Guild Wars Wiki talk:User page/Archive 1

Groundwork for a user page policy.

This page is linked to from the main policy page. Clearly, we need some kind of user page policy. Here's me starting the ball rolling on some quasi-centralized discussion...

• Folks should be able to create some kind of user pages. It's very useful to be able to link a contributor with an in-game name, a chat account, &c. A flat-out "no user pages" policy doesn't work.
• There need to be tighter rules on what exactly lives on your user page. I forget where, but someone said that it has to all be pretty much GW-related. I think the ideal user page contains no more than a paragraph of personal stuff.
• The rules of the rest of the wiki apply, of course: no selling gold from your user page.
• The kind of user page that is fashionable on Guildwiki is rather excessive. We should discourage people from making big long pages with pictures of each character and big lists of their titles, loot, and builds. I'm not sure how that "discourage" translates into actual policy, however (certainly you could say "text only," for example, but that may not be the right place to draw the line)...
• Subpages are bad. Anything actually useful you'd do with a subpage can exist as a regular wiki page (marked as a stub, if appropriate), a Project page (if it's like "armor category cleanup project" or whatever), or in the global sandbox. No making tons and tons of little pages for all of your characters. (That should be more of a suggestion than a restriction. — 130.58 (talk) 09:11, 8 February 2007 (PST))

Thoughts? — 130.58 (talk) 23:58, 7 February 2007 (PST)

I didn't realise this was here until I was halfway done. But I tried to incorporate some of this in. Ab.er.rant 05:00, 8 February 2007 (PST)

I don't see why we should allow anything about char. The user page should be about your work on guild wars wiki not guild wars. One single in game contact for your active account should be enough maybe your guild name. No upload of char pictures, title tract or even a small description on why you love that char the most.Aratak 07:58, 8 February 2007 (PST)

I agree with you

• No images(Biggest problem we had with Gwiki was that 70% of the bandwidth went to images)
• MUST be GW related
• No linking to other site(Including your guild)

These may seem harsh rules but if we don't it will get abused, ppl that dont know anything about wiki will fall for tricks like "I am a Dev, look at my page wiki.gw.com", My userpage at Gwiki got me in almost every guild there was, even Hero r3 guilds where i didnt even had rank1, as soon as ppl see you have a userpage at guildwars.com they will naturaly think your a pro. ~ Kurd 08:02, 8 February 2007 (PST)

Images on user pages contributed virtually nothing to that. --Fyren 08:10, 8 February 2007 (PST)

Images don't take up bandwidth if they don't get viewed. My user page has a moderate amount of images and my skills pages have alot of images. How often did you view them compared to those in the namespace? I believe it was already mentioned that content not related to GW or this wiki are not allowed -- this includes images.

As for scams... by your definition, we shouldn't allow user pages at all, since the mere act of registration will give you a page you can use with the guildwars.com domain... Those guilds you got into, did they actually say they let you into their guilds based on the fact that you had a page in gwiki? But in any case, that's human guillibility. Even if you BS about how good you are on the page, the moment you actually play with them, veterans can tell at a glance whether you're really capable of what you claim you can do.

Same thing with links, it's not like you force people to click on links you know... might as well rule out external links in all pages in the namespace, those are much more visible.

If user pages are really such dangerous elements of abuse and scam, I think huge wikis like wikipedia would've ruled them out already. Ab.er.rant 08:35, 8 February 2007 (PST)

Wikipedia does have a guideline on userpages. It's relevant here to discuss what Wikipedia lists under "What can I not have on my user page?" I honestly don't have time to read and process the current proposal here right now - I'll come back later to comment. --Barek 08:48, 8 February 2007 (PST)

Subpage/Length restriction

I don't see the point here. I also don't know what the official opionion of A-Net really is, but I don't see how a little bit of userpage would make it any more acceptable. Either they ok them (which I would strongly suggest), or they don't. What would be the reason for going half the way here? They want to be associated with short character descriptions, but not longer ones? That makes no sense. Not to mention of course that all of this is extremely vague (what is "within reason"?) DeepSearch 07:49, 8 February 2007 (PST)

Totally agreed. Userpages on guildwiki were markedly different from this policy proposal and one of the finest aspects of guildwiki, forming a real community out of the editors. Length and subpages should only be restricted if there are convincing arguments for such a move, since we have a live and working example of them not creating the troubles that this policies want to prevent. --Xeeron 08:12, 8 February 2007 (PST)

Userpages on guildwiki are not hosted on the guildwar.com domain. Walking on eggshells concerning userpages would be wise, so that a.net doesn't have to put it's foot down and institute rules of it's own.

Linking to a guildwiki userpage and leaving guildwars wiki user pages terse (in terms of biographical information) would be best. I believe.--Drekmonger 08:18, 8 February 2007 (PST)

Exactly. They're not concerned with what you want to put up there. They're concerned with how this may affect them because it's now all under their domain. And that link suggestion was exactly what I had thought as well, if this policy got accepted as it is. What we need to know to continue, if to have more specifics from Anet on their stance on this. Ab.er.rant 08:35, 8 February 2007 (PST)

Do I need to point out how horrible the logic is behind Drek's suggestion? It's essentially encouraging people to use GuildWiki as a web host. --Fyren 08:39, 8 February 2007 (PST)

Why walk on eggshells? AN has indicated that they will be largely be hands-off regarding content and policy, right? If I have to continously monitor my content because of political considerations from AN, I'll wash my hands of this place right now. I think this document as it stands could be reduced to "common sense and general etiquette rule the day". I can't think of any user pages I saw at GWiki that were "excessive" except those that violated policy in one way or another anyway (GW:GARES, etc.). Regardless, my opinion is that this document, as written is textually fine, though I tend to think it overemphasises it's prejudice against subpages and images. Neither of those issues were ever performance critical on GWiki regardless of the occaisional lack of aesthetic. Oblio 08:37, 8 February 2007 (PST)

As might be evident, I'm totally okay with the current version (with 2 edits from Aberrant, 1 from me) but I would also be happy with a less restrictive policy. ANert isn't too concerned about user pages anyway. I still would like to not see any sub pages for one character only. One sub page for all of your characters would be perfectly reasonable. Images could also be allowed, but only one per character. --Gem (talk) 08:52, 8 February 2007 (PST)

If ANet is the reason for the very restrictive policy proposal, let me quote LordBiro (from the main page talk) after his discussion with ANet: "Overall I don't think user pages will be a problem. There isn't any need for overly restrictive user page policies, I would even go as far as saying user pages don't have to be about guild wars, provided they don't stray too far." --Xeeron 09:09, 8 February 2007 (PST)

This reminds me of that other user page discussion

I came down on the side of letting people do whatever they wanted there. I think, really, what we need is a big separation between "can/can't" and "should/shouldn't": we as a community should discourage some things that we still allow. Wikipedia talks about userpages as very important to community-building. I think they are. What I'm worried about is poisoning the well by just bringing over a bunch of Guildwiki tradition wholesale without questioning it. — 130.58 (talk) 09:19, 8 February 2007 (PST)

That was kinda what I had in mind when I drafted it, after looking at the one in Wikipedia, before seeing the results of the talk Biro had. I just wanted it to start off restrictive. Now, from the looks of things, the "Restricted" section can be adapted into guidelines", but the "Disallowed" part should still be applicable. Ab.er.rant 09:41, 8 February 2007 (PST)

Based on the discussion with ArenaNet

I just posted the discussion that took place with ArenaNet over on the main page, and I discuss the user page issue there.

I have to say that the points in this talk page and in the policy page are for more restrictive than needed. ArenaNet only want a more restrictive policy for user pages in that they don't want to allow people to post material that would be offensive to other users and to ArenaNet's competitors, and I think this is really the only significant difference in opinion between GuildWiki and ArenaNet.

I think it would be a terrible, terrible shame if User pages were heavily policed. LordBiro 09:26, 8 February 2007 (PST)

Ditto. What I'd really like to see is a more prominent set of guidelines (i.e. not restrictions) on how to make a page. Encouraging people to, at the very least, label the images they use intelligently, not spam recentchanges, &c. — 130.58 (talk) 09:40, 8 February 2007 (PST)

I modified the policy to be more allowing and encouraging. I'm still working on minor stuff, but the it's mainly ready for now. --Gem (talk) 09:50, 8 February 2007 (PST)

Even though it looks like I'll be overruled by the majority here, I'd like to state for the record that I would endorse a more restrictive user page policy. This has nothing to do with ANet; I would have liked the same on GuildWiki. It's been bugging me for quite a while that some users mistake the wiki as their personal webspace, uploading screenshots of all of their characters and keeping a record of every tiny little achievement of all of their characters, cluttering the recent changes with edits. I don't care if the server can handle the load with ease. I still find it annoying, and an abuse of a courtesy. I liked the original policy draft by Ab.er.rant, and I would have gone even further, disallowing character portrait screenshots alltogether. --Tetris L 05:42, 9 February 2007 (PST)

.I originally was in favor of the version with total of 3 edits which was pretty strict. As a compromise I would suggest allowing character information on one sub page only. We should also make it more clear that stuff not related to contributing to the wiki project as a whole should be given minimal time and effort. --Gem (talk) 05:46, 9 February 2007 (PST)

While it might feel unfair if new users make large userpages, userpages contribute a lot to the community. At the same time, they are very easy to ignore (if we ever get the function to ignore namespaces in recent changes, you will be able to never see one at allif you dont want to). They should only be restricted if they interfere with the other functions of the wiki. --Xeeron 06:21, 9 February 2007 (PST)

Policy ready?

Does anyone have any major worries/complaints about the policy in its current state? If not, we could accept it as a policy in the evening. --Gem (talk) 03:37, 9 February 2007 (PST)

See section above. --Tetris L 05:42, 9 February 2007 (PST)

It looks good to me.

Just keep in mind that the more restrictions in place the more monitoring and work for the admins (and users actually). I say leave the user pages mostly alone (but for advertising/blogging/offensive, etc. material) and allow the users some lee-way. If a userpage gets out of hand the admins can handle it. If I were an admin I sure wouldn't want to have to daily check every user page edit to see if it then exceeds length restrictions or has too many character images. Just stick to what the wiki can reasonably commit to without taxing the users or admins.--File:VallenIconwhitesmall.JPG Vallen Frostweaver 06:10, 9 February 2007 (PST)

I'm happy with the policy proposition as it currently stands. I respectfully disagree with Tetris's positions on home pages, though do wish there was a technical solution to filtering recent changes by namespace. Oblio 08:04, 9 February 2007 (PST)

If we could take "Uploading an image of each of your in-game characters is approppriate" and just add a "but tacky" to the end of it, I would be reasonably okay with it. — 130.58 (talk) 08:11, 9 February 2007 (PST)

Quid pro quo

I realize that this is a very radical approach, not popular, and I'll probably be flamed for it, but I still want to bring up a point:

I feel that using your user page as a personal webspace in general is abuse of a courtesy, and against my etiquette feeling. But I find it especially annoying if people do it who have hardly ever contributed anything useful to the editorial content of the wiki. I would consider it "fair" if users who have done a lot of "work" are in turn granted more freedom regarding their user page. Or, as Hanibal Lecter put it: Quid pro quo!"

