Guild Wars Wiki talk:Guild pages/Archive 6

Archival Process for Historical Guilds

When archiving... I'd like to suggest that wikichu's logs add the self: tag at the begining of the link to the original guild name so that the pages do not end up on the wanted pages list when the only page making the request is wikichu. Many of those links were guilds that were created and then forgotten about and never used, much less linked to. Elric 01:16, 29 January 2009 (UTC)

I made the list myself to have the list for us sysops to see what pages need to be deleted; I cleared the list and in future the list won't remain that long again. poke | talk 09:35, 29 January 2009 (UTC)

Acceptable Images

There's been reason to address the policy on guild pages and how most images are regarded as unacceptable. The following four are the only pictures allowed in a page:

1. Guild Banner - Must be logo from guild's website. Can't be a generic screenshot.
2. Members striking pose - Must have "large number of guildies" that are "striking a pose"
3. Guild Hall - Guild expansion template
4. Cape - Part of infobox

A lenient image policy does not have to override a reasonable template layout. I'm not proposing to completely remove these guidelines. Instead I would like each of the requirements, some more than others, to be more inclusive to screenshots. There's no reason to contend with the cape as part of the infobox. The main issue is with the enforcement of the first two; it should be left to the guild leaders to decide what makes their guild banner. The fact that pictures have to have a "large number of guildies" for #2 is a bit excessive. I propose that two be the new minimum for this policy. My argument for the guild hall image is less convincing because there's already a Guild expansion template. I still feel that a picture in the respective guild hall should be allowed, but I'm willing to concede this point. In the end what is the point of being strict with these pictures? The content should not be a matter of complete strictness, and should not be subject to deletion if they are simply screenshots of two members of a guild, in their guild hall, or running around. (See Images 02, 03, and 04) If there are the same amount as required then a reasonable template layout is still achievable.

--Kingsguard 19:10, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

I think the gist of the policy is that a guild page is not a personal page for the guild. It's meant to give the public a quick view of your guild. Notice that the guild policy doesn't limit how sub-pages can be used, so if you wanted a gallery I believe you could just put it on a sub-page. --JonTheMon 19:30, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

Also, the main reason for #2 is that some guild articles get quickly filled with full-sized screenshots of small groups of guildies (sometimes, one screenshot per character). Either way, as long as it's just one "posing" image, i don't see the need for specifying a number of participants in such image (be it 1 or a bajillion). I think its enough with limiting the number of big-sized images on the article (which would be 4 as i see it now). Small-sized images (such as icons for formatting) shouldn't be a problem.

Either way, you can always keep aditional images on your personal userspace.--Fighterdoken 21:21, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

Is the Guild Tag Required Content

Given that it was never intended that the guild's tag be a required element of the guild page I suggest the word is removed from sub section 4 of the Required Content section. Not having a guild tag listed should not be reasonable grounds to delete a guild page. -- Wyn 01:32, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

I agree. Its a small issue; nothing worth a cleanup tag. Perhaps move information about a tag to an optional information section? -- Wandering Traveler 01:37, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

I disagree. The Tag belongs to a Guild just like the Guildname. While you are at it why not just remove ANY requirements, delete {{guild cleanup}} and allow thousands of blank pages? --SilentStorm 01:51, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

Missing a tag doesnt neccesarially mean the page has to be blank. if its missing larger things, like infoboxes, formatting, etc.: I think it should get the cleanup then. -- Wandering Traveler 01:53, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

(Edit conflict) We already do that if you haven't noticed, but to delete a guild page simply because it doesn't have a guild tag, when it was never intended that the guild tag be a required element is just wrong. -- Wyn 01:56, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

(Edit conflict) I know. And like I already said on my talk I usually dont tag for the sole purpose of a missing Guildtag. But still I DO think it belongs to the Guildpage just as the Guildname does aswwll as I think that Guildpages should have more then just an ingame name/forum/webpage link and the guildname and some blank infobox. --SilentStorm 01:58, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

(Edit conflict) Then let's make it a required element. It's no harder for a guild to add than the name, and it doesn't even require a change in policy. Lord Belar 01:59, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

Err, based on the wording I thought it was already a required element. -- Wandering Traveler 02:00, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

If a Guild tag is a requirement, then the examples for an ambiguity would be moot - [[Guild:Zealots Of Shiverpeaks (ZoS)]] [[Guild:Zealots Of Shiverpeaks (America)]] [[Guild:Zealots Of Shiverpeaks (PvP)]] If a Guild tag WAS a requirement, then duplicate Guilds could exist, and that would be a bad thing. --snograt 02:01, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

(Edit conflict) Exactly the point. Wyn, however, disagrees and insists that the rest of us can't read. Lord Belar 02:02, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

(Edit conflict) Thats what I say all the time... From the Policy its a requirement and its really not _that_ hard to add it. It also belongs to the guild Like I said earlier. While I dont really get what Snograt wants to say: Duplicate Guilds cant exist. Old pages that are not active anymore get moved to (historical). There cannot be 2 Guilds with exactly the same name ingame and as such there cant be on the Wiki either. If a guild disbands and someone else creates that Guild again and wishes to create a wiki page then the old one will get moved to (historical) and the new one can be created. Should this however occur a second time then its even more important to have the Guildtag beeing present on the Guildpage so that second Guildpage can be moved to (tag) (historical) and the third one can be created. --SilentStorm 02:08, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

(Edit conflict) I have argued for more required content for over 6 months, but the guild tag is not the thing. I am not saying you can't read, I'm saying you aren't reading anything but that one word, not the months of discussion backing the intent. Now I find myself arguing for the spirit of the policy. The months of discussion regarding this policy both while it was in proposal to change, and since it has been implemented have shown there is very little support for increasing the required contents of guild pages. A very lenient policy is what the consensus has gotten EVERY time the subject has been brought up, and I guess, trying to add something this trivial in an attempt to delete more pages is just wrong when consensus has always been for keeping as much as possible. If you were to argue for more substantive content be required, then yes, I would agree with you 100%, but based on all the months of discussions that have happened regarding guild pages that I have been involved in, I have to disagree with this and my original post stands that I believe the word tag should be removed from that line. -- Wyn 02:12, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

Interpretation of law is based not on what led into its creation, but rather the written word produced. Lord Belar 02:15, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

I think (and I'm bad at reading textual walls, so correct me if I'm wrong) the main question here is "Does a missing guild tag qualify it for cleanup?" If thats the question, then I would think no. -- Wandering Traveler 02:24, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

Whats that big of a deal to keep the Policy the way it is right now and enforce what it says? You are going into a large discussion again instead of just accepting the wording it has now. Its not about "deleting as much as possible" its about having informative Guildpages instead of blank pages. Also honestly: They add the Guildname to the Page which is up to 31 Characters how hard can it be to add another 4 Characters at most for the Guildtag? It even can turn out required if my example from earlier happens. --SilentStorm 02:24, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

(Edit conflict) Belar, this is not law, and the wiki is not for lawyering, the intent and spirit of all wiki policies have been a consideration in every policy discussion that I have been involved in here. My suggestion to remove the word tag from that line of the policy is made with the idea of clarifying the spirit underlying the policy changes that reached consensus. -- Wyn 02:30, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

"the wiki is not for lawyering" Then what are you doing? Lord Belar 02:33, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

I think we're making this more complicated then its supposed to be. Either we remove the tag section or not. If we do remove it, then guild pages wouldnt be unnessecarially tagged. If we don't remove it, well thought out and organized guild pages get tagged for cleanup for three letters. Perhaps we can reach a middle ground; what if we left a notice on the guild talk or user talk page about adding a tag? its something thats easy to miss, so maybe a notice before we tag it? -- Wandering Traveler 02:48, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

That sounds like a good idea. Leave a note on the talk page of the creator, and add the tag after a set amount of time, say, two weeks. Lord Belar 02:57, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

It'd at least create a decent middle ground; comply with policy while still giving people a notice for a small thing. Two weeks seems a bit long, but given people and how they like to ignore things on thier talk page it may be compliable. -- Wandering Traveler 02:59, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

People has the bad habit of ignoring time limits, so i don't think that is a solution. I still think (same as when that line was added) that the tag should be a requeriment (all guilds have it, all guild members know it), but i guess we could solve the main issue here in a simmilar way as with the english summary: From now on, require the tag on all new articles, and for older articles just leave a small note pointing that they need to add it.--Fighterdoken 03:16, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

(Reset indent) I have to say Fighterdoken, you seem to be changing your story here.... "Requiring basically only name + guild template + infobox template + "Contact information" (be it on the infobox or the page itself). I am not really a supporter of forcing editors to enter full or specific partial information in the infobox, if failing to adress this will lead to a {{guild cleanup}} tag and later deletion of the page (instead of, let's say, using {{guild-stub}}).--Fighterdoken 18:34, 17 June 2008 (UTC) " from the proposal change discussion. I don't see guild tag in your list of requirements. -- Wyn 03:40, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

No wonder there, i have changed my story a few times, EACH time we have discussed the minimum requeriments for guild articles XD. My point (as in, the solution) still stands.--Fighterdoken 03:53, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

(Reset indent) Firstly I would like to apologize for the following wall of text =P
Personally I'd have to agree with the removal of this section as I don't really see a need in requiring the guild tag and would also have to agree with Wyn that the addition of a guild cleanup tag should not be not based on whether or not the guild page has the tag listed. While I realize that normally a cleanup tag isn't added for that reason alone, removing it as a required element means that pages that for the most part follow policy wouldn't get deleted simply because they haven't got an otherwise trivial piece of information.
As an example if two guild pages were created, one page included all required information except the guild tag and the other included all required information including the guild tag, with the present requirement of a guild tag should the first be tagged for cleanup and the second not regardless of whether they had otherwise identical levels of information and thus an equal level of usability? While I realize that SilentStorm doesn't normally add a cleanup tag solely for that reason, keeping it as a required element is not something that should be included in this policy.

