Guild Wars Wiki talk:Suggestion pages restructuring/Archive2

Proposal

I posted a proposal to my user talk page which directly impacts this decision, so please check it out. We can discuss the proposal on my talk page.--Mike O'Brien 16:16, 11 April 2009 (UTC)

I think that will take some time to digest, however, it seems to me that it will not impact this change, as the proposal would affect every part of the wiki, and this is (only) about intrawiki location. Backsword 18:34, 11 April 2009 (UTC)

Guild Wars 2 suggestions on GW2 wiki?

As mentioned above, suggestions currently on the wiki cannot be used or commented by Arena Net. Even if we accept a new license allowing Arena Net to use the suggestions, we would have to delete everything that currently exists, as the change in license is not retroactive. So if we accept the change in license and begin to delete everything, how about we take the opportunity to move all GW2 suggestions to the GW2 wiki? Given how the user database is shared between both wikis, it would be simple for people to move their suggestions from this wiki to the newer one, solving both the problem with old suggestions here being useless and with the suggestions having to be submited again in order to be valid for use by Arena Net. Erasculio 14:55, 12 April 2009 (UTC)

Adding a template that could be placed on the userpage suggestions by the owner could release their suggestions under the new licensing agreement, rather than requiring resubmission.... I am opposed to moving GW2 suggestions to the GW2 wiki simply because there is so little oversight there atm. -- Wyn 14:59, 12 April 2009 (UTC)

Until there is any life to that wiki, it would be problematic to use it for anything, for several reasons, inluding the one Wyn mentioned. Backsword 15:01, 12 April 2009 (UTC)

Moving Forward on Suggestions

→ moved from User talk:Mike O'Brien

(I'm really only breaking this into a new section to make it easier to edit). I thought it might be useful to provide a summary of what I think is expected of us for suggestions and what I think consensus seems to be at this point.

• First, it seems everyone is in agreement that suggestions should be created and maintained on userspace, this should help to keep suggestions to be more well-thought-out or at least more descriptive (i.e., the idea is that people will be less likely to create a one-line suggestion if they have to create a page within their own userspace to do it), and, most importantly, it means that maintenance of these ideas falls squarely on the shoulders of the creator, rather than relying on other users to police everything.
• Secondly, Mike and Emily have indicated to us that it would help them a lot if we can come up with some way for them to easily browse new ideas.

With regard to this second point, I believe what some people have been envisioning is some set of categorized (armor, races, etc.) lists of suggestions in which suggestions would be listed by the creators themselves. Information to be provided on each entry would include (in no particular order):

1. Name of creator

2. Location of suggestion

3. A brief (maybe a sentence or two) description of the suggestion

Key points of these lists is that it should be up to the suggestion creator to list the idea and not the responsibility of any other user/admin, and that there should be clear instructions on the form and manner in which ideas should be listed, that way nondescriptive or otherwise violating entries can be removed with clear reasoning. Some of my personal suggestions for such groundrules would include (Again, in no particular order):

1. Entries must be descriptive of the suggestion (i.e., no entries that simply say "best idea ever!")

2. Entries must link to a suggestion page within creator's userspace

3. Entries may only be listed once

Finally, if we agree that categorical lists such as I have described above are the best way to go, a key remaining question is what happens when a list gets too long? Do we archive suggestions at some point? If so, when? I am worried that ideas will come so fast that we will begin archiving after only a few weeks or days, not giving ANet enough time to see the ideas. This is not an insurmountable problem, and it will depend in part upon what actually happens when we go live with this, but I think ANet should be ready and able to provide admins with feedback about whether or not staff is able to keep up with reviewing the suggestions or if they are falling behind or if lists are getting archived too quickly or not quickly enough. In other words, if ANet staff are going to be consumers of community suggestions and feedback, then the community will need feedback from ANet on the effectiveness of our organization of the suggestions and other feedback. (Satanael 21:30, 14 April 2009 (UTC))

I think discussing the structure of suggestion pages would be better suited to Guild Wars Wiki talk:Suggestion pages restructuring to keep it all centralised and keep Mike's talk as tidy as possible - we all know this is going to be a big'un... -- Brains12 \ talk 21:47, 14 April 2009 (UTC)

Satanael, making it short, your point has nothing to do with the license issue, and it is void unless the license issue is solved (as without a new license Arena Net is not going to use any suggestion at all). How about focusing on the current issue on the current page? Erasculio 23:30, 14 April 2009 (UTC)

My apologies, yes, I was getting ahead of myself, I was assuming that there already was concsensus (or something close to it) that the new licesning or something similar would be implemented. In any case, I do hope that my above discussion will get due consideration when the time comes. (Satanael 03:34, 15 April 2009 (UTC))

Back to square one?