I realize that this is probably in conflict with Guild Wars Wiki:You are valuable, that it may cause some users to spam meaningless edits in the main namespace in order to justify edits to their user page, and that it would be terribly hard for the admins to assess how valuable a user's contributions are compared to his user page. But I'd still like to add a note to the policy. It must not be a strict rule, but rather a request to use some common sense. --Tetris L 06:13, 9 February 2007 (PST)

Flaming? I doubt that but I will discuss it.  :) Sounds fair enough to me but how would something like that be enforced? Is it worth the effot involved? Not that I'm saying you are wrong by any means but I'm just looking at it from the time in vs. time out perspective. Adding words like you say to a general new user info screen might be nice so they know not to get too carried away, but otherwise, I really don't know how what you suggest could be made into a reality without tremendous effort or a special user page admin or something that only monitors userpages.--File:VallenIconwhitesmall.JPG Vallen Frostweaver 06:27, 9 February 2007 (PST)

I tend to agree with Tetris on some parts. It is definitely silly when a user has 2 edits and then 12 user pages with pictures of their characters and lots of meaningless information. But there isn't really any way to limit or enforce or set out guidelines to say who gets allowed to do what and who isn't. In the end I think the safest, most democratic and best way is to limit everyone to the same amount, usually the strictest common denominator. User pages don't have to be shrines to yourself or your characters, you can go set up a free website to do that. In the end I think the user name space should be used 1. to contact people via talk pages and 2. to draft projects for the wiki (without having to deal with other users editing a sandbox you are working in). I think a user page should only have basic information (in game contact, email, etc) and no pictures. I know my user page at gwiki is pretty over the top, but in the end, the only useful information on it is wiki related or my in game contact information. Same with everyone else's user page I've seen. - BeXoR 06:28, 9 February 2007 (PST)

I agree. If we could list some way of disallowing character info, images, unlock progress etc that would be great. — Skuld 06:39, 9 February 2007 (PST)

What about just restricting the use of images on user pages altogether (seriously)? Problem is, we are trying to make the public happy too and I'm not so sure they'll like that idea.--File:VallenIconwhitesmall.JPG Vallen Frostweaver 06:48, 9 February 2007 (PST)

Are we trying to make the public happy? - - BeXoR 07:13, 9 February 2007 (PST)

If user pages get restricted too much, people are just going to stay at GuildWiki. I for example don't like to work for free in an environment which doesn't allow fun. Fun is a major thing in the wiki, otherwise this would be just work and work is rewarded with money. --Gem (talk) 07:14, 9 February 2007 (PST)

I don't know how I feel about having a fun user page as being the only motivation towards contributing to a wiki. I will agree, that when I started at gwiki the userpage was a fun incentive to learn about wikicode and get myself out there, but after a while I began to realise it's not really necessary. I was considering blanking it earlier in fact. - - BeXoR 07:18, 9 February 2007 (PST)

As you might notice from my user name space in GWiki, I quite enjoy doing more or less personal stuff. However, most of my contributions are still geared towards helping the wiki. Even though many users are willingto contribute without any humor and fun at all, those users are mostly the ones who don't spend a significant amount of time in the wiki. Anyone who spends most of the day online will most likely want to have some fun at some point of the day. The amount of articles in the GuildWiki humor category and amount of contributions to my fun page give some hints. --Gem (talk) 07:52, 9 February 2007 (PST)

Yes. Why should we spend time creating a wiki the public is not happy with? --Xeeron 07:48, 9 February 2007 (PST)

"Are we trying to make the public happy?" <--- Yes, we are. Every editor here isn't (or at least, shouldn't be) building this wiki for ourselves (even though that's a plus that shouldn't be ignored). The purpose of the wiki is to keep the public happy, to keep the users of the wiki want to come back again. That includes not only readers but also editors. It is achieved by a) Providing them the information that they came here to find, b) Getting them to start feeling as part of a community, c) Making them find browsing the wiki and being involved with any and/or all aspects of it FUN. If the wiki can't manage to keep both of those different groups, editors and readers, interested and coming back for more day after day, ANet pulls the plug. Rightfully so! The wiki wouldn't justify existing anymore.

I don't like the sound of this "quid pro quo" proposal at all. It goes very much against the spirit of the wiki. "We've been here for a longer time, we've done more than you, thus we have more rights than you". It really shouldn't work like that. Also needs to be taken into account the fact that often new users begin their experience on a wiki with customizing their userpage (just like when you sign up for a new community you often get tempted to fill all those "Where do you live?" "What are your interests" fields on signup forms). Then, after their initial infatuation with their own user page dies out, their interests expand to the rest of the wiki.

On the other hand, I do agree that people were going crazy with their user pages (honestly, no one really cares about you unlocking Cyclone Axe on that pve warrior you have, it's only clutter on the Recent Changes page). So, something does need to be done in regard, even if it shouldn't be quid pro quo. How about something like what I mentioned even on the Guilds policy talk page:

Anything goes as long as it's potentially useful and of interest to others, and not merely yourself. Basically, if something on your userpage could only possibly be of interest to you, it gets cut. Unlock progress for your chars/account is one of them, entire picture galleries of your characters is another (even though probably there should be some leniency on this, maybe 1 pic per char? Not sure). General information about yourself is fine, but your family biography up to five centuries back isn't. No one really cares about a five page list of all the greens you have on your necro, or about how far your ele is on each campaign, so that shouldn't be on there either. Copying half the Mo/ builds from the Builds section of the wiki to the "Builds my My Super Duper Monk character uses" page is also overkill and useless and should be axed (maybe some leniency could be shown, 1 build per char? Dunno). This doesn't mean that everything not "wiki-work"-related (for lack of a better term) gets axed; for instance, the humor pages such as on the old wiki are fine, since they are very often of interest to others and do help to increase that sense of this being a friendly/tight community. Does this make any sense here, or am I just rambling? --Dirigible 08:16, 9 February 2007 (PST)

We should also write up a little guide as to what makes a user page more than just trash, to go along with the policy. I wouldn't mind somewhat elaborate pages if people were actually trying new things with them. (Just getting people to take pictures of something other than the login screen would be a start.) — 130.58 (talk) 08:22, 9 February 2007 (PST)

The guidelines on this would have to be very clear. And it will need to be policed as well. I will wait and see what you can come up with, but at this point I'm not hopeful. I don't want it to end up like gwiki where user pages have near to 200 user boxes, and yes, skill unlocks, mission progressions, etc. You could just make a spreadsheet with that info, you don't need it on the web. - - BeXoR 08:45, 9 February 2007 (PST)

What comes to elite unlock sub pages, I will b ekeeping mine or staying at GuildWiki permanently. That is one of the most useful page for me, listing what I have and including easy links to the pages of those skills which I don't have to allow easy checking of boss locations. I would support restricting those things to maximum one sub page thou. --Gem (talk) 08:56, 9 February 2007 (PST)

Well if this is the case, then it would need to be clearly stated. Speaking as a noob to the community, and one who has been striving to fit in somewhere... It was my understanding that the guildwiki as it stands is a huge book of public guild wars information and the personal user pages are meant to follow that example and be more of a personal book of information. Again I've not been around too long, but I can see how this is what others have assumed user pages are for. And, I think that's why many users (me including) have used our pages to keep track of unlocks, progress and goals. Are user pages not meant to be a personal wiki page? --KaYa 08:57, 9 February 2007 (PST)

In terms of the wiki format, I thought user pages were to facilitate communication between editors. I think that the wiki shouldn't be used for social networking or as a webhost. Your user name space should be used to help organise your editing work. - - BeXoR 09:59, 9 February 2007 (PST)

I disagree. Neither character info nor unlock progress should be restricted, or anything for that matter, unless there is a reason. "I don't like it" is fine, but I don't think that should be enough. Now if A-Net has no problem with it, and bandwith/space is not a reason either, then where exactly is the harm? Recent Changes spam might be one, but then we should put our resources into educating users about the minor edit checkbox instead. Again, what's there to be annoyed about? Now I can kind of see where you're coming from with your point about ettiquette, but actually adding something along the lines of "earning user page edits" to the policy is waaaay over the top, imho. DeepSearch 11:41, 9 February 2007 (PST)

Having that information on a userpage isn't necessary in any way for the purpose of the wiki, which (we haven't had a clear statement from Anet yet) is ultimately to document the game. If we say that isn't a good enough standard to set for content uploaded here, then what's stopping anyone from doing anything they want on their userpage. As I said above, user pages should be used for communication and as a space to organise projects or contributions. The wiki isn't a free webhost. - BeXoR 11:51, 9 February 2007 (PST)

Well, "anything they want guildwars related". For what it is worth, like Gem, overly restricted user spaces is a showstopper for me. It's not that I want to see things get out of hand, but tightly regulated user spaces seems a bummer for everyone involved (the user and the administrator who is policing). I've said my peice on this, I'm for anything where "common sense and general etiquette hold sway". I don't feel strong prohibitions or "quid pro quo" are reasonable. In many ways, all wiki's are free, restricted, web hosts. It's all about mapping reasonable behavior. Oblio 11:59, 9 February 2007 (PST)

I think that's exactly it - you want to base a policy on the question "What is it good for?", but I'd like to ask "Where is the harm"? Communication and organisation are great functions for user pages, but so is community building. Yes, there should be limits, and I'm fine with how it currently reads, but I don't see why we should put overly hard restrictions in there that are not needed. DeepSearch 13:18, 9 February 2007 (PST)

Just a note: YAV is not policy and I will do my best to prevent it being treated as one. Current discussion on Project talk:You are valuable. S 07:38, 9 February 2007 (PST)

Part of the way to discourage everybody from making big ol' shrines to their characters is for the bigwigs not to do that, too. If I'm the most prolific editor (not gonna happen, but, y'know, an example) and I have a super-shiny userpage with 20 pictures (also not gonna happen, I hope), people are going to try to copy that. So I think it's very important that the experienced and active people here right now lead by example if nothing else: having fun is good, but it's important to discourage ego-stroking and useless clutter. (Unfortunately, since you might see a mass migration over from Guildwiki, I expect a lot of casual users will just copy over their big honkin' Guildwiki pages, so this may be moot.) — 130.58 (talk) 08:02, 9 February 2007 (PST)

Why restrict layout? --Gem (talk) 08:56, 9 February 2007 (PST)

I would just like to point out a couple things. First, from Lord Biro's discussion w/ANet there isn't a large concern about having to restrict user pages. Second, from GuildWiki, that Fyren pointed out that userpages are not tying up resources and causing harm to the wiki. That being said I can understand why a policy such as this one can be useful as excessiveness can be irritating. My opinion, though, is that the policy should lean towards leniency rather than restrictiveness as a general rule. With that I'd just like to note that I support the policy as it currently is. Lojiin 09:20, 9 February 2007 (PST)

I use my old userpage as a general "This is what I got and where I'm at" page that as has been stated could be kept on an excel sheet. That's all fine and good but at the same time, I can direct others that are in my guild/alliance/any GW gamer to so they can see my info. If I am stuck on a mission or people want to see how far my monk is when I'm offline, they can. Now, of course this can be hosted on a free site as well, but here's the kicker - If it's on another site the other people viewing it go to THAT site and not this one. By having a userpage like this here it encourages others to come to the wiki to get that info. I have people from my guild that don't come to the wiki since it's too intimidating but are recently coming around. It basically advertises to others that GWiki is a good place to go for any and all info and I think that will work for this wiki too. From this I think that userpages aren't a big deal (especially since ANet is making it less of a problem) and don't need to be heavily policed but that they should be checked for obscene/etc. content minimum.