Also I do understand that including the tag might be helpful in the event of a guild being created by one person, later disbanding, created by someone else, then disbanding and finally being created yet again by yet another person when it comes to historicalizing the article as was already mentioned that wasn't the original intent of the policy to make the tag one of the required elements. While yes Belar you can say that the way it is written could be interpreted as the tag being a requirement the original intent was that a guild page should contain more than just the name, tag and basic formatting as was the case with quite a number of guild pages back before the latest policy change. That specific sentence was trying to emphasize that more information or specifically some form of contact information should also be required for a guild page to exist on the wiki.
Based on what I remember of that original discussion; long as it was; the original consensus for that particular sentence was for this intent and this proposal simply brings the policy back to that original intent while still maintaining that a guild should include more than just basic information.

Finally although this last section doesn't have anything to do with the above and is merely just an after-thought that came to mind while writing the above, there is one element that I personally would really like to see included in the policy; something that was previously discussed in length and something that I doubt consensus could be reached on due to differing views. This element is the previously mentioned paragraph explaining a bit about the guild, it's play style, etc. and is based on my own thoughts of how a guild page can be used as an alternative method for recruiting outside the game.
Simply having the most basic information that is currently required to stop a guild page from being deleted to be honest really doesn't add anything substantial that would make a person choose one guild over another and I know that if I was looking for a guild I wouldn't really give a lot of these pages a second glance for this reason.
Having said that I have accepted that this is something that most likely won't be included in policy since it's very difficult to write a statement or formulate a requirement that would satisfactorily address this while not being overly demanding (I think that is the word I'm looking for).

For the tldr people the short version of the above is that I'd have to agree with the removal of this section as I don't really see a need in requiring the guild tag. --Kakarot 05:40, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

As this discussion about required content in guild pages came up now, I would like to add my thoughts and propose something in the other direction. Some of you maybe have noticed that I generated a list of guild pages sorted by tag names. While most guild pages had no problem with that, some of them have listed the tag in a wrong way (which is not a problem, as it can be fixed quickly) and some don't have a tag at all (see the full list here).

While I really don't want to make the guild tag required for keeping the guild article on the wiki, I would still like some note within the policy that a tag, as a part of the really basic information of a guild, should be listed - but won't qualify for guild cleanup when it is missing.

However when I went through some of the guilds in my list with a missing guild tag, I especially looked at the historical ones, as I thought that they have the best chances of being full of information and listing the guild tag somewhere in between. Well, I was disappointed quickly, when I looked at pages like this, this, this or this (you can imagine, that I can continue this list for a while). So when looking at the pages, I see that they - of course most of them don't have a guild tag somewhere - all have the, by the policy, required content: Contact information. That allowed them to be archived as historical guilds. But the thing that is really annoying me is, that that is all. They only have the contact information, and not really more. And at this point, I have doubts about if these guild articles justify the fact that they will be kept on the wiki forever. I mean, when you are interested in old guilds, then what does it help you when you only can read about contact information which are inactive anyway (as otherwise they wouldn't have been archived as inactive) and don't get other information about it? How are those pages interesting at all for somebody? There are other pages of course, pages that contain really interesting information that remains interesting if the guild won't exist anymore, and even pages that are still updated although the guild was disbanded. But for pages that really contain no information that could be useful after the guild has disbanded, I really see no reason why we should archive them. As long as the guilds still exists that content is okay, as contact information is then useful, when the guild exists and the contact information is still up to date.

So what I want to say is that I would like to see some more requirements for guild articles to be moved to historical. More information than that all listed contact methods are inactive and more than that there was a guild with that name. It doesn't have to be much information, but at least something that is worth to be kept on the wiki. I don't want to change requirements for active guilds, I only want to require something so that historical guild articles are not empty as a lot of them are; and then we can have an alternative inactive tag that guild articles with not enough content for being a historical guild article will be tagged with that makes them open for deletion when other guilds would be moved to historical. poke | talk 14:01, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

I agree with poke that historical content should be somewhat useful in that we get more than just templates and names. --Antioch 19:01, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

I'm all for requiring more information than what the current policy requires, I always have been, but that is really de-railing the point of this discussion which is... do we or do we not require the guild tag on a guild page. I never believed it to be a required element, not during the policy revision discussions, or since the change has been implemented. I believe the concern has been highlighted by this. If the tag is to be considered a required element, the majority of those pages will be tagged for cleanup and potentially deleted. Is this what we want? -- Wyn 19:26, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

As I said: "While I really don't want to make the guild tag required for keeping the guild article on the wiki, I would still like some note within the policy that a tag, as a part of the really basic information of a guild, should be listed - but won't qualify for guild cleanup when it is missing."

There is no problem in having some guilds not in that list. But for the historical pages I see a problem if we archive those and then they don't even have a tag listed.

Also according to the section title, this is about guild requirements in general, not only the guild tag, so adding some thoughts about other requirements should be fine. poke | talk 19:39, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

As Kakarot already mentioned I dont tag otherwise fine Guildpages for deletion because of a damn missing tag... Its not as if I have an urgent need of deleting guildpages or whats not as Wyn might think, its just that empty Guildpages like the ones poke mentioned are a thorn in my side. I also agree with poke in that Guildpages should have viable content in order to be archived as historical Guilds. I could also live with a kinda cleanup tag as Fighterdoken suggested to notify the Guilds that they should add the guild tag which in my eyes is basic content and then after a short period be dealt with. In short: Delete Pages that doesnt give any Information rather then having blank pages lurking around the wiki serving NO purpose. --SilentStorm 00:13, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

Also ROFL Wyn that Edit was soooo lame... I loled alot. --SilentStorm 00:15, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

I'm glad I could amuse you, I thought I'd clarify what this section was about. As I have said for many months now, I agree that we should have more required content on guild pages. I have no argument with that, but this discussion is suppose to be about whether or not the guild tag is a required element, and I have never considered it as one, EVER. The dispute is over tagging guild pages that otherwise meet the rest of the requirements of {{guild infobox}}, {{alliance nav}}, and contact information, and lack only the guild tag. I personally consider your tagging of those pages soooooo lame. -- Wyn 00:37, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

Consider what you want... The Problem however is that we have lots of blank pages that lurk around here and you cant honestly say that those Page serve _any_ purpose. Tagging those for cleanup (and deleting them 2 weeks later) is just getting rid of empty Pages. And the policy is allowing for it. Wether this was intended or not as you claim now is irrelevant. There has been some alternatives offered and I said I could possibly agree with some of them but yet again you failed to see that. --SilentStorm 02:10, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

As you have failed to see anything I have said anywhere on this entire page. I am all for increasing substantive requirements for guild pages, I'm not into tagging and deleting a page for failing to have a guild tag, and whether you believe it or not, I don't believe the policy allows for it as there is no specific requirement of the guild tag, just the mention that name, tag, and templates are not enough, it must also include contact information. So... I guess we are at an impasse Silent. I still am requesting the word tag be removed from that line to clarify that it is not a required element. So why don't we discuss that instead of this other stupidity that seems to be happening. -- Wyn 02:27, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

Why not just move it to the Explicitly allowed content section of the guild pages policy? It would still make a guild tag viable without having to mark a guild page for deletion based on that one tag. Problem solved. -- Wandering Traveler 02:30, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

No Wyn I did read that you wrote you are for more content on Guildpages. But at the same time you are against requiring the Guildtag to be present. I do agree its a minor issue and like we have said countless times all over this entire section nobody is tagging Guildpages that are fine but lack the guildtag for cleanup. But I will ask this question again in case it got overreaden: Can you honestly say that Pages containing nothing but the two required templates and a Character name to be informative? Especially if they are due to be tagged for inactive? As thats the occassion when I tag for cleanup most of the time. Im not saying the Guildtag would make much of a difference and in fact there have been pages exactly the same just they did include a tag which forced me to tag them for inactive instead of cleanup. And this im going to repeat aswell again: There have been some suggestions which I could agree with but still we seem to get away from that over and over again. --SilentStorm 02:41, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

See Silent, this is where we are differing "we have said countless times all over this entire section nobody is tagging Guildpages that are fine but lack the guildtag for cleanup", you are in fact tagging pages that have the other required elements but simply lack the guild tag. This fact is what started this entire dispute. In fact you are tagging pages that have considerably more than just the required elements Guild:The Crunge. The fact some of them contain nothing BUT the required elements is seemingly what makes them not "fine" in your eyes because of your personal belief that guild pages should require more, and that's the problem. The policy does NOT require more, so we can't enforce it. You are just grasping at the lack of a guild tag to remove a page that you don't feel merits being on the wiki. If you really are interested in increasing the requirements then let's start that discussion again even though consensus has been impossible to be reached already on numerous occasions. -- Wyn 02:53, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

Well ok you found one where the cleanup on a quick look was indeed for a missing tag. What makes Guildpages not fine im my eyes in blank pages containing only headers if even. I am and was always thinking that Guildpages should display the Guild give information about the guild, what they are like and such stuff... A place where a guild can profile itself to get possible recruits... I dont see how most of the pages I tag for the missing tag could accomplish that. The main problem with discussions like these is the walls of text they tend to produce and that it gets extremely hard to read all of it yet reply. --SilentStorm 03:19, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

Section break

(Reset indent) Wait, wasn't that exactly what you did like... a year ago, Wyn? Tagging pages for cleanup just because they didn't match with your interpretation of the policy (that, and because none cared about your change proposal at the time). Either way, the current policy DOES require the tag as per the interpretation we gave on the September 08 discussion, and which you even acknowledged at the time (see? i am not the only one with short memory span).

