Guild Wars Wiki talk:Requests for technical administration/Cite or Cite.php

Support

1. Gordon Ecker 08:54, 2 December 2007 (UTC)
2. Jennalee 03:29, 28 October 2009 (UTC)
3. Aspectacle 03:36, 28 October 2009 (UTC)
4. Unendingfear04:12, 28 October 2009 (UTC)

Oppose

1. -- riyen ♥ 06:53, 29 October 2009 (UTC)
2. Quite frankly silly. Pika Fan 09:45, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

Vote tally

Why is there a "vote" tally here? -- Wyn talk 07:55, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

Because this page was created in late 2007, and back then, most of the RFTA talk pages used them. -- Gordon Ecker (talk) 09:33, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

1. -Auron 11:22, 29 October 2009 (UTC)
2. Cursed Angel 18:09, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

Discussion

Can anyone provide some GWWiki-specific examples of when this would be useful? — 130.58 (talk) 16:36, 15 February 2007 (PST)

Here's an example of what the method used at GuildWiki looks like for citing sources.

Here's a Wikipedia example using cite.php that shows how reference notes could look using this extension. --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 16:43, 15 February 2007 (PST)

I dunno, both seem about as cumbersome to me. Anyway, other than that page, how would we actually use the citation system? Most of our sources are really just going to be "see also" links to a public announcement or a forum thread, aren't they? — 130.58 (talk) 18:13, 15 February 2007 (PST)

Both are about equally combersome to use; but I find the resulting page much easier to read using cite.

I also didn't think we needed anything like this on GuildWiki until I saw several pages that are using the current method over there. Granted, useage would be minimal, and because of that I didn't expect much support for this; but I would rather see the tool in-place so that when we do use it, we can have the more reader-friendly output that's already in use on Wikipedia. --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 18:38, 21 February 2007 (EST)

So, is the only difference that the references are numbered with Cite and not numbered otherwise? I feel like I'm missing something important here. — 130.58 (talk) 17:33, 24 February 2007 (EST)

For the Wikipedia version, clicking the reference number takes you directly down to the footnote. Additionally, the numbers for the reference and the footnote are automatically synchronised, and, while editing an article, the text of the footnote is right next to the link pointing to it, so you can just insert something like Drakes are attracted to the scent of bananas.<ref>[[Lord Yama the Vengeful]], during the quest [[Drakes on the Plain]]</ref> in the same line instead of putting Drakes are attracted to the scent of bananas.^N in one part of an article and #Lord Yama the Vengeful, during the quest Drakes on the Plain elsewhere in the article. -- Gordon Ecker 06:54, 27 June 2007 (UTC)

Reviving

So, in summary, cite.php would mainly be useful for the following:

• Providing inline citations in lore-related articles which use information from several sources, such as Charr.
• Citing developer quotes in articles with information about game mechanics, such as creature.
• Citing off-site third-party research in articles with information about game mechanics, such as critical hit, damage calculation or animal companion.
• Citing developer quotes confirming trivia.
• Citing sources for articles about cancelled content, such as Guild Wars Utopia.
• Citing sources for articles about ArenaNet, NCsoft and their employees.
• In addition to its' intended purpose, the extension can also be used for inline footnotes.

Is that enough to justify installing the addon in this wiki? Are there any other benefits? What about drawbacks? -- Gordon Ecker (talk) 04:03, 28 October 2009 (UTC)

Can't think of any drawbacks atm - citations, much as I hate the method, are standard practice for substantiating claims in all sorts of places. Jennalee 04:17, 28 October 2009 (UTC)

What's the cost to the wiki's load speed? Other costs on the client or server side? Usually plug-ins like this put some friction on performance. (For any single addition, the drag is usually negligible; if the wiki loads 100s, then we could revisit which ones are important enough to contribute to 1% of any resultant problem.)   — Tennessee Ernie Ford (TEF) 06:34, 28 October 2009 (UTC)

I had a quick look around for performance issues associated with this extension. There is little information but what there was suggested that it slows the load time for a page which has a significant number of references in it when compared to a similar page without references. As I don't expect references to be widely used in the wiki and when they are used only a few would be provided, I don't think that performance will be an issue for this extension. I don't think it would have anywhere near the performance impact of, for instance, some dpl queries you could put together. -- Aspectacle 22:47, 28 October 2009 (UTC)

back up a sec

Could someone tell me why we would need this? I looked at this page for about 15 minutes and I'm still not sure about the purpose such an extension would serve on our wiki.