On the other hand, if a user goes totally crazy and adds lots of pages all listing every aspect of their character in every way or just has 300+ userboxes or some other craziness perhaps it can be better organized or an admin could then say "Hey, can you limit that stuff a little?" as it's less useful to playing the game or encouraging others which I would imagine ANet wants most is us to encourage others to play the game afterall. Sorry if I rambled... --File:VallenIconwhitesmall.JPG Vallen Frostweaver 10:56, 9 February 2007 (PST)

I'm not talking about restricting layout with policy. I'm talking about the fact that being a major contributor means everyone copies your page, so saying "You have to be a major contributor to make a garrish and overlong page" is self-defeating. — 130.58 (talk) 13:30, 9 February 2007 (PST)

I see and I get your point. If I didn't allready, my opinnion is that everyone should have the same rules. --Gem (talk) 13:37, 9 February 2007 (PST)

"Part of the way to discourage everybody from making big ol' shrines to their characters is for the bigwigs not to do that, too." <- That would be my preferred solution, in an ideal world. But it looks like it's not going to happen. :( --Tetris L 00:58, 12 February 2007 (PST)

Some restrictions

This page is getting very long! Here is my proposal and thoughts on the matter. I encourage you to comment at the end and also create your own proposal if you are opposed to these ideas. It's time to consolidate all the talking into some focused ideas!

Guild Wars Wiki is not a personal webhost, blog or social networking website. User pages should be used to facilitate communication between editors and to help organise the user's work within the wiki.

I think elaborate user pages detract from the reputation of a wiki as a documentation tool.

Anything goes as long as it's potentially useful and of interest to others, and not merely yourself. I think this should be though of in terms of any user stumbling upon your user page, not in terms of a user you had directed to the page. If I went to someone's talk page, the unlocks they have, builds they use, green weapons they've found, and so on, are of no use or interest to me at all. If I had to direct a person to the page, I could have easily directed them to my personal website.

If you really want a webpage about your Guild Wars characters and other such exploits, there are many free webhosts on the net. By Vallen's reasoning, if you get someone to visit your userpage they will visit the wiki too. Why not put a banner on your personal website linking to here? It should generate about the same traffic. Perhaps we could even allow links to personal websites on your user page.

Holding your contributions to ransom because you aren't allowed to have an elaborate page is terrible etiquette. You should be contributing because you are dedicated to documenting the game. Anything you are given in return is a bonus. There is no contract that says you should receive payment of any form for your work, nor should you contribute if you expect to be rewarded for it. I think some people take the liberties we were given at gwiki for granted.

As far as what ANet's stance on this is, most people seem to be saying because they didn't say no, it should be allowed. I take the meaning instead as something they thought the community would best decide about, just like they are leaving policy up to us.

Lack of restrictions on user pages is not the only way to build a community. I personally have never read another person's user page in full, just skimmed them. In respect to my own guildmates, if they want to know my progression in the game they can simply ask me, or contact me through irc/voice chat/msn/email/talk page. I would never expect them to read my user page. It is just a vanity page. I have spreadsheets with everything else important in it. I can upload this information to a free webhost if my guildies really need it, or I can send them the spreadsheet.

The community building I experienced on gwiki did NOT come about from user pages. It was from discussions on talk pages, and that would be not affected by restricting user page content.

I do believe that having personal information helps you to identify with other contributors and break the ice. I met several people in gwiki because their user pages (or talk page comments) said they were also Australian! But their characters and unlocks don't matter to me, because there are hundreds of thousands of other people that have the same thing with a different face.

What should be allowed:

• Brief personal information
  • Name
  • Country
  • Time zone
  • Contact details
    • Email
    • Instant Messaging
    • In game contact
  • Maybe some trivial information like interests and hobbies
• Guild Wars Wiki related
  • Organizing contributions (subpages, sandbox, etc)
  • Information that affects your contributions (campaigns you own)

What shouldn't be allowed:

• Trading
• Offensive behaviour
• Any content that violates the EULA
• Personal Guild Wars information (character bios, unlocks, unique weapon lists)
• etc

Comments

I want same policy as on the old wiki. BlastedtGuildWiki page 14:42, 9 February 2007 (PST)

Are you going to give a reason why? This isn't a vote. - - BeXoR 14:44, 9 February 2007 (PST)

Because if they take away our precious guildwiki, I at least want the same freedoms, BlastedtGuildWiki page 14:51, 9 February 2007 (PST)

Someone is taking something away from you? ... What kind of thing to say is that? You do realise that most everyone that's contributing here is doing so because they think this new wiki can add and improve to what GuildWiki used to be, don't you? At least I personally am here for that reason. And if excessive user pages are one of those things that could be improved upon, then so be it. --Dirigible 14:54, 9 February 2007 (PST)

Restricting user pages so severly will also reduce the user base. Count me out if this suggestions gets through. Personal GW information is the salt of the wiki. You are able to track your in game stuff easily, share it with friends and tell something about yourself at the same time to other contributors. It helps creating a working environment which will be fun. And yes, the whole point is fun. Or are you playing the game because you are forced to or you are paid for it? No, you are playing for fun. The wiki is upposed to be helping the fun. --Gem (talk) 14:58, 9 February 2007 (PST)

I agree with Gem. Most of what made guildwiki so sweet wasn't just the guildwars information right at my fingertips, but that my personaly information was in the same place. If this falls through then I will have to continue to call guildwiki home. 15:06, 9 February 2007 (PST)

I disagree with restricting user pages also. For several reasons, firstly, it does help create a sense of community. I admit that that statement does not hold true for every wiki user but I believe it holds true for some, myself at least. Secondly, some people enjoy creating them and maintaining them. Yes, they can be excessive but as noted previously and elsewhere the username space has not caused any resource problems thus far so excessiveness isn't a large issue in that regard. Also, its fairly easy for this policy to simply say : keep it tasteful. Also, I'd like to point out that in building a policy we're trying to form rules and guidelines for the community as a whole not just the tastes of ourself or myself or any one individual and as demonstrated on guildwiki the community has an interest in creating and maintaining user pages. Barring an official message from ANet or someone having a good reason to exclude what seems to be a community interest I see no reason to do so. Lojiin 15:09, 9 February 2007 (PST)

As I mentioned above, I do agree with you about the wiki needing to remain fun, and I do agree that the user pages add to that. Also agreed with Lojiin that they add to the community sense. But I also think that there was excessiveness shown in some userpages and that there should be at least some kind of effort to place guidelines on what that excessiveness is. If both of these can't coexist, keeping the personal user space fun while at the same time having guidelines controlling it, I'd rather opt for the first one as well, lets keep this place fun. --Dirigible 15:43, 9 February 2007 (PST)

I dont see the point in regulating user pages for regulations sake. Why drive users away when user pages hurt noone? --Xeeron 16:05, 9 February 2007 (PST)

I still find it horrifying that people wont contribute unless they are allowed to use their user page as a webhost. I think it's selfish and ugly to demand that.
Guildwiki isnt being taken away. You are still free to contribute there. I think we should aim here to be better and not just do things because it's the way things are done. Challenge the status quo. This place doesn't need to be a clone of gwiki. What it should be is an improvement.
I still think we need a statement from ANet as to what this wiki is actually about. I consider the objective is for the community to document the game. If you want fun, go play the game instead! Although I personally find contributing fun.
Though I still believe my proposal allows for "fun" whilst at the same time limiting users to only include information useful to others, not only themself. By allowing some personal information you can learn about the person. You don't need to know how many skills they've unlocked or which greens they own to do that. Nor would formatting be regulated. You could still have tables and coloured backgrounds to display your personal information.
I believe that the excessive user pages on gwiki are ridiculous, and they should have been restricted in some manner. The best way to restrict this information is to limit the types of information that were causing the excessiveness. IMO the main culprits are character bios, unlocks, mission progressions, weapons lists, user boxes (when used prolificly), etc.
I'm sure people can come up with other ways to foster community growth other than allowing vanity pages. - BeXoR 16:16, 9 February 2007 (PST)

Ridiculous... you mean like this one i just found: User:EMonk Yeah, that sort of thing makes me feel sad inside. He/she is just copying the bloated pages over from GuildWiki, and it already defines "excess." Honestly, we're already getting this junk, and we kinda need to hurry up and come up with a policy =P -- Pepe 19:51, 9 February 2007 (PST)

The page of 301 userboxes is excessive, too. More so because I've already seen it on freakin' Guildwiki. — 130.58 (talk) 20:03, 9 February 2007 (PST)

Well, I agree that 301 userboxes are a bit much, and I think a policy that encourages more mature behaviour would be good for this wiki, but I don't really see a problem with pages like User:EMonk. There isn't anything too ridiculous on there, just enough to let you know what kind of person they are and how they feel about guild wars, etc. Its definitely longer than what I would want myself, but thats just an opinion. The size of userpages was never a technical issue on guildwiki, and nobody has presented a good reason here other than "I don't like it", so it seems the only issue here is that of "taste". You're going to have a difficult time coming up with a policy that accurately legislates taste. If its really just a concern for bandwidth or resources, then simply set a size limit in kB. That way you don't get involved in trying to determine if someone's page is tasteful. -- BrianG 22:04, 9 February 2007 (PST)

Hasn't presented a good reason other than "I don't like it"??? I have said user pages shouldn't be used like your own personal webhost. It's taking advantage and the information is against the nature of a wiki. - BeXoR 16:58, 10 February 2007 (PST)

If you (as in, anyone reading this) have a problem with my 100% about Guild Wars page (at least the way it was before, much shorter now, even before I saw this), please take the time to put a note in my talk page, explaining why and what your thoughts are. For the record, there was -nothing- on that page that did not relate directly to Guild Wars. There were also no builds, no loot checklists, no elite skill checklists, no farmed areas checklists. Yes, there was a spot (still there) where I keep track of what characters have finished campaigns. This information is contained in a table that lists my ingame names. If you want this removed, you'd better bring a good reason. I would imagine others think along the same way as I do; contact us first if you think there is a problem. EMonk 23:04, 9 February 2007 (PST)

This is a copy of Gwiki, which is a copy of wiki, which is successful. Go to wiki and look at some user pages, look at what they do to get an idea of what should and shouldn't be allowed. Most of them are pretty neat, but many contain lots of user boxes, images, multiple paragraphs on the user personal. That kind of flair obviously hasn't smudged the image of a site that is now commonly linked on many official university active desktops. I think people should be free to list characters, unlocks, personal information they like to share; that is what gives a wiki heart and soul. A wiki is people, people are personality. Barring personality from a wiki is to kill a wiki.--69.155.122.92 00:16, 11 February 2007 (PST) -- Oops, forgot I don't have user page yet. Its me, Windjammer. Hi everybody.