Back to the topic, i think Poke offers a good compromise to solve this issue, remove the Tag as a requirement (cleanup-able if not) from guild articles, but make it a requirement for historical content. That way everyone should be happy (not really, but still).--Fighterdoken 03:01, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

Before the policy was changed there was no "required content" and when my tags were disputed I stopped, and proposed the change to the policy. I have never, during that discussion (and if you claim I acknowledged it then I guess old age is farther affecting my memory than I realize), or since considered the guild tag as a required element on a guild page. So if my understanding of what everyone else's intent was then I apologize. I am not trying to be difficult, I have over and over asked for increased requirements for guild page content and been rebuffed by the rest of the community, but I feel that something as trivial as the lack of a guild tag should NOT be grounds for tagging and deleting a page which is why I suggested the word be removed from that one line. I have no problem with poke's compromise though it will require an additional step for wikichu when archiving guild pages. -- Wyn 03:12, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

(Edit conflict) How I understood poke's Reply he wanted not to archive that kind of Pages which he linked and I fully agree with him on that part. When I tag Guildpages they are either brandnew or inactive. And I was already acting like what I think he proposed so I think I could get along with that part... However I would still like that other suggestion beeing implemented too as that a missing guild tag does not qualify for guild cleanup but there could (should) be a new template notifing that its missing the guildtag... It could even be something small like the stub templates for articles. --SilentStorm 03:19, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

As for the moving by Wikichu you addressed it wont necessary be an extra step because those pages could get tagged cleanup instead of inactive (or even some new template for that matter) and just be deleted instead of beeing archived. --SilentStorm 03:19, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

No, they can't because it screws up the timeline, since a cleanup tag would mean deletion in 14 days where an inactive tag gives a guild 3 months to reclaim it. You would have to tag it for clean up at the end of the 3 month activity, or just agree that at that point if it doesn't have a guild tag it gets deleted rather than archived, and have wikichu check for guild tags in the infobox, or manually go through the 'to be moved' pages one by one and check manually. (edit) There is already a guild stub template, but I would prefer a note to the creator of the page, or on the guild talk page rather than adding a new notice box. -- Wyn 03:33, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

No opposition for the change proposed by Poke then i guess?--Fighterdoken 03:39, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

None that I've seen. Lord Belar 03:59, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

None here. -- Wandering Traveler 04:01, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

Okay, as it seems that you like the idea, let me elaborate it a bit: When going through the pages that are inactive and need an {{inactive guild}} tag, the pages are normally checked if they meet all requirements, and if they are really inactive etc. At that time, we simply check also if they meet the requirements for a historical guild. If yes, go on as we did and tag them as an inactive guild; if not, so if they miss required information, tag them as an inactive guild that is missing information. These pages will be deleted instead of archived after the three months, and there are no changes about the time spans. So basically I want to split the inactive guild template into two templates, one that results in an archiving and another that results in deletion - as always people will be allowed to remove the templates and mark the guild as active again or even add the required information.

One thing that seemed to be lost that I mentioned are the requirements for the inactive guild. I was not talking about that I want to simply move the guild tag from the requirement for normal guild articles to the historical guild articles. I was rather talking about that I don't want the guild tag to be a requirement at all (just a recommended content, maybe more visible in the creation templates than now), but instead want to add more content requirements for the historical guilds. I don't have a clear image about what these contain, so please add your opinions; but maybe we could for example require a infobox that is not empty (so at least contains some lines) and also at least one text paragraph (outside of the recruiting and contact section), so that there is viable content for a historical guild. poke | talk 12:37, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

I'd have no problem with modifying the inactive guild template; assuming you would rather modify the current one than create yet another template; to include a parameter that when set will make the template read something like:

"This Guild article has not received any edits in over 3 months and does not meet minimum requirements for a historical guild. If this is not rectified within 3 months then it will be tagged for cleanup and deleted 2 weeks later, per our Guild pages policy. Guilds that have not received an edit in over 3 months are assumed inactive or disbanded.

To prove that your guild is still active, either edit your article to reflect any changes that have occurred within the 3 months, or remove this template with a note on the talk page or in the edit summary."

I would also have no problem with changing the guild tag from required content to recommended content as you suggested Poke. As to the suggested one text paragraph, while I would welcome this change since I've never really seen a reason to keep a guild page that has no usable information other than a contact, the main problem that has come up when this was previously discussed; albeit that was for all guild pages not just historical ones as you are now suggesting; was that we couldn't come to a consensus on what was enough and also how to word it in the policy so that it would satisfactorily address this while not being overly demanding. Having said that maybe considering this would only apply to guild pages that are being moved to historical rather than all pages it might hopefully be somewhat easier to agree on the wording this time around. --Kakarot 16:24, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

In regards of "descriptive paragraphs"... my main issue is (and i quote myself from this page) telling people that their guild articles "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".

As i pointed last time we discussed this, i don't have issues with raising the required content for historical articles, as long as they remain concrete (like, have at least 70% of the infobox information entered, have a puppy picture as guild cape, or include a rant about WS in zwahili).--Fighterdoken 17:06, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

Then please, instead of repeatedly repeating what went wrong in the past discussions, start to give ideas of what we want as required content. poke | talk 17:25, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

First, let's see what every guild has to have, no matter what, as per the infobox:

• All guilds have a name, a tag, and a leader: requiring that should be fine.
• All guilds can select a territory for playing (in-game territory), a location for playing (real world), a language, a playing style (type on infobox), and a timezone for playing. While these may be relevant data, i have seen lots of guilds already that play on a "we don't really care about this" basis, so using these for filtering may not prove to be useful. We could fill blanks if needed, though, asuming that if they don't specify a certain entry then that means they use the "all of them" version (ie. no country restrictions? select "international"; no territory? select "any"; no playing style? select "PvX"; no language? select the default one on the article; etc...)
• Not all guilds have a cape, or selected a faction allegiance, or have a hall, or alliance, or possess alternate on-line contact methods (we should asume that if they leave it blank, it's because "none" is the answer), so i don't think requering them to include such information in order to retain the articles should be done. Even so, i guess we could just go and declare that if a guild has no cape and hall then sure as hell they are not relevant for archival purposes (may not be nice, but meh).
• Not all guilds participate on tournaments, so requiring their "notability" in this regard may not be fair to all those PvE guilds out there. In the same way, not all guilds realize in-game events or invest their time in public relationship, so just archiving those guilds that "were known" could become a problem when deciding which one was or was not "known".

Obviously, after all of the above, the problem could still stand (example provided by a vandal of a possible scenario), and we would end having this same discussion in 6 months. The final solution would probably be to let the archival process run on admin discretion (the dual tagging explained above should give enough time to fix wrongs), even though i would like to think someone out there has an alternate option to that.--Fighterdoken 21:07, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

@Belar (from much earlier in the conversation): "Interpretation of law is based not on what led into its creation, but rather the written word produced." No. No, no, no, a thousand times no. First of all, interpretation of real-world law does often involve what led into its creation. More importantly, it's at the very heart of wiki culture that the spirit and intent of consensus is far more important than the wording of a given policy. Using the technical wording of a policy over what consensus intended is the very definition of wikilawyering and will only ever get us bogged down in a circle of people trying to exploit perceived loopholes and other people and other people trying to close those loopholes by rewriting the policies so convolutedly it takes an actual lawyer to understand them. So, no.

@Fighterdoken: This actually ties into the same thing, but what is the benefit of putting requirements in concrete terms? So people can more easily put the bare minimum of effort into their guild page? I see nothing wrong with a general statement that inactive guilds will be deleted instead of archived as historical if they aren't informative, and then listing things informative guild pages should have (at least one descriptive paragraph, most if not all of the infobox fields, a guild cape image, whatever else). It doesn't mean that if a guild page falls short of one thing but is overall a good page it will automatically be deleted, and it doesn't mean that if a guild page technically meets each thing but overall is completely uninformative it will stay. Judgment calls can and will be made. The wiki wouldn't work without them. - Tanetris 21:20, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

Fighterdoken, you seem to be a bit too fixed about the infobox. The infobox is only to give short ideas, but if we would have the infobox as the central point of information on articles, they wouldn't be at the side and wouldn't give that much room for text. Also having the archival process run on admin discretion is exactly something that would make this policy useless. And no, normally there is no possibility that users, which guild page was tagged, will fix that guild when they get an inactive guild tag, because the guild is inactive and when I look at how many inactive guild tags are removed out of all tagged guild pages, that number is really low.

I really like the way Tanetris goes. We require a informative guild page with "at least one descriptive paragraph, most if not all of the infobox fields, a guild cape image, whatever else". Something along this is probably the best way to go. poke | talk 21:50, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

And you and Wyn seem a bit too fixed on the "descriptive paragraph". Please check the example of a guild article with a descriptive paragraph i left above. I don't think you would say a guild article written that way would be historic-able, would you?