Granted, it is useful to have at Wikipedia, a good portion of their work revolves around citations, and being an encyclopedia, they are forced to place these citations in standardized manner. I get that. Having these types of small links after "claims" makes it enormously easier to read large pages with many such citations. But we are not an encyclopedia. We document a game, pure and simple. 99% of our articles revolve around the game. We don't need to cite the game, and there is little else that we do cite. A few examples that I can think of are some trivia sections and a couple of published articles about both GW and GW2. We do cite those, okay, but do we really need an extension for that? Even the charr article Gordon has linked uses only a few external links (and I think all of them to GWW2, but I may be blind), and a "See Also" section has worked well enough for this while. Do we really need to create more work and stress for the general editor community? I suppose there would be no harm in adding it (aside from some lag, which should be negligible), but we really don't stand much to gain from it. NuVII 12:15, 28 October 2009 (UTC)

This: "create more work and stress for the general editor community" really caught my attention. Of course, most anonymous contributions (and many registered) require editing already, whether to conform to policy, guidelines, or just "sound" better, so I think this wouldn't be as bad as it could be, but I really am not sure I see the benefit, especially on this already established wiki where it would basically invite rewrite of existing articles that have no need for such. -- FreedomBound 12:21, 28 October 2009 (UTC)

Ditto; I don't really see the need for rigorous footnoting on a gaming wiki. -- Hong 12:58, 28 October 2009 (UTC)

The revived interest in this is directed toward getting this extension on the gw2wiki. As there is more traffic here, arenanet staff active here and the software is duplicated on both wikis it makes sense to approach it this way. Because there is no gw2 game and all of the knowledge of the game comes from articles and scattered sources it will lend credibility to the scant information that wiki provides because each statement will have a supporting reference. I agree there may not be wide applicability for this wiki in most every case the reference is the game, but it can be a useful tool on the few occasions it might be used. Also, if I felt this was going to also mean a rigorous, intimidating footnote referencing scheme I would be the first to oppose it. I've done a bit of writing for wikipedia and formal references are not fun. -- Aspectacle 22:41, 28 October 2009 (UTC)

On the one hand, the utility to GW1/2 (small though it may be) seems to outweigh the costs (use as intended, following a doctor's prescription). However, if it's used as intended ("few occassions"), then why not simply use <small>^§</small>? For example, "This was the best Wintersday ever!^§" It's slightly tedious, but easily copied. How often will we need a full citation (link + explanation + reference) rather than a simple link (as above) or an improper footnote (link to Notes, which has an explanation and a link)?

In other words, we already have tools in place for occasional footnotes. No one seems to love formal citations for GW1 or GW2. So, while cite.php does no harm, does it do enough good?   — Tennessee Ernie Ford (TEF) 01:13, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

I don't see any need to cite the game when the source is obvious (such as the dialogue section in a quest or NPC article), but the source isn't always obvious, and I think there are probably over a hundred articles which could be cleaned up or cleanly expanded with citations and / or footnotes, and that cite.php would make those citations and footnotes far easier to add and maintain. Here are two dozen more examples of articles which either already draw on information from several in-game sources, or could be expanded using information from several in-game sources: Abaddon, Ascalon, Asura, Cantha, Celestial Ministry, Deldrimor, Dhuum, Druid, Forgotten, Great Destroyer, Great Dwarf, Human, Istan, Kourna, Kurzick, Luxon, Norn, Palawa Joko, Shiro Tagachi, Stone Summit, Turai Ossa, Vizier Khilbron, Vabbi and Wintersday. -- Gordon Ecker (talk) 02:33, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

Don't forget Guild Wars 2! The simple standardised formatting and automated linking to the footnote on such a large page would greatly reduce the effort of providing links to external articles containing the original information. The extension is a powerful force for good. :) -- Aspectacle 03:05, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

That's what you have Notes for in either case. Gw2w shouldn't really have 'problems' noting the source (or as close to exact as possible) from places that are official by ArenaNet or official with ArenaNet. -- riyen ♥ 06:58, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

Take a look at wikipedia:Half-Life 2 to get an idea how references work. Consider how related facts from different sources flow together providing information about the game. See how at the same time it allows the reader, if they care about it, to find out more about a specific fact by clicking on an unobtrusive link directly associated with the text. I can't see how a notes section would accomplish the same but can only imagine it to be extremely clumsy, if not completely unwieldy and unworkable way to present the same information. -- Aspectacle 07:50, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