Trying to reach agreement

The majority of users taking part in the discussion seem to want to allow personal guild wars information to be posted. Now I would like to hear comments about the current state of the plicy page. I modified te text yesterday so that it disencourages multiple character user pages and such. If a user starts to disturb with multiple character, pet and build pages in the user name space then he could be asked to remove content based on this policy, but it would allow personal guild wars stuff as long as it stays within reason. --Gem (talk) 23:48, 9 February 2007 (PST)

It could be even less restrictive, but I would be ok with the current revision. DeepSearch 00:09, 10 February 2007 (PST)

The policy is a little more restrictive than I thought it'd be, but i guess there's been a lot more push and pull going on about the policy than I thought there'd be too. Seems to me from the discussion that it's really only restricted as much as it is because of the few that think userpages as they have been are annoying. There's really nothing else holding us back from making an all too lenient policy except for better judgement. - I do think the policy is good as it stands. If we see too much abuse with userpages then we look into restricting it even more or visa-versa if we feel it okay to give a little more freedom to users. 01:19, 10 February 2007 (PST)

The policy sounds reasonable to me now. --Xeeron 03:27, 10 February 2007 (PST)

I like the changes made to the section about images, but I think the section on in-game info could be re-worked. I don't think it needs to be so strict.

The text at the moment does not read as though it should fall under the "encouraged" header. The following paragraph is definitely a restriction:

You are allowed to indulge yourself by adding personal achievements and in-game characters, but within reason. One sub page dedicated to your characters is allowed and reasonable, but listing all of your characters builds, weapon and armor sets and titles is unnecessary.

I recommend we change this to something like

You are encouraged to include information about your in-game characters, either on your user page or using subpages, but please bear in mind that by limiting your character information to one page and keeping the information concise it will appeal to a broader audience.

I think we should encourage users to create small character pages, rather then telling them to. And if we decide in the future that this policy was too lenient then we can produce a stricter policy. LordBiro 04:28, 10 February 2007 (PST)

The policy as it is now is very acceptable to me. I believe this is a good compromise between those who like elaborate user pages as a form of self-expression, and those who find them unnecessary and distracting. Not too much freedom that allow large user spaces, yet not too restrictive as to prevent creativity. I think some restraint might be good, I'm kinda guilty of excessiveness I guess (but I really do like my GWiki page! :p) I'll try to control myself here. --ab.er.rant (talk) 08:15, 10 February 2007 (PST)

I think the current policy is acceptable. It seems to indicate that my page on guildwiki would be appropriate here so that means I'm happy. -- BrianG 10:23, 10 February 2007 (PST)

If this is what the policy is going to look like when it's passed then I want to say some things. I disagree with Biro's change to that line. If this is a policy it should be clear about what is and isn't allowed. Biro's change makes it look like just a suggestion.

Also, if we are going to allow Guild Wars information, I have a suggestion that will be a compromise so that people can do whatever they want: keep it on a subpage. Only put your personal information and gwwiki information on your actual uesr page. That way if I am working on a project and need your help (and contact information) I won't have to load a million pictures of your character or your user boxes. And it is also considerate for people on dial up too. It's still accessible for anyone who wants it, they can click the link to go to the subpage. It's still available for you to play with as much as you want.

One thing that really bothers me on gwiki is that I watch people's talk pages and then every day they make 100 minor edits to their user page and gets pushed up on my watchlist. It just bugs me.

Anyway, that is my suggestion. I hope that a compromise can be found. - BeXoR 17:09, 10 February 2007 (PST)

Good point. So that explains why some people hate long user pages. I support. Restrictions on the userpage. No information that does not help others should be on the main page. Personal details, bookmarks, a few links, and some tips is all that's allowed in the user page. --ab.er.rant (talk) 20:17, 10 February 2007 (PST)

If the main complaint of user pages is the "Death of 1000 Minor Edits", then I believe people here are starting to think to highly of themselves. I see 100 edits by same user to the same page as ONE line in recnet changes, only x100 after their name. People that edit a page multiple times will continue to do so, as this won't help that problem. I'll go along with the small < 5 line no graphics main user page idea, though, as I am willing to comprimise.

I am only mentioning this because the user felt they needed to single me out, I point out that Pepe has a 29k graphic of his monk on his user page, and the day before it was a full-page 555x785 60k graphic. I am not saying that was bad, I am saying take that into consideration when you think about who some of these complaints ideas are coming from.

Aside from Arena Net coming out and saying minimalist user pages only, I see no reason why a subpage, only about Guild Wars, can not also exist. I also believe that ANet might want to think about both a policy and an admin review in 4-6 weeks, if they are not already considering that. EMonk 22:49, 10 February 2007 (PST)

100 minor edits don't show up in recent edits as one line. I suspect you mean in your watch list. To be clearer on why it annoys me, is I have several people on my watchlist at gwiki who I go to for help or work with or whatever. A couple of people edit their page multiple times (every few minutes it seems sometimes) through the day. I don't want to remove them from my watchlist because of conversations going on in the talk page, so I have no choice but to either visit their page, or sit there with it bolded every time I go and check what's changed on the wiki. Usually the changes are updates in skill unlocks, mission progression, etc. I even had one user that would update how much experience his characters had. It was all personal information which they had put there primarily for personal use.
Other situations that I have come across are people who offer me help and say to contact me in game. So I go to their userpage to find out contact details and am confronted by dozens of pictures, userboxes, character progression, etc. I have to load all of that (or scroll past it all) to find one simple thing.
Another thing that annoyed me, was that people uploaded pictures of their characters and then replaced them, leaving the image on the server without use. It always felt wrong putting del tags on someone's "personal" belongings. And also when pages were moved, having to fix links in peoples' user pages - ugh!
IMO, using Anet's server as storage or to boast about your achievements is taking advantage. If people say that they MUST have complete freedom or they WONT edit, then they should really consider why they are contributing to the site at all. Here I was thinking documenting the game was everyone's #1 concern. :/
Everyone has been stating their demands: fun, personality and a sense of community. I don't see how any of these demands are compromised by having non-essential information on subpages. - BeXoR 00:54, 11 February 2007 (PST)

The reason why ANet is accepting us to do mostly as we like is that they wanted to create GuildWiki again, just with a different license. They don't want to change the way the site is working. That aside, only a few users are against personal guild wars information, but to make them happy I'll edit the policy to suggest that the information should be on sub pages instead of the main user page. I'll also add a suggestion for not using large images on the main user page. --Gem (talk) 01:06, 11 February 2007 (PST)

Okay, how about the current version? --Gem (talk) 01:13, 11 February 2007 (PST)

Suggestions are easily ignored. - BeXoR 01:15, 11 February 2007 (PST)

How about this? I'm not willing to go any further, but this should be fair enough. (And is actually better than the original, I have to say) --Gem (talk) 01:23, 11 February 2007 (PST)

Looks good now. I think it's a good compromise. - BeXoR 01:29, 11 February 2007 (PST)

Great! Now lets wait a few days to see if anyone else sees problems in the policy suggestion. If not, then lets make it a policy. --Gem (talk) 01:33, 11 February 2007 (PST)

Other than maybe a note about how big of an image counts as "big" (just a ballpark in kilobytes would be fine), looks good. — 130.58 (talk) 02:25, 11 February 2007 (PST)

To toss in my personal EUR 0.02: I find this policy by far too restrictive. I don't see any reason why to go away from what was practise on Guildwiki. Abuse as a personal host? So what? Does that little bit of bandwidth/storage space matter? It wasn't of any concern on Guildwiki, why should it be here? Making contact information harder to obtain? Seriously, how often do you want to contact somebody via means other than their talk page? And if you do so, does it matter whether you need 10 seconds to look it up on that user's page or 30 seconds? Don't over-regimentate! If you want to go the way that this policy suggests, you might as well create a user page template. --Eightyfour-onesevenfive 02:36, 11 February 2007 (PST)

How would you feel if we simply axe this part?

• "Having in game information on your user page only makes it harder for people to find the information they are looking for so using a sub page is required if you want anything more detailed than a list of your characters. One sub page dedicated to your characters is allowed and reasonable, but listing all of your characters builds, weapon and armor sets and titles is unnecessary and uninteresting for others."

I found it a bit excessive myself. — 130.58 (talk) 02:40, 11 February 2007 (PST)

I completely disagree with that part being removed. All of the arguments against have been sensible and with good reason. All the arguments for have been because of how gwiki operated and because we want what we want. I simply cannot believe how demanding and selfish people can be regarding this! Learn to compromise. - BeXoR 02:46, 11 February 2007 (PST)

Well, if everyone just goes and makes their three-page table of characters on a subpage rather than their main user page, what is actually gained? Also, do you know anyone who posts contact info on his page but hides it underneath or within the giant character shrine rather than putting it above all that stuff? — 130.58 (talk) 02:51, 11 February 2007 (PST)

Not forcing people to load/read things they don't want to. Cuts out minor edits on watchlist when you're watching someone's talk page. Saves bandwidth (for the servers and for the user). Read everything that's been said above for more. What exactly is lost by putting this information on a subpage? You can't force people to look at your e-shrine yourself anymore? And yes, I have seen pages with so many userboxes that you have to scroll down two full screens before you reach anything useful. This is a wiki, not your personal webhost/organisation tool. Show some decorum. - BeXoR 02:58, 11 February 2007 (PST)

I agree with a) not having to load all the image crap which Im not interested in b) cutting down edits on my watchlist caused by character progression. --Gem (talk) 03:17, 11 February 2007 (PST)

And I will compromise with letting anyone do what they want on subpages. (I still think it's terrible etiquette though). But if people need it that badly, keep it where it will not inconveniece others pls? - BeXoR 03:18, 11 February 2007 (PST)

I don't believe in the e-shrines at all, pretty much. I really would like to encourage people to tuck them away somewhere, but I'm wondering whether that encouragement should or should not extend to the level of force. I think that matter's an open question right now. FWIW, your arguments are reasonably convincing. It's just that I'm a bit wary of supporting a restrictive policy just because I happen to agree with its general sensibilities. — 130.58 (talk) 03:22, 11 February 2007 (PST)

My suggested change further up the page was relevant, in my opinion, when you consider that character information was under the "encouraged" heading. I personally am not planning on punishing people for putting character information on their user pages, whether this policy is accepted or not. It's simply demoralising.

However, if the information about character pages is going to remain under "restricted" then I recommend (grudgingly) that the wording be much clearer. If there is a risk that the user will be reprimanded for their actions then there should be no doubt as to what is allowed and what is not. Saying "within reason" is not accurate enough. Saying that "One sub page dedicated to your characters is allowed and reasonable, but listing all of your characters builds, weapon and armor sets and titles is unnecessary and uninteresting for others." is OK, but it does not indicate that 2 or more subpages is not allowed. Is this the case?