"Descriptive paragraph" has been and still is my main issue, since it's easily wiki-lawyer-able, same as it was "blank articles" on his time (and you people can't seem to come up with a better way to name it). We will have (yes, i used my dimension-swapping time-machine to check) people coming here, mass-tagging, and claiming that X-pages had not descriptive paragraphs, and then we will have people claiming that yes, they do, and then we will start a discussion to specify what is a descriptive paragraph and what is not, and if possible i would like to discuss that now instead of in 6 months.

Give me a second to go acording to your list:

• "Most if not all the infobox fields": Most fields in the infobox already are entered on every guild article, since "none" is a valid entry for most of the fields. As i said above, name, tag and leader should be required here, language can be required (if not obvious from the page content), but other than that "blank" already provides the information requested. Faction = (blank) means that the guild has not chosen an allegiance, and such piece of information is as important as knowing they are Luxon; Territory = (blank) means they play on any territory, etc.
• "At least one descriptive paragraph": I actually prefer something along the lines of "Inactive guild articles whose bodypage includes objective information about the guild besides the one requested on the infobox, will be tagged with the {{go to historical later}} tag. Information provided this way can include (but is not limited to) date/reason for creation/disbanding, internal rules, accomplishments/punishments, activities the guild took part in, insert more here.". This way we already include examples of what is expected here, declare that "we rock lolozonene" is not a valid entry, and declare that just a rewrite of what the infobox ask is not enough.
• "A guild cape image": Same as guild hall; not every guild has them. If we require it, then we need to make clear that a guild is not considerated for archival purposes if it hasn't reached a certain level of development (not that is a bad thing, but i just want to make sure people is aware of that).

As i said, my main issue is one of wording, and i really would like for that to be solved now instead of fighting for it again later.--Fighterdoken 22:39, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

"Please check the example of a guild article with a descriptive paragraph i left above." - Please don't provide examples that are clear vandalism and as such could be deleted as G1 if there was nothing else within the history. And yes, if that wasn't vandalism but some real information, it would be totally fine to be kept.

"Faction = (blank) means that the guild has not chosen an allegiance [...]" - Actually that is something that you alone interpret into the infobox. The infobox only displays those values which actually have content, and with common sense someone should be able to determine if "N/A" or a slash or something like this is really a valid value for such a parameter and qualifies as "information".

"I actually prefer something along the lines of [...]" - Great, now why do you hide this into your text like that? Actually it is a good idea, so why do you come up first with what parameters the infobox can have and a big explanation to that? We want ideas, so that should have been your central point you wanted to say.

What we are doing now is gaining ideas of how we could write it in the policy so that it isn't to strict but still prevents people to argue about it in the future, so instead of reading every idea word by word, say what you don't like about it in general and give other ideas. Nobody said that the concrete text of Tanetris is a proposal, that's why I said "Something along this is probably the best way to go.". We are just collecting ideas, and I like Tanetris' way a lot more than having a "checklist" editors have to go through to make their guild page ready for historical. poke | talk 22:54, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

Last time we just threw ideas and none argued them one by one, we ended with "required content: tag".

About the other... that is why i try to avoid discussing now. I tend to write wall of texts to answer all possible issues, bu at the cost of hidding things in wall of text. It's up to everyone if they read them or not.--Fighterdoken 00:30, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

As for poke's idea of splitting the inactive tag, how about if it is done the same way the historical and guild tags are with and added optional parameter for missing information, so rather than having two separate tags, it can just be added? Fighterdoken, you did a great job with the other ones, I'm sure you can come up with a workable one for this as well. I have always advocated for the requirement of at least a single descriptive paragraph, (even one line if it is informative about the guild). -- Wyn 01:35, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

Yeah one or two templates don't matter as long as we have two different categories so that we can split the different types correctly. poke | talk 01:37, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

Ok, so for the template, how about User:Wynthyst/Sandbox/Inactive guild? I changed the wording a little making it less redundant and added the second parameter. It eliminates the need to retag them for cleanup at the end of the 3 month inactivity. It also adds the pages that are missing information to a separate sub category of Inactive guilds that can be used to identify the ones that should be deleted rather than archived. -- Wyn 23:45, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

That's great; now all we need is some requirements for historical guilds ;) poke | talk 09:34, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

In regards of that, how about a minor change to the {{Guild infobox}} such as User:Fighterdoken/Sandbox/001? As you said poke, i was just "asuming" what a blank space could mean, but i also think there are lots of guilds out there that make the same asumption. If we make clear that blank spaces equal missing info, i think we could start asking "full (or a certain % of) infobox" also, if you guys want.--Fighterdoken 19:54, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

No, that is definitely the wrong way. If I would have a guild infobox like that on my guild page, whereas only 4 or 5 things are filled, I would rather have no page at all.

And it is not the problem that the infobox is too empty. Most of the pages have no text, so that is something where we should start adding requirements imo. poke | talk 21:14, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

Any good idea on how to leave clear to people that they have to enter the info even if the info is "none", and that "blank" is not an alternative?.

About the body content, my proposal about what i think could work in that regard is still up there. --Fighterdoken 22:04, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

I personally have no problem with information left out of the infobox. I think the info box should be the very least and last consideration of 'required' content, as it is just a quick footprint that takes up less than a 3rd of the entire page space. I have always fought for this, but the focus has always been on the infobox. PLEASE can we just add a requirement of minimal descriptive text in the main body of the page and get off this infobox requirement? Requiring the tag is really as far as I will go in agreeing to completion of the infobox. (edit) I remove the word "None" from the infobox if that's all they enter since the infobox is designed to eliminate blank fields. I would much rather see a shorter infobox than a box filled with "None". -- Wyn 00:14, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

But that brings us back to the problem i foresaw before. You are pretty much saying that a guild article whose infobox is full of valid data but whose bodypage is blank (or nearly blank) would be removable, while at the same time a guild article whose infobox is empty and whose main body is compromised solely of content like the vandalizing i linked before would stay, and that would be kinda... lame, for saying it one way.

Do we need a new draft for these changes, by the way?--Fighterdoken 00:28, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

You know Fighterdoken? I dont' think you give anyone any credit for common sense. I am not talking about keeping pages that are filled with "content like the vandalizing i linked before". I am not even talking about filled, I'm talking about minimal descriptive text, even if that is just one sentence of "This guild is me and my brother" And yes, if someone can take the time to COMPLETE the infobox, they can type a sentence. Quite simply, there are very few guild pages that have complete (or even nearly complete) infoboxes that don't have minimal descriptive text. Going back to my arguments from the very start, having no text at all is paramount to a blank page. We would not keep a mainspace article that was nothing but an infobox, why should we keep guild pages that are nothing but an infobox? Since we now archive guild pages to keep FOREVER, it's just ridiculous to keep these. They provide no truly useful information. -- Wyn 00:36, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

For the notes, I would rather see an empty infobox but information in the text than an empty text area and a full infobox with information that is of no interest when the guild is historical (who is interested in webpage or Teamspeak or the leader name if the guild is no longer there?? What I want to read is what they did, how the guild was like and such). So I fully agree with Wyn here. poke | talk 00:43, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

If a guild has the time to write about their philosophy, playing style and/or records, what stops them from filling the infobox? Kinda, works both ways, even if you don't like it...

The problem is, Poke, we are not asking them to fill in what they did, how the guild was, or such, we are asking them to put "descriptive content" into the page, which can pretty much be anything they want, even if it offers no information at all about what the guild was about. The infobox, at least, gives us a real glimpse about what the guild used to be, instead of "We are a group of friends who likes to hang together and blahblahblah...".

I am not asking to pick infobox over text, just asking that, if we require "descriptive content" for guild articles to become historical, then we should also require at least (for saying a number) half of the infobox data to be filled also (leaving contact methods out). I don't see how requiring more information to be available should be a problem, when we are discussing about pages that are (supposedly) not going to be updated anymore.--Fighterdoken 01:06, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

Well, of the infobox content, you've already pointed out the only things they all really have is guild name, tag, and leader. They don't have to have a cape, or choose a faction allegiance, they don't have to specify a territory, or a language, they may or may not have a hall, the guild trim variable is only for those guilds that participate in the gvg tournament and place, you are saying leaving out the website and forum (which if they are being moved to historical are dead anyway) and the timezone is variable. So... just what do you expect us to 'require' in the infobox for archival? -- Wyn 01:12, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

As Poke made me realize, just because they don't specify it doesn't mean they don't have it, it only means the didn't specify it. If a guild has no faction allegiance, they can specify faction = none. If a guild has no specified a language, it doesn't necesarily mean that they accept any language, and if they do, they can make it clear.

Name, tag, leader, type, they all have non-blank values; cape, territory, language, faction, trim, hall, timezone, they all have "none" or "any" as a possible value".--Fighterdoken 01:35, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

"If a guild has the time to write about their philosophy, playing style and/or records, what stops them from filling the infobox? Kinda, works both ways, even if you don't like it..." - nobody, really nobody said that the infobox is unimportant. However we are talking about guild articles, and articles are normally made of text, not of words in a short "checklist".

Take this guild for example; there is a lot informative text there, and it's even a notable guild. But the infobox is very short, so now imagine what would happen if the infobox would show 15 parameters with "None" or "N/A" filled it? That is like having the skill infobox showing sacrifice, upkeep, adrenaline, energy, activation, recharge, exhaustion, ... for all skills. That is not just totally redundant, but it also looks completely stupid; especially when the page is not so long.