As I've seen so far on gw2 wiki. Gw2 doesn't really have that many links as per that site you posted. That site is loaded with lots of links, etc. A headache that I don't think many would want to 'read', 'look at', 'deal with', etc. Despite it has a lot of information in it... I think both sites can deal with what's current, until a real need is shown that can't be handled by notes, trivia, etc. -- riyen ♥ 07:58, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

I personally find the citations unsightly, and disruptive to reading the information. We already have a {{source}} template for notating outside sources, so I don't see this as being that necessary. -- Wyn talk 08:02, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

While cite makes the wiki look like wikipedia I don't mind. --Dominator Matrix 08:16, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

(Edit conflict) Wyn, source seems to be used at the top of whole pages. Information doesn't always come from one place, unsightly as that may be. ;) If there is another tool available, please point it out.

Ariyen, I want to add links like the wikipedia page I showed you - a page like the Guild Wars 2 one could be full of them if I had a way to add them simply. Notes and trivia really don't cut it. At the moment you don't know where the information came from. Most, if not all of the information comes from non-official sources, magazine articles and the like - I see a lot of queries about where a particular tidbit of information comes from. People don't know what's old information, what is new, what is made up, whatever. I wouldn't want to use them everywhere, this isn't wikipedia, but I think it has a place for these general summary articles. -- Aspectacle 08:25, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

(Reset indent) I must be missing something because I'm not seeing the need. Wikipedia is meant to be encyclopedic; the GW1 and GW2 wikis are meant to support enjoying the game. The Wikipedia Half-life article absolutely requires detailed citations, but GW articles do not. I particularly don't see how the GW1 articles linked above would be improved by the use of citations. The half-dozen I reviewed are short and sweet because there just isn't that much information available.

GWW and GWW2 information doesn't require the same level of authority as Wikipedia. If the main purpose is to make it easier to separate rumor and speculation from known, erm, facts (in advance of the release of GW2), then can't we manage that with an occasional quote and/or a link to the source? I grant that I'm often trying to trace back the particular source for something. However, that's because no one used any method of citation. That's easy enough to fix using either Wyn's method or the one I used above. For example, the Realms of the Gods article has a note that Gaile Gray said (in 2007) that there no plans for adding additional realms to GW1; it's trivial to link that and it doesn't require the formality of the cite.php.

It might be useful for supporters to mock up the type of article they envision as currently missing here and that we would see more of (here or in GWW2).

For the sake of argument, if I were convinced that citations were required, this seems like an awesome plug-in and I don't know how we'd manage without it or something similar.   — Tennessee Ernie Ford (TEF) 08:53, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

I don't feel like doing a mockup right now, since it's late and there doesn't seem to be much opposition. Here are some examples from gaming wikis: Naaru on WoWWiki, Forerunner on Halopedia and vault on the Fallout Wiki. -- Gordon Ecker (talk) 09:30, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

While I would like it to source some claims in texts, things quoted direclty from in-game should not be sourced at all. For dialogues we already have a quite easy visible scheme (and adding sources there would be ridiculous..) and for longer texts, we should use {{quotation}}. poke | talk 09:39, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

Basically, as I see it, the debate is over whether the use of the formal, 'academic' citation system, as used on wikipedia, is appropriate for this wiki. Personally, I hate writing up academic citations as much as the next person (extremely tedious), but I don't see the results of such as disruptive and unsightly; perhaps I'm just used to reading articles full of them. Their purpose is to ease substantiation claims with references to evidence - they make it far easier to track and verify given information. The argument against it is that there are already templates etc. made here for that purpose, which forgo much of the rigor and formality of the academic system, which some feel are adequate for the purposes of this wiki.

While I agree that for the vast majority of cases here the formality of academic referencing is not necessary, I wouldn't mind a standardized method for managing references. Jennalee 09:34, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

Except that we don't have anything to cite. 99% of our mainspace articles are directly from the game, and the others get by fine without any fancy extensions. NuVII 09:46, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

But "the game" includes three campaigns, an expansion and hundreds of quests, and, although the source is obvious for most of the articles, there are also a significant number of articles for which the source would not be obvious, and in those articles, stating the fact and citing the source may be a better option than describing both the fact and the source in prose. I think the total number of articles which would benefit from cite.php is more important than the percentage of articles which wouldn't benefit from it, I suspect that over 99% of WoWWiki's articles don't have or need citations, but I don't think that the existance of thousands of item and quest articles which don't have or need citations diminishes the usefulness of cite.php in the hundreds of plot, setting and character articles that actually use it. -- Gordon Ecker (talk) 10:43, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

That is a valid argument Gordon, but do we really need this extension in order to do those citations?