So while I am not in agreement with the restrictions on character pages, I think the wording should be much more precise if anyone wishes this to be enforced. LordBiro 07:15, 11 February 2007 (PST)

Just to add to my point, I wonder how many sysops would be willing to tell a user to delete their character page or face a ban? I personally would not. LordBiro 07:18, 11 February 2007 (PST)

I would think it would be change your page to fit the requirements or it will be moved. I agree though that the wording needs to be much clearer. It should also detail the repurcussions of violating the policy. - BeXoR 07:21, 11 February 2007 (PST)

About the "not loading unnecessary stuff" argument - Don't forget to add some regulation about talk pages then. I suggest users should be forced to archive their talk page at least once a week. Also, I wonder if Fyren is really fit to be an admin here? BTW, this one is getting awefully long too. DeepSearch 07:35, 11 February 2007 (PST)

That would depend on the amount of activity on the page. Some discussions also last longer than a week. There is a size limit warning that shows up though. - BeXoR 07:49, 11 February 2007 (PST)

(reset indent) Reword of this:

You are allowed to indulge yourself by adding personal achievements and in-game characters, but within reason. Having in game information on your user page only makes it harder for people to find the information they are looking for so using a sub page is required if you want anything more detailed than a list of your characters. One sub page dedicated to your characters is allowed and reasonable, but listing all of your characters builds, weapon and armor sets and titles is unnecessary and uninteresting for others.

to this:

Where personal Guild Wars information is concerned, a sub page is required if you want anything more detailed than a list of your characters. Information such as in game personal achievements, character biographies, character images, builds and other non-Wiki related materials are required to be placed on a sub page.

and maybe:

Breach of this requirement will result in the information being moved to a sub page by an administrator.

And under encouraged change personal contact information to be Brief personal information (such as location and interests) and then Contact information (is there a reason there are two dot points for contact information in the list?). There's nothing wrong with saying Hi, my name is whatever, I'm from this country and my favourite tv show is Sesame Street. We don't want to completely eliminate personality and other identifying characteristics. That stuff IS interesting to other people and helps you to get to know your fellow contributors. Your unlocks and how much exp your characters have isn't. That information is useful only to you. Should I edit the page to make things clearer? How do my ideas seem? - BeXoR 07:49, 11 February 2007 (PST)

Hm. I think I forgot the irony tags up there. BTW, the size warning appears on non-talk pages too, so that's hardly an argument. DeepSearch 10:10, 11 February 2007 (PST)

Bexor, I am trying to understand exactly where you think the line should be drawn on userpages. Would you be willing to look at my userpage on gwiki and tell me if it is something you would consider acceptable here? I think its tricky to determine exactly what is considered "useful" information for other people on your userpage. For example, on my page I have a list of greens that I want to get. At first this seems useful only to me, but as you can see, when I crossed off Sadi's Benediction, 8765 noticed and it resulted in an interesting conversation about farming with him, Gem and I. It is also useful if someone notices I need the same green as them, then we can help each other farm it. If this information was located on a subpage, it actually becomes less useful. The type of policing involved in trying to determine something this subjective is going to be more trouble than its worth in my opinion, and it seems a majority of users posting here seem to agree that less restrictions would be better. -- BrianG 08:41, 11 February 2007 (PST)

In the case the we dont even want to list our personal contact information? I feel that what I do in wiki stays in wiki, and I dont need to be contacted elsewhere. If somebody needs me they'll use my talk page which i check just as often as any e-mail anyway. And anything I'm willing to post about my personal self (ie. interests) will be guildwars realated, and for me that would be something about my characters. But I wouldnt do that cause it's not policy to do so. I'll follow policy, and I'll be an example to those who check my page out of a person that follows policy. Even if that means my front page is only a list of links to subpages. But, I honesly think that all these restrictions are only to soothe mere annoyances. And I dont think that should govern policy.  :\ 09:34, 11 February 2007 (PST)

This is a big response

Kaya, the personal information is only encouraged, not required.

I spent a long time writing and rewriting this response, as I am beginning to feel like I am repeating myself and that the problems I have identified are being swept under the carpet. My stance at the moment merely arose from attempting to find a compromise with those users who want a completely unrestricted user page policy.

• The information generally included on gwiki user pages doesn't belong on a wiki, but on a personal website or in a personal document.
• In some cases users go so far as to abuse the generosity given to them.
• User pages do cause problems and need regulation.
• Some user pages are detrimental to the wiki as a whole.
• User pages are not the source of the community feeling that was built at gwiki.

Now for some bullet points to summarise things as well as I can:

• A userpage is primarily for facilitating contact between editors and supplementing your contributions to the wiki. It is also used to get to know your fellow editors.
• Users are concerned they will not be allowed freedom of expression or to have any fun with their user pages. They also like being able to keep track of their in game exploits with the ease of internal links.
• Excessive editing of user pages is causing problems for some users in regards to recent changes, and more pointedly, users’ watchlists.
• “Excessive” user pages are frowned upon and considered annoying and in bad taste.
• The current situation at gwiki offers no compromise between the two.

Compromising:

• Keep main user page content in line with the primary function of a user page: wiki editing, communication and getting to know each other.
• Allowing self expression.
• Keeping edits to a minimum.
• Keeping pages user friendly in terms of length, content and images.
• Allowing users freedom in sub pages.
• User page edits should always be set as minor (does not apply to talk pages).

Things to remember:

1. GW Wiki is not your personal webhost
2. Using it as such is an abuse of courtesy, whether the servers can handle it or not

As such, ANet has not stated anything about size restrictions, and Fyren stated that bandwidth and storage was never an issue in terms of user pages. But the same common sense guidelines used when designing other pages on the wiki should be applied – think of the wiki’s main page. Should it be three screens long, covered in huge pictures and other insignificant information? The server may be able to handle it, but the user may not.

Also, think of your user page like a book cover. It can be designed beautifully or just plain and functional. If I stumble across it and like what I see, or if I want to know more, I’ll visit your links. If I don’t like it, or if I’m not there for browsing pleasure but with a specific goal, then I’m not forced to load your entire page, or reload it every time it is changed. If I am interested in any changes you make to your sub pages in the future, I can always add them to my watchlist.

In your case Brian, I suppose your page would be acceptable. You have a brief statement about yourself, user boxes not in excess, links to your contributions and other wiki-related things. I would even go so far as to say the "what I want" and “greens list” are acceptable too, and yes, they are helpful to others, because they may want to provide you with those items, or help you. It isn't garish, isn't a large download, and I'd go so far as to say you wouldn't need to update it too often. Even so, my core belief is that this in game information is still better suited to a different forum, and if that isn’t an option, at least on a sub page.

Now if you had the following listed on your main page I would speak different: a list of every skill unlocked on your account, character stories, missions progressions for your characters, pictures of all your characters, updates every few hours when you gain some experience or unlock a skill, a list of every unique weapon that you own, image heavy content, etc. If I want this information I will look for it, or simply ask for it.

I hope that the users here can see the sense in my proposal. I have been as accommodating as I can be in terms of my own beliefs, despite a disparity in motivations. I hope that others will do the same and find a compromise. I feel that I have presented my arguments logically and with detailed explanations. If you have anything constructive to say, I welcome it. I would like this discussion to move forward instead of lingering on the same points. - BeXoR 11:49, 11 February 2007 (PST)

What are you actually proposing? As fas as I understood the current proposal is just what you want. No in game info (max a list of characters) on the user page but anything on sub pages as long as it's reasonable. --Gem (talk) 11:59, 11 February 2007 (PST)

Hmmm, let me comment on your first 5 points:

• The information generally included on gwiki user pages doesn't belong on a wiki, but on a personal website or in a personal document.
  • That is totally up to what the wiki decides belongs on the wiki.
• In some cases users go so far as to abuse the generosity given to them.
  • Since we have repeatedly heard that user pages are NOT a problem on the server, I feel that abuse is the wrong term.
• User pages do cause problems and need regulation.
  • Please give an example.
• Some user pages are detrimental to the wiki as a whole.
  • Again, please give an example
• User pages are not the source of the community feeling that was built at gwiki.
  • Since you dont know what made up the community feeling in the wiki, you cant correctly make that statement. In fact I remember people saying that they did make up the community feeling for them, thus the statement would be flat out wrong.

Contrary to the main page, user pages are easily and commonly ignored. They have 0 detrimal effect on wiki users and only minor detrimal effect on wiki editors (via recent chances), so any regulation should have a better reason than "I feel that that stuff doesnt belong here" (where I is any number of editors). --Xeeron 12:04, 11 February 2007 (PST)

I just realised what the problem was. I forgot to edit the personal guild wars info part earlier although I claimed to have done it completely. Now it clearly states that the stuff belongs to sub pages and not the user page. --Gem (talk) 12:10, 11 February 2007 (PST)

In response to Xeeron, as I said above, that was a summary of all the things stated throughout this page. There is more detail above.

1. It was my understanding that the wiki was here to document the game, so logically, information that complements that goal is what is wanted here. I also stated in an earlier comment that we are waiting on ANet to actually put up a mission statement.
2. Abuse of generosity has a lot more to do with than bandwidth.
3. The reason I have not given examples is because I don't want to single people out. I have explained in detail about the problem pages, if you would like to read that instead...
4. I didn't say I didn't know what made up the community feeling at the wiki, but I don't believe user pages was a part of it. The sense of community I found was from common interests, coming from common backgrounds and sharing passions for a common project. I think that if people reconsidered, they would realise it was their interactions with other people that created the community bond, not a list of generic information.

And user pages are not easily ignored, because they are linked to user talk pages, which are a huge part of editing here. I find it insulting that you reduce all of my carefully reasoned problems down to "i dont want it" or "i dont think it belongs here". There are problems and they have to be addressed. - BeXoR 12:22, 11 February 2007 (PST)

Would you like to comment on the current revision of the policy suggestion? --Gem (talk) 12:27, 11 February 2007 (PST)

I think BeXoR has made some good points, although I don't personally agree with them all.

One such point is "User pages are not the source of the community feeling that was built at gwiki." -- they are certainly not the only source, but they are definitely a source. I wouldn't know as much about people from the GuildWiki without having read their user pages, and volunteering information about yourself is an important part of getting to know someone. However this has nothing to do with character pages, so I don't think it's a good point. Unless I've misunderstood? LordBiro 12:36, 11 February 2007 (PST)

Well as I said above, self expression would be encouraged, and personal information too, like your age, country, general interests - those are what personality is about, in tandem with your design. You can always say in a short paragraph that you really love putting story behind your characters and link to your character page if anyone is interested in that side of things. That's why I get so frustrated with people insisting that their unlocks and exp and all that other stuff gets put on their main page - it's not personal and it's not wiki-related. I am getting so tired of saying the same thing over and over when people are objecting to something without reading!!!