The infobox is to give short but informative points, yes, but most of the information given there only applies when the guild is active. After the guild is archived - and that is what we are talking about - the infobox is rather useless when you want to get information about the guild. The text however is, in most cases, the information part about the article that contains the most valuable information. Information that still tells you something about the guild, even if the guild is no longer active. And that is something we should really focus on when we archive guilds. The infobox is just a "gimmick" that stands aside, it makes the guild page look a bit better (and less text-only, independent from the text inside), but the text, with over 75% width of the article area is the thing that gets the most focus. And when we have nothing in there, the guild article is worthless. Or are these guild pages really interesting to be kept forever: 1, 2, 3, 4? On the completely other side see this example; I would like to keep this, but not the others. poke | talk 10:48, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

2nd Section break

(Reset indent) I unfortunately couldnt participate in this discussion for th last week as my Internet Connection went crazy and I had a quite busy week and couldnt get around for the wiki. While I quickly read over all that has been written and had several thoughts about it I completely forgot everything by now when I finished reading up. However I agree with poke and Wyn that the Infobox is quite unimportant and the main Focus is/should be the Textarea. There are many great Guildpages out there which sometimes dont even have much of the Infobox filled in. Also there are even more Guildpages which might have some infobox items specified but are otherwise empty... Those are ugly to look at and on top of that not informative at all. As poke (or wyn) mentioned already (I think) its useless to archive those pages forever. Like poke I would appreciate it if there is some Paragraph about the Guild itself, how the are/where like, what they did, the story of the Guild, accomplishments etc. That would for example qualify as an informative Page. Much more to say but I forgot --SilentStorm 00:13, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

Also as I just ran into it: This does not qualify as informative Guildpage imho. --SilentStorm 00:16, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

3rd Section break

As to not delay this anymore (and since we are going nowhere if i keep pushing for the infobox requeriment adition), can we get a proper written draft/modification proposal? As far as i remember, the things that would need to be changed are:

• Remove Tag as a guild article retention requeriment (cleanup-able).
• Modify the inactivity tagging process specifications to note that articles can be deleted or kept as historical, instead of just kept.
• Add body-page content requeriment for historical guild article retention.

I think that is all we agreed so far...--Fighterdoken 05:20, 11 March 2009 (UTC)

As this hasn't been commented on for 9 days and to try to get this resolved, does anyone have any problems with what Fighterdoken has posted above as I think that is more or less what has been agreed upon. Also what would the minimum content requirement be, one descriptive paragraph in the main body section about the guild? Or more? Also how should this be worded in the policy? --Kakarot 21:18, 20 March 2009 (UTC)

I'm curious as to how we're going to work out point #2, but it all makes sense to me. I support this. -- Wandering Traveler 03:19, 21 March 2009 (UTC)

I can support this, and as for wording I believe stating that there has to be descriptive text of the guild on the page is enough, so there are no arguments over how much text is required. As for the change to the tagging, I have the template worked out (see above somewhere) and it simply applies the more stringent requirement for inactive tagging, of having to have the descriptive text and tag as well as the previously required content for a guild page to be archived, otherwise it gets deleted at the end of the 3 month inactivity, rather than moved to historical. The tag will automatically subcategorize those pages for deletion rather than archival. Are these changes major enough to require an entire new policy change proposal? or can we call consensus to change with this discussion? -- Wyn 05:25, 21 March 2009 (UTC)

I think consensus can be reached on this. Though one inquiry (and maybe this is a blatent bot task); how are we to deal with historical guild pages that are already categorized, but don't meet requirements? Will those have to be manually checked, or is there an automated process that we can use on that? -- Wandering Traveler 05:38, 21 March 2009 (UTC)

I would prefer a manual check, but I'm sure poke will advocate this as a bot job, or we just leave them as is, since they were archived prior to the change in the policy. -- Wyn 05:42, 21 March 2009 (UTC)

HOW DO I CREATE A PAGE FOR MY GUILD????

← moved to Help:Ask a wiki question

Tagging guilds as inactive

I think taggers need to be reminded of the second condition for tagging a guild as inactive: Condition 2: In-game inactivity - The listed contact (forum, website, guild leader, etc) is inactive. The guilds in our alliance are quite stable, and thus do not recieve frequent edits to their Wiki pages. All the guild do however have listed and active web pages/forums, which should per policy be enough to keep them safe from tagging. I am not at the wiki that often, but today I came on to find two of our alliance guilds tagged as inactive, and one had even become historical. This is not the first time I have found active alliance guilds tagged as inactive, but in the past I have been on frequent enough to catch it before they actually got turned into historical guilds. If people are frequently tagging guilds with listed active webpages as inactive, the policy should state this in stead of giving people the false impression that as long as they have an active website they do not have to keep tabs on their Wiki page.--Lensor (talk) 01:18, 2 August 2009 (UTC)

I agree, using the Inactive guild list should only be the first step when determining if a guild page should be tagged as inactive, yet at the same time, is it really that difficult to check/edit your pages once every 6 months? If the guild has an active website, that's great, but to remove a guild from the to be tagged list, it requires an edit here, so normally, what I would do is correct a typo, or remove a comment, but when those things aren't available, I have to find another way to edit the page. I understand about guild/alliance begin stable, as mine is but in 6 months there's always something that could be added, or removed from a guild page. -- Wyn talk 01:55, 2 August 2009 (UTC)

That it is possible to artificially invent an edit every 6 months is not really the point though, as the policy explicitly states that edits are not needed as long as the listed website is active. If edits are needed after all, the policy should state this. Many guilds have a "fire and forget" Wiki entry, it is basically like any other static article. In that context 6 months is a short time. Also, you only have 3 months to discover the inactive tag once it is up, so if you don't keep tabs on edits (there is often several people editing one page) it is not that much time to prevent an "historification". --Lensor (talk) 02:14, 2 August 2009 (UTC)

It would be quite easy by the creators to watch those pages, and activate email notification for watchlist changes. Then if someone edits the guild page, for example by adding an inactive guild tag, you receive an email that it was changed, so you can check what was done and remove the tag again. poke | talk 10:54, 2 August 2009 (UTC)

I agree that there are workarounds (if you know about them, which not all do), but still that is not the point. The policy say one thing but the enforcement work under a different rule set and that is a problem. Either the policy has to change to reflect the de facto enforcement, or the enforcement has to be pulled in line with the policy. It is just no good to expect people to somehow realize that the policy document is only for show.. I dont mean to be antagonistic, but this has really been bugging me. --Lensor (talk) 11:50, 2 August 2009 (UTC)

Lensor, I check every link to webpages and forums when I'm tagging. the problem with this is, that many forums require you to be a registered member to see any posts, and webpages are simply static. There really is no way to judge when there has been any recent activity in those cases. Many guild webpages are on free services, so they remain active indefinitely, regardless of whether the guild is still actually active, or even still a guild for that matter, if someone doesn't think to take them down. Quite simply, we do the best we can, but the primary responsibility for the status of the guild page on the wiki belongs to the guild. <edit>At least now they are simply archived as historical and not deleted, so they can easily be restored by ANY member of the community without the assistance of a sysop. -- Wyn talk 12:05, 2 August 2009 (UTC)

I would have no problem adding a line to the Maintenance section that tells the guild they must make at least one edit to their page every 6 months to keep it active. But if you wish a more substantial change, feel free to propose it. -- Wyn talk 12:13, 2 August 2009 (UTC)

I rather have a few untagged guild pages than endless 'activity' spam. Backsword 12:17, 2 August 2009 (UTC)

Endless activity spam? What planet are you on today Backsword? A single edit every 6 months does not make endless activity spam Be serious. -- Wyn talk 12:33, 2 August 2009 (UTC)

I would think there more than one guild page on the wiki, nad not everyone is one a strict schedule. And stay off the personal attacks, Wyn. They don't bolster your case. Backsword 12:53, 2 August 2009 (UTC)

Moving back to the original case, one edit every six months isnt that big of a deal to cope with. And even if one forgets, the move button to restore that guild page is a simple two clicks away. I'm thinking we should modify the policy slightly to an and/or basis for tagging. Perhaps this: Guild pages will be tagged as {{inactive guild}} if one or both of the following two conditions are met. In essence, I'm thinking of guild inactivity strictly speaking to the wiki. If one is truly active and running, I would think that periodic changes to the respective guild page would be commonplace. Therefore, an edit every six months would not be that hard. Thoughts? -- Wandering Traveler 15:18, 2 August 2009 (UTC)

(ri) This would be a solution, but to me the worst possible one. I (and others) argued very hard when these guidelines were first made to include forum/website inactivity to the conditions for tagging guilds as inactive. The reason simply being that since the guidelines explicitly disallow including information subject to regular changes, a stable guild could very easily make a Wiki entry to never look back. My preferred solution would therefore be to enforce the rules in place. However, I can appreciate Wyn's point that sometimes you can't judge website/forum activity due to login demanded, so a reminder to guilds to make sure the website/forum can be assessed for activity to avoid the inactivity tag might be in order. --Lensor (talk) 07:51, 5 August 2009 (UTC)

"a stable guild could very easily make a Wiki entry to never look back" ~ Since the purpose of the guild page is to inform the community about the guild, even a stable guild should have something they can add/remove in 6 months. I do understand, as my guild/alliance has been stable for quite awhile, yet I manage to keep our pages off the inactive list. -- Wyn talk 22:14, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

You are very active on the wiki in general, so that you manage to come up with updates to your guild wiki page is not really a good example. For someone who make a guild wiki page simply to inform the public about the guild (which is supposed to be the purpose of guild wiki pages after all), and that is pretty much all they ever do on the wiki, it is a completely different situation. If there is activity on the listed webpage/forum the guild is evidently not inactive, and should not be tagged as such, wiki inactivity or not.--Lensor (talk) 06:51, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