With the proposed changes to the licensing I believe we need to rethink this entire restructuring. I do not believe that at this point we can restrict suggestions to userspace without massive explosions on ArenaNet staff pages unless we get some additional ground rules established. As I see it, these are our most viable options:

1. Keeping the suggestion pages structured as they are, but writing some rules (a policy perhaps) regarding how suggestions MUST be presented, and restricting editing of the suggestions to original posters, rather than the community at large. The arguments for community editing were based on trying to present the best suggestions to ArenaNet, however, I don't think that is up to us. With the licensing change, ArenaNet is going to be an active participant in suggestion discussions, I think it should be up to them to determine if a suggestion is worth developing.
2. Continuing with the planned move to userspace, but requiring registration to submit suggestions, and eliminating suggestions from staff talk pages completely. Again, this would require the active agreement from ArenaNet staff, and would also require we develop a better way to present the list of suggestions so it is not simply a list of names.

Up until now, this entire process was based on the fact that there could be no active participation from ArenaNet staff because of the licensing/legal issues, and now at the 11th hour they have provided a potential solution to that problem (which has entailed creating some legal precedents for their legal department, thus the delay). -- Wyn 02:00, 15 April 2009 (UTC)

I am pretty much in agreement with #2 above, I really do believe that putting the full on suggestions onto userspace is the best answer, if we try to put them anywhere else there will be just too much maintenance required, as we all know far too well. Although I think we will also need some rules for suggestions that are listed in public space, as discussed in #1. In other words, the meat and potatoes of a suggestion is put on the userspace, for which there are no restrictions, but to list them in our listing pages the entries (and maybe even the suggestions as well) must adhere to certain criteria. (Satanael 03:54, 15 April 2009 (UTC))

Alright! No. 2.... let's go let's go let's go! =] (Terra Xin 13:07, 15 April 2009 (UTC))

We should wait until we hear back from Mike or Emily about the license - if they do make it specific to the ArenaNet namespace, putting all suggestions in the user namespace wouldn't work. And if they are going to be viewed or responded to by ArenaNet, they should preferably belong in the ArenaNet namespace - that's the place for "ArenaNet interaction".-- Brains12 \ talk 13:40, 15 April 2009 (UTC)

I have a question: if I wanted to continue with my pet project to summarize the ideas in a form of 'user requirements' as demonstrated here -> User:HH_LEADER/Guild_Wars_2_suggestions/Use_Case_Scenario under new licence terms, would I be allowed to link only to the suggestions that were reposted (or otherwise fall under new licencing) or to any idea that does not fall under it? In a latter case should I denote the difference? (I don't suppose that this way of structuring ideas will be considered by the community in a 'table of contents' context, or will it?)

Thanks. HH LEADER talk 13:45, 15 April 2009 (UTC)

There's not much point to using it for non-ArenaNet suggestions - they wouldn't be able to comment on or use it. -- Brains12 \ talk 13:51, 15 April 2009 (UTC)

Agreed. What about the second question: is the summary I was proposing all that bad and cannot be developed further and adopted by the community for a general use as a main point of the ideas reference?

HH LEADER talk 14:14, 15 April 2009 (UTC)

Because your idea is still in development, there shouldn't be anything stopping you from suggesting that your structure be used to accommodate the new licensing terms. (Terra Xin 15:17, 15 April 2009 (UTC))

OK, I am proposing to use it under new licencing terms as a main cross reference point for all the ideas submitted under new licencing terms. All the ideas that will be posted under new licencing terms must have an entry in this structure and a link to the idea itself. The structure itself must be put in a space that is under new licencing terms allowing ArenaNet to own it and to be accessible by all contributors willing to submit their ideas under new licencing terms.