Forget the game articles, forget the percentages. Look at those pages in which we cite other articles, not one of them would be "better" by the addition of footnotes. We don't need this extension do do citations, we never did. Now, if we had articles with 5+ sources (like wikipedia does) and if we needed to place footnotes (again, like wikipedia), fine, then this extension would come in handy. But right now, there is simply no place on this wiki that calls for an extension that would make placing footnotes easier. --The preceding unsigned comment was added by User:NuclearVII (talk).

Actually I quite like what WoWwiki did with referring to other wiki articles (about quests for example) when making comments. There are a lot lore-related notes and text bits that come to my mind that are based on other dialogues etc. It would be quite nice to be able to use direct sourcing for that. However that only applies to "self-written" content, not to citations from in-game (like dialogues, quests descriptions or even item descriptions); it would be ridiculous to have multiple "in-game" sources listed at the end when we are documenting the in-game facts. But for the many lore pages we have, it would be a nice addition. And I don't see how we really want to refuse such thing when we have other extensions or tech requests that are much less useful.. (for example SVGs won't be used in any articles, simply we won't have any vector graphics for in-game and not even the icons we have are useful to have in SVG for multiple reasons). poke | talk 12:07, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

To echo poke, it won't be the most useful extension, but it won't be the least, either. Since there's not a whole lot of harm that could come from installing this, I'd say go for it. -Auron 15:47, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

Also, nobody is advocating the revision of articles just to use this extension, if it is installed. I'd expect it to be used with discretion; if it is more suited for an article then by all means use it over the other existing methods for referencing. Jennalee 06:55, 30 October 2009 (UTC)

If it's not going to be used to revise articles, why install it? -- FreedomBound 12:18, 30 October 2009 (UTC)

I think what Jennalee meant is that no one here is advocating the revision of articles for the sole purpose of creating an excuse to use cite.php. What the pro-cite.php side is advocating is the use of cite.php when it would improve an article. As for the "citation needed" tag, which you mentioned in your edit summary, I don't think we need one, however I do think that a more generic inline "disputed" / "fact check needed" tag, like an inline version of Template:Disputed, would be useful with or without cite.php, and encouraging people to mark and discuss dubious claims seems more like a benefit than a drawback. -- Gordon Ecker (talk) 01:11, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

(Reset indent) I don't see the advantage of adding this plug-in. I think the downside is (a) having to craft and tweak new policies on citations, (b) making it easy to figure out when cites should/should not be used on existing/future articles, and (c) ensuring we have a strong enough core of peeps that can keep things consistent per whatever policy we work out. However, I remain willing to be convinced if folks would point to a gaming wiki article (or a mock-up) that uses cites similarly to how folks envision them for GWW1/GWW2. At the moment, peeps have made the case that some articles might benefit, not that they will.   — Tennessee Ernie Ford (TEF) 01:30, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

Gordon provided a bunch of links to game wikis using this when he replied to your objection above. They seem like reasonable examples of how references might normally be used by this wiki. I can provide a partial mock of the GW2 article, but I don't think it is an example of normal use here.

I think your downsides are just part of a wiki doing what a wiki does, editors doing what they do. We probably don't need to lay anything out policy wise until we're actually using it and can see whether consistency and direction on use is actually required. -- Aspectacle 04:08, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

My apologies: I missed the second set of links. Having read them, I don't find that the articles are improved by the use of cites over the way GWW currently sources. The articles here are concise; the 3 examples are so dense with information that sourcing must be put into footnotes.