(add). Ok, it happened again. Our guild, that has a very active forum which is linked right at the guild page, was yesterday tagged as inactive. Apparently there was a tagging spree, so I went through all the guilds tagged as inactive at the same time (around 20, took like 3 minutes). I found 2 other guilds who also had listed active (recent posts) forums, so I reverted their tags. However, such guilds are not supposed to be tagged per policy, so why are they?--Lensor (talk) 07:35, 26 August 2009 (UTC)

(another add, last one). Just to prove a point I went through all the guilds starting with "A" in the inactive guild category, almost 60 guilds. The vast majority had no listed forum/website. A few had listed forums that could not be assessed for activity (login demanded, guild name not matching, very foreign language) but I found five guilds tagged as inactive with active accessible listed forums (double checked that they had been active also when tagged). Assuming the same rate of erroneous tagging is true also for guilds starting with another letter, that means we currently have upwards of 90 guilds tagged as inactive in error. How many have been already been moved to historical one can only guess at. --Lensor (talk) 10:08, 26 August 2009 (UTC)

Lensor, I'm not disagreeing that some guilds have been tagged erroneously, when you find them, remove the tag, and what happens when they get moved to historical when still active? We move them back when someone notices and edits, or tries to recreate the page. Short of tracking down every listed guild leader in game before tagging, it's going to happen (and you know that is just NOT a reasonable thing to do). There has to be some accountability placed on the guild that creates a page here, rather than heaping it all on those of us trying to maintain an organized and active wiki. I do try to go through the inactive guilds and double check activity before asking Wikichu to do the archive moves, but I'm only human and do miss some. -- Wyn talk 12:34, 26 August 2009 (UTC)

As I tried to show with my experiment, the problem is not that mistakes happen. If it was honest mistakes I would not had said anything. Everyone is human. The problem is that editors routinely tag Guilds in spite of listed active forums, hence violating policy. If out of 60 guilds 5 are tagged in error (which was over half of the guilds with listed forums) it is clear that something is not working. Of course I am not saying you have to track down every guild leader etc., but clicking on a link only takes a few seconds. Especially as there are precious few guilds that have listed forums to begin with, so it is not something that has to be done for every page. --Lensor (talk) 13:52, 26 August 2009 (UTC)

I have added a note to the List of inactive guilds reminding people to check forum/website links before tagging. Regardless of whether the link is active or not the only way to remove the guild from the inactive page is to "create" an edit. Again, I would like to stress that more accountability is needed on the part of the guild posting the page to begin with. -- Wyn talk 14:10, 26 August 2009 (UTC)

(ri) Thank you, I think this reminder will go a long way. The accountability of the creators of Guild pages is of course to follow the policy. In that includes making sure that listed forums can easily be assessed for activity. For instance if the linked forum demands registration to see if there is activity. Or if the forum is in Cyrillic. Also creators should be aware that mistakes do happen so it is a good idea to keep an eye open. But it is the editors responsibility to do their best to follow the rules set in place. It is important that tags are handed out in a manner that can be predicted by reading the policy.--Lensor (talk) 15:40, 26 August 2009 (UTC)

Historical guilds.

I think both conditions should be met before a guild page becomes historical. Need for only one of the two doesn't make sense to me. BUT if in-game activity can't be found in any way, then the wiki inactivity should be enough. - J.P.Talk 18:13, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

Erh... that is what is supposed to happend already. Guilds should only be able to be tagged as inactive if, after 3 months of no edits, they are unreachable through the contacting methods available. The policy as it is written is clear already in that regard.

(added) Don't get confused with the "2 options for historical tagging" part, because that is there to deal with the "known disbanded guilds" issue, not with tagging due to inactivity.--Fighterdoken 21:54, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

I actually realized that not long ago. I should think (more importantly, read) before i type -.- - J.P.Talk 22:01, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

But, where would be the fun in that? :)--Fighterdoken 22:03, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

Not being an idiot, that's how i feel right now :P - J.P.Talk 22:05, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

A new template for guilds with active forums/websites?

Ok, as can be seen above I have been moaning about how editors tag guilds as inactive in spite of active listed forums/websites. I think we have gotten a long way to help editors remember to check the forums before tagging (rewording of the inactive template, a reminder on the inactive list). However, that leaves another problem. Guild are not removed from the "to be tagged" list unless they actually recieve an edit. Since we per policy cannot tag them as inactive if they arent, we have to come up with another easy way to remove them from the list. One way could be to just make a small edit (like adding in a break), but it seems kinda arbitrary and leaves no information for other editors. I therefore suggest we use another template for this purpose. Bascially what I envision is a template that says that the guild has not recieved any wiki edits for at least three months, but the forum/website is still active. That way the guild would be removed from the list (so editor after editor do not have to check it again and again) while at the same time leaving an alert for later editors to check the forum before tagging as inactive. Stupid? Doable? Acceptable? --Lensor (talk) 19:37, 27 August 2009 (UTC)

Couldn't you just add in a hidden comment that says, "forum check on DD-MM-YYYY, found active"? -- FreedomBound 19:45, 27 August 2009 (UTC)

Or just add a parameter to the {{inactive guild}} template. --JonTheMon 19:47, 27 August 2009 (UTC)

I have a better idea, let's scratch the forum/website clause from the policy completely and make it the guild's responsibility to keep it off the inactive list. -- Wyn talk 19:52, 27 August 2009 (UTC)

I second Wyn's proposal. -- Wandering Traveler 22:05, 27 August 2009 (UTC)

I have always found a bit weird that we ask guilds to not put dynamic information such as rosters because the page would need to be updated too frecuently, but also we ask them to update the page frecuently to prevent inactivity...

How about just changing the policy so "as long as they have a forum/web page accessible, they are presumed to be active" (regardless of wether the forum/web is updated or not)?

In other news, people needs to stop mass-tagging with GWWT (it's evil i say, evil!).--Fighterdoken 22:17, 27 August 2009 (UTC)

The hidden date tag thing seems like a very good idea! Easy and obvious. Maybe it is just me, but I see guild pages as something that is there for the users, not the guilds themselves. If someone meets a guild in game I want them to be able to go to the Wiki and check them out, simple as that. Besides, guilds with active forums are more likely to get visited from inside the game to begin with, so they should be a priority to keep from the users' point of view. It is not like there are a lot of guilds with active forums anyway. I went through about 600 tagged guilds yesterday. The vast majority had no forum at all, or the forum link was dead, so no problem there. Of the remaining about half had an inactive forum (or a forum that could not be assessed), and about half had an active forum. In the end I reverted about 60 tags. Hence, in comparison with the about total number of guilds tagged, not a lot. But in comparison to the guilds with forums, about half still being active seems like way too high an error rate. --Lensor (talk) 10:06, 28 August 2009 (UTC)

Suggested change of wording

I would like to suggest a small change of the wording of the second criteria for tagging a guild as inactive:

Guild pages will be tagged as {{inactive guild}} if both of the following two conditions are met:

• 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.

The reason for this suggestion is that no one, not even me, will track down characters in game or send emails or leave messages on people's Wiki user pages before tagging a Guild as inactive. Spending a few seconds clicking a link to see if it is active is IMO perfectly reasonable and should be routine for all taggers. Spending maybe days per tag to try to get a hold of people is not. The reason for adding the "GW-related" clause is because some guilds are part of cross-game clans so site/forum may be active even though the GW guild is not. Also some forums seem to be only about OT-posting, which also really says nothing about guild activity.--Lensor (talk) 17:04, 28 October 2009 (UTC)

Ive been doing this anyways, but implementing it would be a good idea. I sitll don't like the fact that we're allowing the second clause, but thats not the point here. I'd support the rewording. -- Wandering Traveler 21:37, 28 October 2009 (UTC)

I will go ahead and change this. It is a very minor change, and is already how the policy works in practice so should not be particularly controversial. --Lensor (talk) 16:03, 30 October 2009 (UTC)

Just realized I forgot to make a link for the proposed change at the policy page for this. Not that I think it would change anything, but better safe than sorry, so added it now. --Lensor (talk) 09:41, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

Add: The previous wording was: "Condition 2: In-game inactivity - The listed contact (forum, website, guild leader, etc) is inactive." with no further instruction how to deem the contact as being inactive. --Lensor (talk) 09:43, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

I see that Ariyen now reverted the change without checking the talk page first. However, since I forgot to make the link to proposed policy change I will leave it as is for a few days (in case there is more input).--Lensor (talk) 11:20, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

Truthfully, talks should be here first, get an idea, before applying. Wouldn't want someone (like me) think that's already the new policy and not know that it's not. Thought did cross my mind, until I looked in history yesterday, before I tagged a few guilds, and then was nice enough to send out a couple of hellos - is your guild active? type message , so to speak. It's just nicer to talk here about it, get a consensus, then add. -- riyen ♥ 11:29, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

The whole point of tagging as inactive sends an alert to people who are involved - whether they are inactive or not. If they are not, people can, will and should revert. Typing a message to the people involved in the guild management is just going to waste a lot of time. Yeah, you might have a lot of time so the policy suits you, but do mind that most other people have a job and life, so please think of the bigger picture. Going the extra mile is not necessarily "nice" when it inconveniences other users. I support the rewording, simply because waiting around for people to respond before tagging just slows down cleanup processes. Pika Fan 11:42, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

People can register here without emails, the point of trying to actually contact and see isn't that big of a deal. I just think that discussion pages should be checked and if someone left a message. I'd ask them, "Hey, did they respond if it was active or not?" person says no, deactivate. Easy, Simple. It's in line to be Historial. If no response within a day (or within amount of time that they could show up and leave a simple yes or no) then inactivate it. Let them reactivate it the next day, week, etc.