Thanks. HH LEADER talk 16:31, 15 April 2009 (UTC)

I don't feel quite comfortable with using HH Leader's summary/use case idea as the main portal for suggestions. I can see it as secondary/supplement/advanced, but not as the default portal. --JonTheMon 16:34, 15 April 2009 (UTC)

That's OK. What are the perceived cons of using it and what is your vision of a main portal? Thanks. HH LEADER talk 17:00, 15 April 2009 (UTC)

Your summary area would likely confuse many readers. I would simply have a portal with links to suggestion areas and those individual suggestion areas would contain links with summaries. Or, if we dont' want to split up suggestions into areas, just have the links on the main portal page. --JonTheMon 17:31, 15 April 2009 (UTC)

That is what we already had. This approach will lead to a flood of duplicate suggestions.

To avoid possible confusion my form can be simplified and called 'ideas catalog', for instance, and 'scenario' can be called 'implementation'. It serves the purpose of uniquely identifying the suggestion before going into too much details and letting people think before they suggest something. It serves the same purpose as the warning 'read suggestions in the area first before submitting your idea'. The advantage, however, is that one can actually read them for they are expressed in one phrase without going into too much details that are left for the user's page.

HH LEADER talk 19:52, 15 April 2009 (UTC)

It's a question of simplicity vs. functionality. A simple interface likely wouldn't have much filtering, but it would be easily accessible by the public. And with individuals making suggestions there are bound to be duplicates. How does your system differentiate between duplicate suggestions? --JonTheMon 20:04, 15 April 2009 (UTC)

I don't think we are taking into account ArenaNet's active participation. Yes, duplicates are going to exist, if ArenaNet feels ideas are similar enough to be merged into a single suggestion/idea, they can say so. We need to stay away from a system that is too labor intensive for the community or we will then end up with the same sorts of issues we have experienced with suggestions up until now. A list of page links with general summaries seems the easiest for ArenaNet's navigation, and then based on their comments, suggestions could be merged. If the new licensing is adopted (which I believe it will be) there would be no attribution issues to deal with in merging since it will all be ArenaNet copyright. At some point we have to AGF that people will at least look through the existing list of suggestions prior to posting, and if not, duplicates can be pointed out in discussion. No offense HH, but I find your system complicated, confusing and labor intensive and the entire reason for this restructuring is to lessen the amount of community involvement in suggestion maintenance. -- Wyn 20:11, 15 April 2009 (UTC)

Satanael already pointed out that my proposed 'catalog' will be contributor maitained, that is, initial contributor will create an entry in it. The community only involvement will be on the catalog level, not on the idea level. And you may remember that I was strictly against any suggestions merging. It was another reason for catalog to exist. Interpretation of the idea should be left to the contributor and ArenaNet, not the community. The idea of a catalog is combining similar ideas and show alternative implementations that are left unaltered.

I do not insist on the implementation of my idea, even though I see nothing complicated in it. One just need to go to a library to deal with the cataloged items. As long as catalog is properly described working with it is not more complicated than putting a book on the shelf.

Another reason why I do not insist on it is that I have offered ArnaNet to define the form because they are the intended audience and they did not. This creates a doubt for me as to the extent of their declared interest. It maybe explained by the fact that they should have a dedicated staff to work on the ideas for the game, not only 'developers', who are basically coders. The more mess with the ideas it will be, the more time it would be needed for this staff to go through for refining it, thus creating better job security at the end of the day (no offence to ArenNet staff, but it's how big corporations work).

I rocked the boat when community has decided to give up on suggestions telling me that ArenaNet is not interested. When ArenaNet has showed their interest, the community tells me that it is not interested and tired.

Wow, it loooks like I want to be more royalist than the king and queen combined! Why would I take offence? It's my own fault. HH LEADER talk 21:50, 15 April 2009 (UTC)

(RI) I don't trust people to write half decent summaries for their ideas. If we followed a format in which people added a summary of their ideas to the table showing the suggestions' links, we would need to watch over said summary and eventually edit the improper ones, something which would be followed by a lot of QQing (just like editing a suggestion often is, today).

IMO, we need an automatized system. A table made with DPL allowing people to see (and sort suggestions by) date of creation, and if the suggestions linked mention some topics (with parameters such as "PvP suggestions = yes/no", "character customization = yes/no" and etc). This would allow Arena Net to filter what kind of idea they look for at any given time, at the same time it does not allow people to add any summary to their own ideas.