I'm therefore against bringing cite.php into GWW as it would be (in my opinion) unnecessary to continue in the direction this wiki has established. It to me that there are a number of people who don't care either way and a few who like the idea. I might be the only editor who is (at this point) firmly against the idea. So, if there are at least a couple of people who strongly believe this is important to GWW, I'll stop arguing against it.   — Tennessee Ernie Ford (TEF) 08:32, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

I'm against it as well, this seems completely useless. What source could we possibly cite? The GW official websites? It's easier to just provide a link to those at the bottom of the page than upgrade the wiki. Other than that, pretty much the only sources we have are in-game. If someone could give me a legitimate reason why this is needed, I could support it, but for now it seems frivolous. –Jette 08:35, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

Derp. Legitimate reasons have been provided. This obviously isn't the most needed extension, but I've seen absolutely nothing in terms of legitimate reasons against installing. "Too much work" is BS, since those people aren't going to be doing the work anyway. It will help the few articles we need to cite stuff on. It will hurt nothing. It is a positive gain with no loss whatsoever, even in the worst case scenario. Why would you be against it? -Auron 10:50, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

(1) I agree that solid reasons for inclusion have been provided; I don't happen to agree they are sufficient. (2) I expect to be involved the extra work of helping to add/edit citations and in the inevitable policy/guideline discussions. (3) Perhaps we can continue to argue on the strength of the ideas, rather than dismiss objections as illegitimate or BS because one happens to disagree.   — Tennessee Ernie Ford (TEF) 17:18, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

Yes, that's why I made that reply to Jette. He was completely ignoring arguments for and against, so I had to remind him that he still needed to read them.

There are some solid reasons for inclusion. There are no solid reasons to leave it out. Your ABC list up there is so vague it has nothing to do with the extension anymore, just how people treat it. Yeah, obviously it's going to require a page detailing its use. Obviously it's going to require people keeping it consistent across pages. Those aren't downsides, that's how the entire wiki works. Do you have any arguments about this extension or are you going to continue pointing out general slowdowns that this wiki has with any new thing ever added? -Auron 18:07, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

To make my stance clear, I don't really care either way. I'm not going to use it, but I'm sure others would. The arguments I've seen in support are well-reasoned and backed by links and examples. The arguments against are vague at best, and can be summarized as "can't be arsed." That's a terrible reason to oppose, and I don't want to see that oppose reason ever win over actually planned-out support reasons. If you don't intend to use it, don't. I'm never going to use Template:Getvar, but is that a good reason in favor of deletion? :/ -Auron 18:12, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

Ah, it turns out we have philosophical differences about changing the status quo. I believe that it's not worth effort to make substantive changes unless there's clear benefit and strong support; in my opinion, that has yet to be demonstrated. (I would also argue that Getvar should remain for the same reason: removing it would also be a change.)

If I understand you correctly, you are arguing that, as long as a couple people have a pretty good reason, we shouldn't oppose something like this. So, I doubt we'll get farther than agreeing to disagree on this.   — Tennessee Ernie Ford (TEF) 19:30, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

But it's not a substantive change to the wiki. You seem to be strenuously objecting to something where the majority of effort will be for ArenaNet IT installing the extension - and it seems, in trying to attain consensus to even request its installation. The rest is simply wiki work which some of us are more than happy to take on. As this is a wiki you never need to be involved in using or setting up usage rules for the tool which makes your objection over effort seem particularly hollow.

You didn't like Gordon's examples, but I can see articles within this wiki which are apparently concise, the health and regeneration of the Guild Lord for instance, where it isn't easily verifiable from the game that the information is correct. Information about game mechanics and lore for a page can come from game update notes, interviews, books (Fall of Ascalon for instance), Fansite Fridays, quests, developer wiki posts - to name the ones which readily came to my head. Selected use of references allow us to link everything up and verify the information we're telling wiki users is correct. But it appears you are unwilling to be convinced on this matter, so I ponder if I'm just wasting my time. -_- -- Aspectacle 00:57, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

I think the problem here is that you've yet to demonstrate that there is even a net benfit to the wiki, yet every extention need to have a sumbstiatial benefit to warrant inclusion; we can only ask Anet for so many before they say no, so those needs to be ones we won't regret. Backsword 08:16, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

Wat? Jennalee 05:36, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

Installed

Apparently this has been installed, but I didn't see it put into GWW:TECH. I'm not seeing the consensus for it, either. It's in Special:Version, and see the sandbox for an example. Did I miss something? -- pling 20:41, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

Apparently I missed this too, and it's not working on the GW2W.-- Shew 20:42, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

I hope this wasn't rushed into installation without consensus... NuVII 20:46, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

Okay, I have talked to Emily about this and she explained me that this was actually an accident. The extension was requested for an internal ArenaNet wiki and accidentally installed to GWW instead, so this installation has no relation to this request (even though it looks that way).