I have a life, but it's not hard to just simply ask and still do, doesn't take that much time. If someone can tag a guild deletion. Someone can take the time to look at the discussion, as that question and go from there. There's no harm in taking risks, that so many seem not to want to take, because it's either inconvenient or not worth it. If you can't take the time out to do a little bit more (as what shows in policy - like looking into discussion, forums, etc.), maybe guild tagging isn't for you. Leave it to some one who is. As a person who's had both a job and life and I still do (Full time mom here). I have always on a lot of occasions taken risks to do things needed or what not, that some with jobs and life couldn't do. It's not only called multitasking, but managing time wisely. It's not inconvenience, but a way to manage w/out a lot of issues or problems in the long run. (Thanks for rewording pika. To others, to see what i'm talking about, see history to Pika's previous message.) -- riyen ♥ 11:57, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

I do not think you are seeing the big picture here. Say there are five active taggers. With the current system they can each tag ~1/5 of the guilds on the list, since once they have tagged it (alternatively added token edit due to active forum/webpage) the guild is removed from the list. With your system though, each of these would have to visit each and every guild page (because they have no way of knowing if someone is "on top of it" before visiting), effectively making the combined effort of guild maintenance five times bigger. I am quite convinced you are the only one thinking this is a reasonable way of doing things. I must wonder though, do you also track down listed in game contacts?--Lensor (talk) 12:15, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

No... Here's what it is in optional view. Say you pick guild A. Guild A is being done by Another person (They leave a message in the discussion page, that you checked). you find out that they hadn't finished. They had left a message with leader. ask if leader has responded. If answer is no, tag it. Anyone can do this with any guild. The only exception is, not in game use, Just im (Quick way), or check forum, see if any activity within the three months (more-so two of the later ones). Updating of pages is iffy and can be hard to pick/judge. Check their wiki ids, see when they last logged in. If within a month (especially witin two weeks, more-so one), leave a message. If not and the other methods don't work (no imming, no latest forum), Tag for in-activity.

See what I'm getting at now? (And no I don't track down in game contacts, That's overboard. Messages get lost, etc.) -- riyen ♥ 12:32, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

Assuming that a guild doesn't have an active website and forums, you can tag a guild inactive in 2 ways:

1. You tag the guild, then go on to message the user(s) involved in the guild management that their guild is tagged for inactivity, link them the page to remove the tag if they are still active as a guild.
2. You message the guild management involved, then wait for them to respond; if they don't tag, then go on to tag the guild.

In the second case, which is what you are suggesting, you now have to keep track of how much "grace period" is left for the users involved to respond before you can tag, whereas in the first case, if the user is active, he/she can easily click on the link and remove the tag, which counts as a token edit and reinstates the guild as active. Logically, in all aspects possible, the second case just requires more work.

There is nothing "nicer" about telling users their guild will be marked inactive than telling them their guild is tagged inactive unless reverted. The only difference between doing the two is one requires more work than the other. Pika Fan 12:43, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

Here, let me put it in this view then for you, Pika.

When a guild becomes inactive, shows up in the list... You can do the following...

1. Check the discussion page, see if another user is already or has already done something about this guild (Within the week, like say yesterday or today)
2. Check for any webpages or forums. Check to see if those have been edited within two months.
3. Check to see if there's an instant messenger (that you have, no need to download install/not a requirement, just optional) that the leader or officers use. Leave a message on their messenger. (A possible, no need, not having to do, etc. An Option) If A reply saying they are active (Within that day, preferably within the hour) Leave a message in the discussion and place a note in = = notes = = stating that the guild is active. If no response within the day (preferably hour). Mark it as inactive.

what you all think? -- riyen ♥ 12:54, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

You still do not seem to get that your "simple" system leads to multiplying (exact factor depending on the number of active taggers) of the guild maintenance work load total. In stead of taggers dividing the work load between them, they all have to visit every guild page, because they cannot know what is happening before visiting. Although as I understand your comment above ("They had left a message with leader. ask if leader has responded. If answer is no, tag it."), it would be even worse than that, because taggers would have to ask the "on top of it" person if they received a response, and even wait for that response before tagging. So it would be: Tagger A visit Guild page X, leaves message on talk page. Tagger B checks the "waiting to be tagged" list, and goes to Guild page X. Tagger B sees Tagger A's message, so he asks Tagger A of they got a response from Guild page X's contact person. Meanwhile, Tagger C also looks at "waiting to be tagged list". Tagger C also sees that Tagger A left a message, so Tagger C also asks if Tagger A got a response from Guild page X's contact person. And so on an do forth. Unless Tagger B should also leave a note on the talk page saying they asked Tagger A if he got a response from Guild page X's contact person, in which case Tagger C can ask Tagger B if he got a response from Tagger A whether or not he got a response from Guild page X's contact person. I mean, honestly. --Lensor (talk) 13:00, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

It's very simple. You want to inform users before tagging guild pages as inactive. Everybody else wants to tag guild pages as inactive, then go on to inform users involved as needed. It's not logical to wait one hour for a response because 1) not everyone has the time to spend every hour making sure their guild is still holding the active status on wiki 2) not everyone has the time to spend waiting for people to reply to them in order to do their job. Please think about people who actually have a life and job out there. Pika Fan 13:05, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

Just an add: there is nothing in neither policy nor practical implementation implying that taggers should leave messages for everyone whose guild pages they tagged. Sure, it is a nice courtesy, but it is just that, a courtesy, not a requirement.--Lensor (talk) 13:08, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

Actually, it is already courteous to tag a guild as inactive instead of tagging it historical right away, so there's really nothing "rude" about it in the first place. Pika Fan 13:12, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

Well basically what should be in discussion and main page in notes (or one of them, another can add it to main). Is if the person Has contacted leader and they said yes their guild is active. The person could place it in talk page. That's all that would need to be placed.

Because any tagger can go look at talk, forum, webpage and see if that's all checked out, and if wanted needed, could communicate with leader. If it's active and known and already marked in active, that person - all would have to do is inform leader to check their guild on site. They could do that if they wanted to anyway. The Leader or officer, could either edit the page to update it - if not tagged yet Or if tagged, remove tag and update.

Instant messengers - optional and can be considered Only if... there's instant messanging avaliable via web or forum. (Information that is). And if the other doesn't check out.

In which case if other information (forum, website) doesn't check out - mark it inactive. but ask leader, kinda like a remind that says hey, check your guild page.

They can either go edit the page or tell you if it's active and you can either let them know to change it from inactive or place a note in the page/discussion area.-- riyen ♥ 13:17, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

You do realize that editing the talk page wont remove the guild from the "waiting to be tagged" list, right? It just seems like you are turning a deaf ear to the argument that your system will multiply the guild maintenance workload and create a LOT of extra work for others.--Lensor (talk) 13:26, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

The topic of this section is rewording Lensor's way.

Guild pages will be tagged as {{inactive guild}} if both of the following two conditions are met:

• 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.

I approve totally. Additional steps are unnecessary. Posting messages for users is a major time consumer, I'm absolutely against requiring contacting them outside of the wiki. Anyone who seriously wants to have their guild page on this wiki needs to be at least responsible enough for it to check it ONCE EVERY 6 MONTHS to keep it active. If they can't be bothered to do THAT LITTLE, why should we be bothered to do THAT MUCH? -- Wyn talk 15:53, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

"any GW-related edits" Edit of any kind in 3 months should be enough in my opinion. - J.P.Talk 17:06, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

GW-related should be used, because as Lensor pointed out, you can have cross-game sites, like X-fire, where they might have moved on to a different game, yet still have edits. Also, my two cents, I support this change (supported it a week ago, too, just didn't say anything). -- FreedomBound 17:27, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

If they're still active on this wiki and actively editing, it shouldn't be that hard to make a single edit to a single guild page. Right? ......right? -- Wandering Traveler 01:54, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

So can we change the policy already since no one except Ariyen objects? Pika Fan 04:16, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

Hehe, I don't object. Just this needed to be done, before it was added. :-) A consensus decision. -- riyen ♥ 04:51, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

It was done, you should look at timestamps sometime. -- FreedomBound 12:05, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

I am sorry to inform you, but consensus also means that Ariyen needs to be convinced that no one supports her wikilawyering. It doesn't matter that 2 sysops, active members of the guild tagging group as well as other people on the wiki have said Lensor's rephrasing was the best and most efficient thus far. Pika Fan 12:51, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

No, It's just to change a page on Policy (aka Lensor - check date) before others added here, was not really a good thing. It should have been discussed on first, consensus decision. I'm not wikilawyering. I just what's right and that has been done (that I've seen) on other policy pages. -- riyen ♥ 19:05, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

He waited a week, and had one agreeing comment, and no disagreeing comments. That was fine, and didn't require this wall of text and added drama. As was pointed out, it was a minor change. -- Wyn talk 19:20, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

It wasn't on here for more to add their 'comment' suggestion, etc. How would more have known? It was on here in the pending, but not that many would check the policy page. -- riyen ♥ 19:30, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

Not every little change is posted on the RfC. Those of us who have a specific interest in the guild page policy have it watched. Not everyone in the community HAS to know about every minor policy change that is proposed, especially since this change was just in wording, not actually changing the practice. But enough already, it's been changed, so this discussion should be at an end. -- Wyn talk 19:39, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

Would been nice, but okay. Just thought this whole wiki was 'community' based. -- riyen ♥ 20:03, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