In response to Gem:

You know that I'm happy as long as the "extra" stuff is kept off the main page, and seeing as one of my main concerns is the talk page watching thing. But people aren't going to like being limited to one page. And it's unclear with this wording how many sub pages they are allowed.

I think it should be reworded to this:

Where personal Guild Wars information is concerned, a sub page is required if you want anything more detailed than a short list of your characters or goals. Information such as in game personal achievements, character biographies, character images, builds and other non-Wiki related materials are required to be placed on a sub page.

Users found with pages in breach of this policy will be notified, and if the situation is not rectified, the offending information will be moved to a subpage.

It would be easy to slap a tag on a user page that says "your page doesn't follow policy, please fix it, or I will". - BeXoR 12:40, 11 February 2007 (PST)

As for watching user pages: You can filter minor edits from your watch list - I assume that would help? DeepSearch 13:17, 11 February 2007 (PST)

I've followed all the threads on this page, and so far, I have only seen the following arguments *against* a very liberal user page policy (if I'm missing anything, please feel free to point that out):

1. Ettiquette/Abuse of courtesy etc.: Difficult, because if that's the way one feels, then it's hard to change that. But in the end, it's not a real argument, it's just recursive - all we have to do is write a user page policy that says "You can do it". Then there is *no way* you could consider it an ettiquette problem - after all, we just encouraged people to do it. See the problem? Ettiquette is a set of rules. We're only making the rules right now. You used the term "generosity" - whether something is an abuse of generosity is up to the source of that generosity to decide. In our case, this is ANet, and as I see it, ANet delegated that decision to us, the wiki community.
2. Recent Changes: It's a problem, but this is the wrong approach. The "right" way to fix it is to add something along the lines "if you edit your user page, use the minor edit checkbox" to the policy. Heck, I'll bet hacking the MediaWiki source to auto-check that box when a page in the user namespace is edited doesn't take more than two lines. Besides, sub pages don't do anything about this.
3. Loading of unnecessary data: Suprisingly, that seems to be the best one from my point of view. I could say: Don't visit that user's page again. The number of times you will have to post something on his talk page is usually minimal. If you have to do it more often, you could add a bookmark. But those are all workarounds, and if you are really annoyed by long pages, then I guess you have a point there.

However, I like you're compromise above, and I think the earlier version of the policy reflected that (when "Trying to reach agreement" was first posted), but I feel it's slowly moving away from that now with the last edits. DeepSearch 13:15, 11 February 2007 (PST)

In modern browsers, pages are gnerally rendered before images load, so I'm not sure an ugly user page really counts as a major diss to dial-up users. Also, wouldn't requiring that signatures feature a direct link to the user's talk page also fix that issue just as easily? — 130.58 (talk) 17:10, 11 February 2007 (PST)

Bexor, thanks for explaining further. I understand what your points are, I just think that most people don't find them as problematic as you. But still, there is nothing wrong with striving for compromise. I think the revised wording you posted above is acceptable, but really its going to be a subjective decision. You say my page might be acceptable with a couple of to do lists etc, but what if someone else has similar lists as me, but also has "list of captures i need", "list of collectable drops i need", and "lists of incompleted missions"? Where do you draw the line? Since the admins are the ones who will be enforcing the policy, its ultimately going to be left in their hands to decide where to draw that line. I say we give it a try and see how it goes. It would not be that difficult for me to move all lists to a "My Tasks" page anyway I suppose, if an admin determined that it was neccessary. -- BrianG 19:54, 11 February 2007 (PST)

Edit conflict. :(

Most talk page comments are left as minor so you can't filter them if you don't want to risk missing things. I don't filter minor changes in the recent changes because a vandal might change something small like add a swear word and mark it as minor. Or they could blank the page and mark it as minor.

1. Etiquette: Anet gave us the responsibility to choose the best way to do things. The best way for all parties concerned, not just for the people that need webhosting. They haven't said you can do whatever you want in your user page, but they haven't said anything about it yet at all. People are thinking this means cool I put anything I want here whether it's useful or not! I believe it's common courtesy not to take for granted or exlpoit the rights and liberties given to us by others. And I believe that this information is not in line with what is wiki, and what I believe our goal is.
2. Everyone keeps boiling this down to a problem with "Recent Changes" - the main problem with multiple edits is with the watch list, not the recent changes. I have people on my gwiki watchlist that edit their user page more times throughout the day than they edit the wiki. I don't want to know every time your character levels or you've just unlocked a skill or you hit 2 million experience. That's not what I use the wiki for. I watched your page because we're talking about armor and I value your opinion, or because I've left a comment and need a reponse to it, or because people gravitate towards your page for discussions. If I were interested in your character page, or other sub pages, I can visit them from your user page and watch them too if I so wish. What I am using your page for is communication.
3. If I check my watchlist every few minutes, and someone's user page keeps popping up at the top again because they just adjusted the dye colour on their ranger's armor or got a title, I'm going to load all of the pages in the list that are bolded, even if it's just to get it off my list. If that page is covered with pictures and lists and other stuff, I'm having to download that, or a part of that every time you edited. I honestly don't want to look at anyone's characters. Everyone looks the same anyway. Do I need to download 9 pictures?

I am feeling very ill at the moment so building a cognitive argument takes a lot of time, so I will just say this: The wiki is not a webhost and to treat it as such bothers and inconveniences other users.

BTW keeping skill and weapon unlocks falls under "a periodical blog of your activities". We need something better that a copy and paste and I'll try rewrite it later to make it less subjective and clearer on what is and isnt allowed. - BeXoR 19:59, 11 February 2007 (PST)

DeepSearch, I don't hide minor edits either. For certain articles, I want to see the edits that registered users make as well, especially newer users or those names I don't really recognize.

Bexor, take care of yourself :) As for this equating a periodical blog of your activities to unlocks and such, I honestly didn't see it or mean it that way. I was more referring to users who provides some details on their real-life activities (and I've seen schoolwork before too!). If the "activities" are all on subpages, they shouldn't be able to interfere with watchlists right? One of the reasons I use the user space to keep track is because I use multiple computers. So I took advantage of the wiki. Exploit? Yes. Abuse? Don't think so. An abuse only occurs when we're misusing something improperly. But Anet has already mentioned they're mostly fine with the user pages as they exist in GuildWiki. No complaints should equal no misuse right? Let's just limit everything that's GW-related but not GWwiki-related to subpages. Only GWwiki-related stuffs should go into the user page. All other stuffs - subpage. I think if you go with that, then you'll find much less objections. --ab.er.rant (talk) 23:57, 11 February 2007 (PST)

This is why I am tearing my hair out over this. That is exactly what I have been saying and saying and saying and saying... My compromise was that you do whatever you want on subpages, as long as only gwwiki and personal information is on your main page... I've said a number of times myself that restricting it to one sub page wont be accepted. I have said that that should be an acceptable compromise for all parties involved, and yet it is still being met with repetitive objections. And as for the periodical blog, I should have been clearer and said that it could be taken to mean those items, that it should be written clearer, rather than copied and pasted from wikipedia. I really wish that people would read what I've been saying, because I am sick and tired of having to say the same things over and over. - BeXoR 00:08, 12 February 2007 (PST)

I don't get what big difference it makes if the content is on the user's main page, on one sub-page, or multiple sub-pages. Sub-pages are merely a way to structure content. I think we should concentrate on the content itself, not how it's structured. --Tetris L 01:38, 12 February 2007 (PST)

... Should I copy and paste it? - BeXoR 01:47, 12 February 2007 (PST)

Tetris, he has mentioned that it is annoying to have the user pages on the watchlist get bolded up only to discover that it's a trivial unlock update or title progress update. --ab.er.rant (talk) 02:19, 12 February 2007 (PST)

Please fill me in, or point me towards where it has been explained: Why on earth would anyone have all user pages on his watchlist? I don't get it. --Tetris L 02:59, 12 February 2007 (PST)

Not all user pages. The watchlist thingy is this: Also, if we are going to allow Guild Wars information, I have a suggestion that will be a compromise so that people can do whatever they want: keep it on a subpage. Only put your personal information and gwwiki information on your actual uesr page. That way if I am working on a project and need your help (and contact information) I won't have to load a million pictures of your character or your user boxes. And it is also considerate for people on dial up too. It's still accessible for anyone who wants it, they can click the link to go to the subpage. It's still available for you to play with as much as you want.

One thing that really bothers me on gwiki is that I watch people's talk pages and then every day they make 100 minor edits to their user page and gets pushed up on my watchlist. It just bugs me. --ab.er.rant (talk) 03:09, 12 February 2007 (PST)

I can see that you would have a user's talk page on your watchlist if you are currently discussing something with him, but not a user's user page. These are separate on the watchlist, aren't they? --Tetris L 03:35, 12 February 2007 (PST)

No they aren't. You watch one you watch both. --Rainith 03:38, 12 February 2007 (PST)

I learn something new every day. I've never used the watchlist feature much, obviously. --Tetris L 04:22, 12 February 2007 (PST)

And remember, knowing is half the battle. :P Would the next person to edit, kindly reset the indent? --Rainith 04:29, 12 February 2007 (PST)

Vote?

Yes, I dare to suggest it. Let's face it (whether Tanaric and Stabber like it or not ;)), we're not going to find a consensus or an acceptable compromise in discussion here anytime soon. It's been going on for almost a week now and we are not even close, and not making any considerable progress either. I reckon the discussion will still be turning circles in weeks from now unless we all accept some way of arbitration. And the easiest way to arbitrate this is to vote.

I'd like to point out that I support a vote despite the fact that I expect to lose, as it seems that my favor for a restrictive policy is a minority here. But I'd rather have an accepted policy asap, even if I don't like it, than the "legal vacuum" that we have right now.

The only alternative to a vote in my opinion is an arbitration or decision by ANet. ANet have stated that they require more restrictive rules for user pages than on GuildWiki. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I have not seen them explain in what respect exactly they require more stringent rules. As they have the ultimate power over this wiki they should elaborate their requirements beforehand, so they don't have to over-rule the outcome of the vote afterwards.