(Also, I agree that HHLeader's idea is a bad one. The format he wants to use is not really good for this kind of thing.) Erasculio 23:38, 15 April 2009 (UTC)

HH, I'm one voice, not the entire community, I just think your system is overly complicated for the average user. I think we'd be better off designing a template for suggestions that has built in options as Erasulio described that provides some levels of filtering/categorizing. -- Wyn 23:58, 15 April 2009 (UTC)

On the issue that was only touched on: staff talk pages. I think we can pretty much let them decide themself, as long as they can handle the influx allowing certain things cause. And I think most of that has already happened. I'd guess Linsey's is the primary one here. Joe's may be an issue in the near future. The rest seems under control. So when it comes to Linsey's, it's pretty bad even with community members helping her. Given that it's a valunteer effort, it's up to those contributers if that's what they want to do, but i would rather see them improving the wiki. Backsword 16:42, 16 April 2009 (UTC)

@Leader, I don't think people are nessarily saying your idea is completely off the mark, but we have said from the beggining that we would be looking for something a little bit more user-friendly. I think you will find that whatever we end up going with will have a lot of the same foundation as what you originally proposed, even if it looks quite different.

In that vein, I have put together an example of how I thought the GW2 suggestions could be organized. It starts with this page, which I think could be located at ArenaNet:Suggestions or ArenaNet:Guild Wars 2 suggestions or something like that. Please be sure to follow the link to the example category list (here), the table I put together there represents what I think the end product of the "automated system" that Erasculio was thinking of would look like. I haven't made the form that the users would fill out, which I arbitrarily named "{{Template:Suggestionform}}", simply because I don't know enough about coding on wikis to do it. I would like to invite Erasculio or anyone else to please help with that part of it.

I realize that all of this is contingent on us adopting the new license (or something similar), but I feel pretty confident that at least some form of the new license will be adopted, so I don't think there is any harm in moving forward with this development, we already know what is going to happen if it is not adopted anyway. (Satanael 19:23, 16 April 2009 (UTC))

I disagree. One thing we wanted to make possible was more freedom for suggestion writers; by using a form - which is not possible on a wiki btw - we would remove all that freedom and make it a simple "fill in here" thing again. Also it would make creating suggestions far too easy so the quality of suggestions won't be improved.

And no, we should not continue without knowing the outcome of the licensing discussion. We cannot say in what way it will affect how we plan suggestions at the moment. poke | talk 06:53, 17 April 2009 (UTC)

No, you misunderstood, the form is only for listing a suggestion in the ANet space, actual creation of the suggestion is still done like it is now, on a user's subpage, and can be done in any way they want. And maybe "form" is the wrong word, but it would be similar to how we first did suggestion creation, where you hit a button and are taken to a page creation with a template already in place, checking the category options in the template would decide where it gets listed. I don't know, I'm not good with the technical side of it, maybe if Erasculio can eleborate on what he was thinking that might help the discussion. (Satanael 17:05, 17 April 2009 (UTC))

The create box only works to create pages; and I don't get how that is related to listing them in the ANet space.. Given that the pages are created in user space and just adding a category actually lists them. poke | talk 17:08, 17 April 2009 (UTC)

Because Mike asked for an easy way for the staff to browse suggestions, simply adding them to a category tells them nothing about the suggestion, this provides them with a short description of the suggestion, allowing for easier browsing. Creating a new page for each entry would make it easy to list the same exact entry in more than one category, while also making it easy for us to speedy delete the ones that don't follow the rules. (Satanael 17:18, 17 April 2009 (UTC))

Take a look @ User_talk:Mike_O'Brien page for the discussion that still continues on the subject whether it should it be done on this Wiki at all. HH LEADER talk 18:07, 17 April 2009 (UTC)

HH L. is actually right. The issue on Mike's page would actually have to be decided first, before there is any point to this. Backsword 23:03, 19 April 2009 (UTC)

(RI) I don't agree with a form, or anything else that would make the creation of suggestions to be automatized or simple; we saw what happened with the forms used on the Guild Wars Suggestions page, in which people just kept submiting stuff without any idea of what they were doing. IMO, we need something more complex, both to make it easier for Arena Net to sort ideas and to prevent people from just clicking somewhere and typing whatever they want.