She said she would tell IT to uninstall it again, but I told her to wait until we actually decide on something here. It makes no sense to uninstall it to later see that consensus is for the installation of this extension and having to install it then again. So I would like you now to continue the discussion so we can get over this quickly. Given that the extension is installed now, you can also try it out a bit or create example pages; but note that we shouldn't put any usages of this in the main namespace given that the extension may be removed later. poke | talk 21:11, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, before we use it on actual articles (if it stays), I think we should come up with a template to be consistent.-- Shew 21:15, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

Please focus on the actual installation, not on formatting or usage, for now. poke | talk 21:21, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

Any news on when we can get this on the GW2W?-- Shew 18:08, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

See the section below. Don't expect anything to happen on the weekend... poke | talk 22:18, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

Continued discussion

To reiterate what some people have said above, it would provide a means of linking outside sources with a more specific approach. For example, someone goes to the article about the norn on the GW2W and reads that the norn can utilize four different forms. Having a link at the bottom of the page without a footnote next to the statement would not necessarily imply that the reference applies to that statement. My point is that there are several sources for Guild Wars 2, of which we take information from and put in an article. This is likely to happen for GW2 expansions as well. Cite.php would allow people to see the exact article the statement is based on without having to go through each one.-- Shew 21:40, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

Sounds like a reason to install it on the GW2 wiki. What does that have to do with this wiki? I still don't think that the benefit to this outweighs the fact that it will turn away casual editors that contribute to this wiki. This is a wiki about a video game, it doesn't need to have detailed references. -- FreedomBound 21:48, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

While the discussion may not seem very useful for a wiki that is only documenting facts, I agree that there are a lot places where this extension would be very helpful, especially when related to lore. Just thinking of some pages that come to my mind:

On Nicholas Sandford, we have some trivia notes at the bottom, for example the one with Imperial Chef Yileng. The information comes from a dialogue he said as Nicholas the Traveler one week. While those archived dialogue text are not very likely to be read later on, a reference would fit here quite perfect. Same with the other notes we have there which give information from the Traveler dialogues.

Or take the older revision of The Waiting Game as another example. We have notes with references to Regina and Martin there saying something about the waiting time, or the duration the quest will be available. Something like this could be easily incoperated with the entry text of our articles which are often very short and content-less. To still have those references (instead of just the statement) we could easily use this extension to list the references at the bottom.

There are a lot other examples where this is extension could be useful, and for those articles that don't need it, nothing changes. poke | talk 22:09, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

Sure it changes. You get IPs posting on the talk pages that they have such and such information, but don't want to add it wrong, because they saw "X article" and don't know how to make it look like that. That's if you're lucky. If you're not, they don't bother posting to the talk page at all, you miss out on the information and the contribution. -- FreedomBound 22:18, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

Wtf? The only argument you have against it is that it introduces new syntax? People will get used to it, as people get used to everything on the wiki. And if they don't, they'll ask for help or simply do it wrong (which gets corrected then). And it's not as if people are posting such information now, so your argument that we won't get that information with the extension doesn't really count. poke | talk 22:24, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

Sure they do. You can't tell me that you've never seen a comment on a talk page where an IP (or a registered user, for that matter) wanted to add something to an article, or add something to a table, but didn't know how. My argument isn't that it introduces new syntax, it's that it adds new syntax that isn't needed. -- FreedomBound 22:27, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

The template wouldn't have to be complex. A link and author should suffice; I don't see how it'd be harder to learn than images. + Like you said, they post on the talk pages anyways. Someone who doesn't take the time to learn simple templates is someone who has his/her edits reverted or rephrased.-- Shew 22:29, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

(Edit conflict) I have actually seen such cases, which indicates the issue isn't specific to this extension. New users aren't familiar with aspects of wiki editing, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't have those capabilities. People often have a problem with using templates, but they're not a necessity, there are instructions around to help those people, and other people will always lend a hand. The same goes for Cite. And if someone posts on the talk page with information, so what? Editing is collaborative, even if it's partially done on the talk page. Whether or not this extension is "needed" (it's arguable that every other extension installed recently hasn't been "needed"), it'll be useful and work to our advantage. -- pling 22:32, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

I'm throwing my support behind the "whatever" crowd. One way or the other, it really isn't that big of a change. It may have some minute benefits, so go ahead and don't uninstall. No need to further complicate matters. NuVII 22:40, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

@Pling, I see your point. Consider me convinced that it should be added (or, stay, I guess). -- FreedomBound 22:48, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

I think it should be added and my opinion was changed with trivia on pages such as Rebel Yell and other pages. I don't think it should be removed. It's here and it's not hurting anything, so I say leave it. It'd just be best than the possibility of causing issues in uninstalling. -- riyen ♥ 22:54, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

So is it necessary to create an identical request on the GW2W?-- Shew 23:25, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

No, not necessary. poke | talk 00:34, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

I'd like to point out that cite.php can also be used without templates. -- Gordon Ecker (talk) 05:29, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

Accidental Install?