Just 'cause it's community-based doesn't mean that the entire community has to be involved every time. Pretty much, most people who care do get involve into issues, or they tacitly approve of whatever decision is made. --JonTheMon 21:39, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

Problem in : Archiving historical guild page

In the current process page are renamed with a (historical) suffix.
This creates numerous broken links and wanted pages.
See Special:WantedPages. Visibility of pages that really need maintenance is hindered.
Was this side-effect considered. Elephant 22:12, 22 December 2009 (UTC)

Yes, and the vast majority of the wanted guild pages were there before the archival began, since prior to August 2008, inactive guild pages were simply deleted. In looking at cleaning up the Wanted pages, simply disregard the Guild pages. Unfortunately, that log is a built in feature of MediaWiki, and there is no way to sort it, or remove specific namespaces from appearing. -- Wyn talk 22:20, 22 December 2009 (UTC)

In looking at the more highly linked guild pages on the wanted list, some can be resolved by correcting userboxes that were created. Several others are because users (in violation of the Signature policy) have added links to their guild pages as part of their signatures. Without unnecessarily pinging watchlists, these will just need to stay. -- Wyn talk 23:40, 22 December 2009 (UTC)

Perhaps the policiy's part about archiving guild pages of inactive guilds should be changed. Instead of moving the guild pages to [[Guild:Guild Name (historical)]] they should not be moved at all, just tag the guild pages to indicate that the guild is inactive or disbanded and that's it. This would spare us the work of moving the guild pages and their subpages (and fixing the links therein). It would also prevent the Wanted pages from filling up with broken links to moved guild pages, keeping the links on the user pages or other guild pages that link to that guild intact. --Amakiir 15:35, 8 July 2010 (UTC)

This would cause certain category issues, which require more work than moving the historical guilds. - J.P.Talk 18:01, 10 July 2010 (UTC)

That still wouldn't address the thousands of links to guild pages that were simply deleted prior to the change in the policy, and would as JP indicates just be messy and a lot of extra work. -- Wyn talk 19:10, 10 July 2010 (UTC)

J.P., I don't see how this would cause any category issues, but maybe I'm overlooking something here. Could you give an example, please?

To Wynthyst: I am aware that this change in the policy wouldn't address the pages that were deleted before the archiving began, but that's not the point. It wouldn't reduce that part of wanted pages, but it would help to clutter them up even more in the future. Furthermore, many of the guild pages now listed as wanted pages still exist, just with a different name ([[Guild:Guild Name (historical)]]). That means that they could/should either be moved back to their original location after the policy change, or one can create redirects to the historical pages - whatever seems more appropriate - to remove many of the guild pages from the list of wanted pages. Currently, 40 of the first 50 wanted pages are guild pages, and I think we should try to change that to ease the work with the list of wanted pages. --Amakiir 23:49, 26 July 2010 (UTC)

Or, you could go to the pages where they are linked on, and change the link to the appropriate page. I don't see the policy changing anytime soon. -- Wyn talk 05:29, 27 July 2010 (UTC)

I highly discourage people from going to fix links for archived guild pages. That will just make a lot unneeded edits (unneeded as in "nobody is interested anyway"). People might want to use {{gl}} though. poke | talk 22:45, 27 July 2010 (UTC)

"Or, you could go to the pages where they are linked on, and change the link to the appropriate page." — Wynthyst

You are joking, aren't you? This would result in several hundreds of edits on user pages, and I think nobody would really want to do that. However, moving the guild pages to their original location or creating redirects would need considerably less work.

As for the "nobody is interested anyway" part: that might be true to some extent. But we should really do something about it, because you can't work effectively with WantedPages the way it is now. That's why I think we need to change the policy. --Amakiir 23:27, 27 July 2010 (UTC)

I have already resolved several of the most linked guild pages on the wanted list last night. In most cases, it doesn't required that many edits, as they are in userboxes, or templates. We will not be moving archived pages back or creating redirects, however, you can feel free to make a policy change proposal, hbut I don't believe you will get concensus. -- Wyn talk 23:37, 27 July 2010 (UTC)

Color(s) on Guild pages?

I'm curious, and asking before I do it, if we're allowed to change the colors of the template on our guild page.
atm, I want to change the infobox color, from the grey, to a red+black mix, to match our cape.
is that allowed? - Stimpson J Kat 06:57, 5 June 2010 (UTC)

Short answer: no.

While this idea has been brought up several times, concensus until now has been for keeping uniformity for infoboxes between guild articles in order to ensure the readability of the information in them, and to keep the boxes consistent with the rest of the wiki.

You have to keep in mind that the wiki background is mostly white, and some people has problems navigating between normal pages and "black+anything" pages :P.--Fighterdoken 00:24, 6 June 2010 (UTC)

well I don't want to change the background color... the the color of the grey bit in the "guild name" and "region, type, ect" part of the info box - Stimpson J Kat 18:38, 6 June 2010 (UTC)

No, that color was chosen as the most neutral color. That is why the policy specifies the "default" templates are required. -- Wyn talk 23:53, 27 July 2010 (UTC)

Forums Revisited

I"m sorry, but this needs to be revisited. To summarize, current guild policy requires checking for any active forums or web pages of said guild before tagging for inactivity on the wiki. Ideally, this is to prevent false positives of true active guilds.
This is ridiculous. We are voluntary wiki contributors, not janitors to another's whim. I don't give a crap that their forum is active, its their wiki page that matters here. We are here to document the game, aren't we? If these guilds are not part of lore, why are we trying to spend so much time on maintaining and categorizing them when their own guild members don't even give a shit?
In theory, this is a great policy. However, lately, Nobody gives a shit. This list is about three quarters as big as it was originally, and I don't know how many I just tagged. But has anyone else noticed that we stopped tagging these ever since this ridiculous rule came into place? Nobody wants to be a maid or janitor to a guild who probably forgot about their wiki page in the first place. Just as they have to maintain their own website and their own forum and their own guild, they should have to maintain their own wiki guild page as well.
I really think this needs to be rethought. If nobody is following up with a policy, then the policy is useless. With this in mind, I suggest we get rid of this outrageous clause and get some sanity back into tagging inactive guilds. -- Wandering Traveler 00:39, 14 August 2010 (UTC)

I agree. I've never liked/understood why WE have to take care of guild pages of others :P - J.P.Talk 00:45, 14 August 2010 (UTC)

How about you stop "giving a shit" about the guild pages? Don't like it, don't tag them. What's with the attitude? -- FreedomBound 00:49, 14 August 2010 (UTC)

Then the list will just keep increasing, and the policy will continue to be useless. -- Wandering Traveler 00:50, 14 August 2010 (UTC)

I personally think guilds don't belong on a wiki, but in anycase if someone wants to mindlessly maintain the guild pages then let them, and if no one does it, it's not like the useful part of the wiki is hurt by it. --Lania 05:22, 14 August 2010 (UTC)

No, we stopped tagging when I resigned as sysop. Had nothing to do with the rule. Oh, and the guild namespace is because of the game integration (the F10 menu that links you to your alliance guild pages...) If everyone stops caring, then the whole namespace becomes useless. I personally think that if they have a forum page listed, taking the short bit of time to check it for activity is not a big deal. Stop trying to be a bot mindlessly tagging a list. -- Wyn talk 05:49, 14 August 2010 (UTC)

I think personally if users of a Guild can't actively maintain there Guild page every 3 months, but there forum, then why do they have a wiki page? It's a chore to check each guild for there forums and to slap a silly "but wait i'm still active!" tag on the page. The policy should be changed to; a guild wiki page will be archived after 3 months if its active or not due to inactivty on the wiki. It's not hard to update a wiki page every month or two with updates - even if there minor. --Dominator Matrix 23:08, 17 August 2010 (UTC)

^ This. It wouldn't be a big deal to check a forum if we only had to check one or two per week. But that list is hundreds of guilds long. Hundreds. Checking each one for an active forum is a lot of work, considering that... it doesn't actually bring a benefit to the wiki.

If they want a guild page, they need to maintain it. One edit every 3 months is not a very strict requirement, even if the edit is simply to remove the inactive tag. The burden of keeping the page up-to-date should not be on wiki volunteers, it should be on the guild in question. -Auron 23:22, 17 August 2010 (UTC)

Also considering I have yet to be on a guild where they tell members to go to the wiki guild page, importance level is very low. Most I've been in (about 20 different ones from faction farmers, busy pve only, mixed pvp, to others),guilds tend to use forums or other venues of making a website. I agree, no one should have to "maintain" their guild page other than the guild members themselves. --Lania 23:28, 17 August 2010 (UTC)

The wiki pages are meant to be static, it's right in the guidelines for the guild pages, and of course guilds tend to use forums (we wouldn't want them to use the wiki that way anyway). That's why the policy allows for an active forum to be allowed to substitute for edits. As far as there being hundreds of guilds on the list, yes, that's true, but not all of those went inactive the same day, there are guilds that should have been tagged in June. No one does it anymore. -- FreedomBound 00:22, 18 August 2010 (UTC)

Then let them stay untagged. Who really cares if the activity status of the guild is accurate or not? It shouldn't be the wikieditor's job to do that. --Lania 00:30, 18 August 2010 (UTC)

Redirect to main sister guild

I recently started a new guild, Elite Mercenaries of Dhuum [emd] and I would like to be sure if it's allowed to create a redirect to Elite Mercenaries of Abaddon [ema], the main guild. Thanks in advance! Markus Clouser 09:25, 30 September 2010 (UTC)