I wonder if ANet would accept the outcome of a vote. This is a good touchstone for two questions: 1) Are we able to decide disputes without votes? 2) How serious is ANet about letting the wiki community govern itself. --Tetris L 02:13, 12 February 2007 (PST)

We can reach a decision if people could just agree on a compromise. A vote, I think, might take too long if you want to hurry this along. We started from two ends, restrictive (first draft) and free (GWiki influence). And has now moved to a point where compromises are being offered. I've updated the policy (and added a new section below). --ab.er.rant (talk) 02:20, 12 February 2007 (PST)

I fail to see the compromise. For me, the whole discussion comes down to one question: Is it allowed to document each of your characters with screenshot and detailed list of achievements, yes or no? As I interpret the current policy draft, the answer is clearly "yes", pretty much without restrictions that are anywhere near serious. That is no compromise compared to what I would have liked to see. And no change compared to GuildWiki either. --Tetris L 03:04, 12 February 2007 (PST)

Until we get official word from ANet that isn't going to change. The users have made their demands clear and nothing I've said has dissuaded them. You can't appeal to even sense of decency here. :( If you believe you can convince people then please do, but I really think it will take an official announcement. People are using the Anet hasn't said no thing as a supporting argument (or rather as an excuse). Meanwhile, the current form of the page is a compromise on the other matters put forth in the very least. I suggest you and I contact ANet with our concerns and see what they have to say, but in the meanwhile let the policy be implemented as it is. - BeXoR 03:12, 12 February 2007 (PST)

"The users have made their demands clear" <- I wish ANet would speak up. User pages are a courtesy of the host, and the host should set the limits. Asking the users to do it is like asking people how much income taxes they want to pay. Guess what most people would answer. ;) --Tetris L 04:31, 12 February 2007 (PST)

My understanding, from what LordBiro has said, ANet only wants userpages to avoid potentially controversial things. WoW sucks type articles, Gold selling, porn, etc... --Rainith 04:35, 12 February 2007 (PST)

I dare say, you will not get any statement from ANet in favor of restrictive user pages. Why should they ever do that? ANets goal is clear: Sell as many copies of guild wars as possible. Having people identify with GW via their guild wars wiki user pages helps them sell more copies (at a very small cost, since they are very low on traffic). They want to avoid bad publicity by WoW bashing going on here, apart from that, the more "community" the better for them. --Xeeron 04:44, 12 February 2007 (PST)

I've said something about the "decency" argument before, and frankly, one could easily feel insulted here - basically you are calling people who disagree with you on this point indecent. Unless ANet explicitly says they don't want it, it's absolutely fair (and decent) to assume that they are ok with people posting about their Guild Wars characters in however much detail they want (see what Xeeron said above) - that doesn't mean we should not put restrictions for other reasons in place - but please drop the moral superiority angle. Not the mention of course that A-Net is not a selfless donor here. They basically want us to write a manual for their game free of charge. So it's a give and take. DeepSearch 05:04, 12 February 2007 (PST)

I talked with Gaile on MSN on some wiki related stuff earlier and it was pretty clear that ANet really wants us to continue here like we did on wiki with a few very minor restrictions/changes which they have allready clearly stated. They don't want to restrict our user pages as severly as the current plicy proposal does. --Gem (talk) 05:08, 12 February 2007 (PST)

And yet that is not the sole issue at hand here. The way the page is written at hand is acceptable, and going back to these point repeatedly after a compromise has been found is getting us no where. - BeXoR 05:43, 12 February 2007 (PST)

Gem, didn't I already say that???? :( I had presumed the arguments taking place presumed that ArenaNet were not bothered about user pages, as in our extremely long phone discussion on this subject the only thing they specifically asked for was no rants against WoW!!!!!

I feel sad now. /cries LordBiro 05:49, 12 February 2007 (PST)

Yes you said it allready. It just seemed to me that not everyone understood that as they were hoping for ANet to comment on the matter so I tried to make it clear to them. --Gem (talk) 05:51, 12 February 2007 (PST)

I had only skimmed through the above discussion, but I see now why you had to ask. ;) For the record I wasn't that sad. Honest.

And also, I'm fairly happy with the policy at present. LordBiro 05:55, 12 February 2007 (PST)

No offense, Lord Biro, but regardless what ANet told you, or anyone else, in private, I'd rather hear it from them myself, right here on the wiki, very clear, in public, first hand. That would put some of my concerns to rest. We are on their servers, they are registered users with a "voice". Why don't they communicate directly, but only via messenger? --Tetris L 06:07, 12 February 2007 (PST)

I would like to see a mission statement from them at least. This is a business venture. As for what you presume they are and aren't okay with, if they were told of the concerns of users here would they say, no ignore what they want, we don't care what you do? I doubt it. - BeXoR 06:11, 12 February 2007 (PST)

Because they have other things to do. They aren't watching the wiki pages just to see if someone wants their input on something. You could ask Gaile on her talk page to come and say it here if you want. --Gem (talk) 06:13, 12 February 2007 (PST)

Gaile Gray has read the summary that I posted of the discussion with ArenaNet and posted her approval. I realise this is not a binding agreement, but it might alleviate some concerns.

I can ask Gaile if she would mind getting involved in these discussions, if you think that that is appropriate? LordBiro 06:21, 12 February 2007 (PST)

Actually I don't, and I don't see the point in asking her to participate here. Of course we should show the policy page to her once it is done and ask whether that is acceptable to ANet, but she has repeatedly made her stance clear that setting up policies is up to the wiki. We definitely should not set a precident of anyone unhappy running to ANet for backup. What "concerns of users here" are you talking about? --Xeeron 06:38, 12 February 2007 (PST)

(reset indent) Everything other than whether ANet is allowing us complete freedom. Seriously, do I have to restate it every time I make a comment? They are leaving policy up to us to decide the best way to do things. Even if they don't mind what goes on the user pages, people here have (repeatedly) stated that they do have issues with user pages that arise from complete lack of restrictions. And if an ANet rep came here and said, no we don't care how much space you use, or yes, we do care you can't use us as a webhost, we would still need to address the other issues at hand. That is what this current revision of the policy does. - BeXoR 06:47, 12 February 2007 (PST)

Xeeron: "Of course we should show the policy page to her once it is done and ask whether that is acceptable to ANet, ..." <- In that case, lets not waste any more time and let's just show 'em the GuildWiki policy page, and ask them what they want to see changed. :p ;)

All: I think my problem is an emotional one. I'm still suspicious whether ANet really want to grant us so much freedom. I can't help but feel like a lab rat, with ANet being the guy in the white coat behind the one-way mirror with the thumb on the electro shock button. In my mind, I see ANet set up the plan: "Let's build a cage (the wiki server), put in the rats (us), and let them play for a while. We'll see what comes out of it. If they cross any line, we can always step in, or pull the plug and nuke the thing alltogether." I feel like I have to fulfill certain expectations by ANet without knowing what exactly these expectations are, and what will happen if they are not fulfilled. And I gotta say that is not a very comfortable feeling. --Tetris L 07:21, 12 February 2007 (PST)

Bexor: Maybe this is simply a case of me misunderstanding you, but you seem to contradict yourself. First you want someone from Anet to come here and respond to "concerns from users" (which is this case is concerns from one side of a debate not a user consensus) - which I disagree with. Then you say that even if someone from ANet came here, we would still need to address these issues here (making someone from ANet come here before we are done somewhat moot, since we already know their stance) - which I agree with. --Xeeron 07:39, 12 February 2007 (PST)

Compromise added in

I reworded some sections of the policy to include the compromise proposed in the previous sections. All GWwiki-related stuff goes on the user page. All personal GW-related stuff goes onto user subpages. I really feel it's a good compromise where those who like to add personal stuff are still allowed to do so, and those who don't are not ignored and pushed aside. Please highlight any problems with the policy (try to avoid those already harped on above). Let's try to reach an agreement and finalise. I still have three more things to think about:

• I just threw out the 100kb limit. Should be have a specific file size limit? A file size range, such as 100k to 200k where < 100k is good, 100-200 is discouraged, > 200k is denied.
• Do we want to set a fix number of personal images allowed? We'll be missing out on Kaya's wonderful icons in such were the case though... :)
• Do we want to put in a cap of how many subpages are allowed before being considered excessive? I'm thinking 10 is a good number. --ab.er.rant (talk) 02:19, 12 February 2007 (PST)

I added some things in, in some cases to clarify, and to meet some needs that other users have identified. As for your points, a file range would be good. I don't think a limit should be set. Kaya's icons were used by a great many people, and yes it would be sad to see that sort of business disallowed. And the cap on subpages can depend on the situation. I know at gwiki I had something like 40 subpages for organising the complete overhaul of armor functions. It depends on the situation (maybe highlight the difference between using subpages for wiki projects and personal stuff). I also think there MUST be a note about del tagging things you no longer need. - BeXoR 02:29, 12 February 2007 (PST)

For the record I'll state again that I'd much prefer if no screenshots and sub-pages for character documentation would be allowed at all. But if they are allowed, then I'd like the following restrictions:

• File size: A restriction of file size implies that we're doing this to avoid a strain on the server, which isn't the case. I'd say either no restriction at all, or a serious one. Cut Ab.er.rant's numbers in half. Most character portraits on GuildWiki are around 50k or less. My own are around 25k, and still detailed enough.
• Number of images: Either no portrait screenshots at all, or one portrait per character. Use of icons should not be limited, if character documentation is generally allowed.
• Number of sub-pages: Sub-pages for wiki purposes (drafts, lists, ...) must not be limited at all. Sub-pages for personal purposes (especially character docu) shall be limited to either one for all characters combined, or one for each character. Anything in between makes no sense.

--Tetris L 03:30, 12 February 2007 (PST)

Oh, so you're on the side of favoring restrictions... I thought you were against >.< In any case, I'm fine with your suggestions. Let's wait for more responses for the others. --ab.er.rant (talk) 03:34, 12 February 2007 (PST)

I made a huge rewrite of the text, though I didn't make too many changes on the content itself. I modified the image size restriction to the one suggested by Tetris and made a lot of the restrictions clearer. I didn't add any sort of limit on the number of sub pages as I dislike the idea. It's hard to base the limit on anything. (Limit = number of character = bad. Why should someone with muliple accounts be allowed more sub pages?) --Gem (talk) 03:59, 12 February 2007 (PST)

The new limit on picture size seems small to me. If you look at my page on GuildWiki, I have exactly 3 images from the game and none of them are under 50K. I would not exactly call my page one that is bloated with personal in game information either. --Rainith 04:01, 12 February 2007 (PST)

I agree with all of what Tetris said above. The current revision made by Gem is also acceptable to me. And Rainith, I agree that your images aren't excessive, but you could have made them a little smaller without loss of information, whether before you uploaded or by specifying a size for the thumbnail. The thing is, if Rainith has 3 pictures that total 270kb, and UserX has 9 pictures that total 30kb, it's the same deal. It's something that depends on the situation. 50kb and below are desirable but anything over 100kb will be deleted. - BeXoR 04:14, 12 February 2007 (PST)

"[Subpages] shall be limited to either one for all characters combined, or one for each character" shouldn't we just say that subpages for characters are limited to 1 per character? Saying the limit is either 1 or 1 per character makes no sense. The limit is the highest number you are allowed. LordBiro 06:44, 12 February 2007 (PST)

I'm not seeing that. Are you looking at an old version? - BeXoR 06:51, 12 February 2007 (PST)

Oh I didn't notice that. I assumed it said one page for all characters. - BeXoR 06:52, 12 February 2007 (PST)

So does anyone have anything against the current version? --Gem (talk) 07:57, 12 February 2007 (PST)

I am good with it, as it seems to include the basics of everything everyone wants within reason (wow!). EMonk 10:17, 12 February 2007 (PST)

The current policy looks okay, but this clause needs to be rewritten:

"Personal information related to Guild Wars is restricted to subpages (User:Example/Example subpage), although you may link to them from your user page."