Now that it's installed (accidentally or otherwise), I'd rather see us spend energy making it work than spending similar energy discussing whether it should be removed. i.e. we should have a strong reason for altering the status quo, which now includes Cite.php.   — Tennessee Ernie Ford (TEF) 01:28, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

Actually no, if consensus would be against it, we should have it removed. poke | talk 01:30, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

As above readings, aren't most for it? (Including that voting thing) -- riyen ♥ 01:35, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

Give it a bit more time. poke | talk 01:40, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

IMO proposing the removal should be handled through a separate RFTA. -- Gordon Ecker (talk) 05:59, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

Eh, first of all, that poll means nothing.

Second, Even if there were some staunch opposers to this extension, adding yet another RFTA would complicate matters.

Finally, the majority doesn't care enough one or the other, so keeping it installed atm shouldn't be an issue. NuVII 09:56, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

Erm, consensus is based on whoever wants to come to the debate, not on a majority. On the other hand, as one of the staunch opposers (before installation), I'd rather we spend our efforts trying to use citations to improve articles. In a month, a lot more peeps are going to have an opinion about whether this is worth keeping; some of us might even have different opinions than we do now.   — Tennessee Ernie Ford (TEF) 10:54, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

I meant to say the majority of the people who are debating right now. NuVII 10:56, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

Actually, if most people think it's a plus minus zero, then that's a strong reason not to have it, as mentioned aqbove. Backsword 11:10, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

I could give a crap about it, tbh. If we have it, though, I don't think it would be widely used, if only because citations have a habit of very very quickly cluttering an article, especially on wikis like GWW which generally have short pages to begin with. –Jette 16:13, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

It was never in the cards that this would be widely wildly used, anyway. NuVII 17:16, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

(Reset indent) Yeah, sorry about that guys! I wanted the extension up on one of our internal wikis, and one of the folks (who has just recently started helping with wiki requests) misread what wiki I needed it on and assumed it was this one. We figured we'd leave it up because it doesn't really hurt anything. I didn't even notice you were discussing it's installation because I don't usually check the discussion page here. I usually wait until the requests hit the RFTA page. It was a crazy coincidence for sure :) Again, apologies! -- Emily Diehl (talk) 02:37, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

...internal wikis? –Jette 03:02, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

All companys inluding A.Net have testing servers. In this case a clone wiki server. --Dominator Matrix 03:04, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

I really don't think ANet would bother testing software that they don't develop, make money off of or market in any way whatsoever. –Jette 03:14, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

I actually guess they use wikis as a utility to communicate and plan things. poke | talk 08:37, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

SHOW US NOW. –Jette 08:51, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

It could be a wiki they use for developing the game, I remember a developer post mentioning that they have one. -- Gordon Ecker (talk) 09:19, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

Oh, sorry, I must have said it wrong: SHOW US –Jette 11:38, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

Testing it out

← moved to Guild Wars Wiki talk:Formatting/Archive 2#Citations and references

So what's the state of this discussion?

This discussion has been too scattered for me to follow (from Talk:Druid, Talk:Dhuum, Guild Wars Wiki talk:Formatting#Citations and references, and this page), so what's the status of this discussion and use of this function? Would like to know as I've added it to a few articles, and later realized that this might not have been finalized - and by the looks of it, it wasn't, but perhaps I've missed something? -- Konig/talk 07:51, 24 February 2010 (UTC)

Summary: It's here, no one cares, use it if you want to. -- FreedomBound 12:55, 24 February 2010 (UTC)

Okay, well I'm mainly using it for linking to off-site locations (interviews and the official site (on GW2W) for instance), major dev-written articles (An Empire Divided, History of ____ articles, Movement of the World, and Ecology of the Charr), and dev stated notes that now exist in their talk archives (or unanswered questions' "answered" sub-page). Best way to use it, I think, and not terribly messy (one recent instance would be Junundu). -- Konig/talk 19:45, 24 February 2010 (UTC)