I believe we need a DPL based system in which suggestion pages are only added to the list if the user who created them has added the proper parameters (mentioned on the ArenaNet:Suggestions page). The DPL system would create a table with a link, the name of the author, date of creation, and if the page mentions some specific issues (character customization, skill system, AI, level design, PvP, pets, whatever you people want), with each of those columns being sortable. So if Arena Net would like to see only recent suggestions, they would sort by date; if they want to see suggestions about PvP, they would sort based on the column "PvP", and so on. Erasculio 20:10, 17 April 2009 (UTC)

Erasculio, you just described almost exactly what I was suggesting above. In the example I provided, the form is not for creating the suggestion, it is for listing their suggestion. Actual creation of the suggestion would remain exactly as it is now. The only thing that is different between what I was envisioning and what Erasculio suggests above is in mine the listing of the suggestion is done by the creator through filling in a form (or a template, or whatver you want to call it), and the end result includes a brief description of the idea. (Satanael 22:17, 19 April 2009 (UTC))

Next step

Today is April 15th. I propose we follow with the next step described in the site notice, and proceed to delete all the suggestions within the ArenaNet namespace (after moving them to Xeenon's space). Erasculio 23:40, 15 April 2009 (UTC)

I think that should be put on hold until we have a better plan for moving forward with the new licensing. -- Wyn 23:47, 15 April 2009 (UTC)

And poke's bot will do the moving afaik, so we have to wait until he's not busy. -Auron >8< 00:02, 16 April 2009 (UTC)

In the meantime, remove the sitenotice? -- Brains12 \ talk 00:09, 16 April 2009 (UTC)

May as well. The new liscensing will make things interesting as is, so we may as well wait a bit. -- Wandering Traveler 00:13, 16 April 2009 (UTC)

Which one - "may as well [remove the sitenotice]" or "may as well wait a bit"? -- Brains12 \ talk 00:15, 16 April 2009 (UTC)

Never mind, I've removed it - it's already 'been done', we're just waiting for Poke. The main part of the sitenotice message was the "remove" bit, and that hasn't changed. I think in the meantime (i.e. now up to the time we decide on a new structure (if we do)) we go with our original userspace proposal. -- Brains12 \ talk 00:31, 16 April 2009 (UTC)

The site notice could be removed, definitely, until we can figure out what to do about the new liscensing. Hopefully that clears up what I was trying to say. -- Wandering Traveler 00:38, 16 April 2009 (UTC)

I agree with Brains. I haven't seen anyone defending the idea of keeping the current suggestions as they are (rather the opposite). While we don't know exactly how the new system will work or if the new license will be aproved, the site notice was only about removing the current suggestions. I believe it is time we delete them (and move them to Xeenon's space). Erasculio 00:47, 16 April 2009 (UTC)

If Xeeron still wants them given this new information about their useless ness (we could ask him), then I see no reason not to move them. Given that we are apparently expecting Poket to do it, I'd leave it up to him to do it when he thinks it's worth the effort. Backsword 16:38, 16 April 2009 (UTC)

I would say this makes the move to user space and delete idea even more practical. The feedback has become even more of a headache than ever before now that Arenanet has said they can't even use any existing suggestions. Putting them in user space will not hurt anything because the user space is already chock full of GDFL licensed suggestions and other content. This is me agreeing with Backsword. That is pretty messed up and I consider that the strongest argument anyone should ever need. I will add that they probably should still be moved to Xeeron's user space as opposed to just deleted as that will allow the original authors to "reclaim" them and distribute the suggestion under whatever new licensing system Arenanet decides on eventually. I chuckled when I saw Emily suggesting we might "put it to a vote". Lolthatsnothowwikiswork. Misery 17:35, 16 April 2009 (UTC)

I wasn't able to work on this yesterday, sorry. I already have prepared the move and will probably start in short; as Xeeron said on my talk page he still wants the pages moved to his userspace, so I'll do that.

Misery: Wikipedia is voting atm... poke | talk 18:08, 16 April 2009 (UTC)

I can't help it if the people at Wikipedia don't understand how Wikis work either ^^ Misery 06:49, 17 April 2009 (UTC)