In its current state, this thing will either require you to make a separate subpage for the sentence "I like monks. I adventure with henchies a lot," or it will not be enforced. — 130.58 (talk) 10:52, 12 February 2007 (PST)

I'm good with it too. I think it's open enough for us users that want to have a tiny bit of freedom and yet still keeps things clean & clear for those who are mainly here for editing purposes. And even though this has been a mega-huge-fatty discussion... It was nice that everyone kept a cool head about it. Hopefully everyone's happy. I know I'm happy this is almost official policy. :D 13:07, 12 February 2007 (PST)

Good to hear that people accept this one. Lets wait one more day and make this a policy unless somone wants to change something (again). --Gem (talk) 13:32, 12 February 2007 (PST)

I'm ok with it as it is now except for one thing. I don't think we should be limiting by hard cap (i.e. 50kB) user images. I think this "but do not upload large images (such as uncropped screenshots)" is sufficient. Two reasons for this, firstly, who's going to police it? And what if my crop ends up at 51k? Second, if someone runs a higher resolution they will get larger screenshots even when compressed in jpg or png format. In that case the hard cap is an unnecessary restriction especially since these images (of chars at least) will likely be on a subpage from the actual user page. I'd agree that we don't need people uploading 2.5MB bitmap files..but a hard cap of 50kB seems a bit over the top to me. Also, reading/scanning over the page I didn't see any solid justification for including a hard cap particularly on user subpages. Just my .02 Lojiin 14:04, 12 February 2007 (PST)

I also see no real need for a hard cap on the image size. 'Who's going to check' would be my biggest concern. Seeing as people will probably have several images each, and there will be thousands of user pages and images, it would be to difficult to police - its better, surely, to put a soft cap in place as then people are less likely to get annoyed about it etc. as they have more leeway? Ale_Jrb^talk 14:11, 12 February 2007 (PST)

Okay, removing it. --Gem (talk) 14:20, 12 February 2007 (PST)

At the start of this section, I was suggesting a range as a form of guideline. I wasn't planning on a hard cap. When it comes to policy, things should be as specific as possible. In this case, a range of accepted file sizes, from preferable size to discouraged sizes, to sizes outright disallowed. This gives people an upper limit. If you only say that "do not upload large images, it is too subjective. What is considered a large image? If I have use a 100 GB hard disk at home, a 1 MB image is inconsequential and hardly called large, especially if I have shaper images that go up to 5 MB in size. I'm trying to illustrate that everyone will have different perceptions of "large", it depends on the file sizes he or she is used to. If you guys think a hard cap of 100k or 50k is too small, increase it, say 200k is allowed, but never above 250k or 300k. Increase the limit to accomodate your idea of large, don't remove the definition of large.

Removing any limit on user subpages will basically mean that I can create as many subpages for inclusion as I want (again, without a general as to the definition of "too much"), as much as I have now in GuildWiki, or maybe more. If everyone is fine with that, I'm fine with it as well (I was mainly concerned with people creating too many pages for private builds).

And finally, regarding 130.58's comment about adding "I like monks. I adventure with henchies a lot" to the user page, my answer is yes, it is preferable that something like that be on a user subpage, although liekly nobody will fault you if you added that one line to the main user page. --ab.er.rant (talk) 18:04, 12 February 2007 (PST)

I've added a limit of 100kB. Feel free to discuss it. It's not the most important thing in this policy. :) --Gem (talk) 18:33, 12 February 2007 (PST)

My userpage has two images on it; just my two main characters standing around. Both images are over 100kb. In order to retain a high enough image quality to read text easily (on large images), I think 100k is a bit too restrictive. But it's a moot point; unless someone insists on posting entire screenshots of every character complete with weaponsets and different armors all on one shot, what's the use in putting size caps on images in the first place? Every time a user tries to use the excuse "zomfg it's wasting bandwidth" someone else (usually an admin) says they're full of it and that userpage images don't hurt the bandwidth that much after all. Let's give it a rest; if someone tries to post entirely-too-big images, leave a note for them to discuss it; putting it in the policy is pointless. -Auron 18:58, 12 February 2007 (PST)

I know it's trivial, so I was actually expecting people to just suggest another number instead of arguing about whether the number should be there. I just wanted at least a number there so we don't have disputes later on. Look at the arguments we have here. And someone will insist on putting entire screenshots of their characters' armor and weapon galleries. We already have them on GuildWiki. Would putting it as a general 200k limit be fine with you then? --ab.er.rant (talk) 19:12, 12 February 2007 (PST)

Sorry, a limit of 200kB is laugable. That's a full size 1024x768 screenshot with moderate compression. We might as well dump the limit alltogether then. Personally, I do think that character portraits like the ones on Auron's page are bigger than necessary. The portraits on my page are only 25k each, and they don't look much worse than Auron's, IMO. But hey, that's just me. :-/ Again: A restriction that doesn't affect anyone is meaningless. We might as well drop it alltogether then. --Tetris L 02:17, 13 February 2007 (PST)

I'd repeat the same comments I made above about a hard restriction but hopefully people can just read up. I'll just say that I don't think we need one and that its not going to be very enforcable. I'd suggest limiting file upload types (i.e. no .bmp files) to avoid large raw files that are MBs in size. Normal/default .jpg compression in most cases is adequate. Lojiin 11:49, 13 February 2007 (PST)

I reverted the limit to the original 100kB which I prefer. (and seems like Tetris too) --Gem (talk) 11:53, 13 February 2007 (PST)

User boxes

Hmm... we seem to have left out an important part of GuildWiki user pages: the user boxes. Do we want any guidelines on that? I think we should primarily come up with something to prevent the type of user pages where you have to scroll down a full page or two of user boxes before reaching another section. Userboxes pushed to subpages? Limit it to... say 10 userboxes each? --ab.er.rant (talk) 18:09, 12 February 2007 (PST)

I think userboxes should be limited, but again hard limits are not the way to go IMO. Simply state that if people believe that you have too many userboxes you may be asked to pare them down or move them to the bottom of your page. The only pages on GuildWiki that I can think of that made me say "Enough!" were the people with 50+ boxes where you had to scroll down through a couple screens of them to get to their page. --Rainith 18:18, 12 February 2007 (PST)

I added a note to the encouraged field which encourages use of informative user boxes. Ie not spamming 300 user boxes just because you want to have more of them than anyone else. --Gem (talk) 18:33, 12 February 2007 (PST)

Gem! You knew the exact page I was thinking of! You must be psychoti.... er... I mean psychic!  ;) --Rainith 18:35, 12 February 2007 (PST)

I think that particular page was rather notorious for the sheer number of useless userboxes... lol --ab.er.rant (talk) 18:38, 12 February 2007 (PST)

And garrish formatting. — 130.58 (talk) 18:42, 12 February 2007 (PST)

But extremities aside, no limit should be placed on userboxes. If a person honestly finds fifty userboxes that suit him, it's not hurting anybody to let him use fifty userboxes. If a user simply wants to have the "most userboxes ever" and makes 301 mostly-useless userboxes, leave a note asking him to trim it down. -Auron 18:49, 12 February 2007 (PST)

There is no limit on the current proposal, but it encourages informative boxes, nothing else. --Gem (talk) 18:52, 12 February 2007 (PST)

As it should be. -Auron 18:58, 12 February 2007 (PST)

Agreed: hard quotas are stupid. Better to just add a rule-of-thumb like "Okay, if your user boxes fill up an entire screen, you should probably look over them and think about which ones are actually useful, then get rid of some or move them to a character subpage or the bottom of your userpage or something" rather than "Only ten! No more userboxes for you!" Besides, what makes a good number of userboxes will depend on what else is on the page. — 130.58 (talk) 19:09, 12 February 2007 (PST)

edit fliction!

I think, to go along with the general consensus so far, no user boxes should be allowed on the main user page, period. Put 1000 of them in your subpage if you really need to, but the feel of the policy so far is a minimalist main user page, and userboxes are anything but minimalist. Saying "informative user boxes" is very broad and not easily defined. This will be a very defined rule, and easily searched for offenders (if needed). Along that lines, no templates of any kind should exist on the main user page, for there is absolutely no reason for it. I can not see any reason a person can not say
"I like to play a monk.
I play the Prophecies and Nightfall campaigns.
More information can be found [[USERNAME/More|here]]."
in plain text (yes, double negative). This again goes back to the nature of the policy at this time, where the main user page is mimimalist. I "have seen the light" while we have talked on this subject, and now fully agree that the ideal main user page should be under 10 lines to save a lot of time for many people (anyone watching a user's talk page).

User beware if you venture into their gloriously guilded subpages. :P EMonk 19:14, 12 February 2007 (PST)

Okay, but the entire policy so far is also a concession, not a great big tide of consensus. Hell, it's a big concession to a minority of users (rule #1 of policy discussion: ALWAYS remember that, just by taking part in a policy discussion, you are part of a very priviledged hyper-minority). That means that what you'll end up with in the end is a compromise, not some great minimalist "here is my name click on this page for everything else" thing. (What would the point of that be? Something for a few people who hate user pages yet feel compelled to click on links?)

I agree with reasonable limits on user pages, but, c'mon, let's not pretend that the average user (who is not part of the priviledged hyper-minority of policy writers) goes to a user page looking for contact information instead of character pictures and some entertaining personal stories. "Here is my page with nothing on it. Click here to go to the page with some actual content on it" just puts us back to the way the Internet was in 1995, anyway -- and that's a bad, bad place. — 130.58 (talk) 19:28, 12 February 2007 (PST)

That'd be a silly thing to put into practice. "Informative userbox" isn't very subjective; if it has information about you, it's informative (information? get it?). If it's pointless (i.e. not informative, like "THIS IS USERBOX NUMBER 426 LOL") then it doesn't belong. There's no point shoving them onto a subpage for no reason. -Auron 19:29, 12 February 2007 (PST)

Was that a reply to me or EMonk, Auron? — 130.58 (talk) 19:37, 12 February 2007 (PST)

(after three hundred colons) EMonk. -Auron 20:40, 12 February 2007 (PST)

"Informative" is subjective. If I put up a bunch of userboxes that are basically statements about me, such as "I am a male", "I like Guild Wars", "I don't like Warriors", "I love Necromancers", etc. are these considered informative? Information, yes, but informative? We do need at least some clarification. --ab.er.rant (talk) 21:10, 12 February 2007 (PST)

Reset indent

Anything that is said in a userbox can easily be said in a list of personal trivia. I think we could have set userbox templates that users can add like the language ones, location, how good they are at wiki code (they add you to a category right?) and then leave the more "personal" ones like favourite profession to be put on their guild wars or other subpages. - BeXoR 21:07, 12 February 2007 (PST)

So we define a list of acceptable userbox types? That's a bit hard to monitor right? So... am I allowed to go and create new templates? --ab.er.rant (talk) 21:10, 12 February 2007 (PST)

Could put them in a category, apart from user created ones. It's not that hard to monitor. As soon as someone notices it will be fixed. That's how everything works here. I've seen vandalism sit by unnoticed for hours. - BeXoR 21:13, 12 February 2007 (PST)

I'll be happy with any policy on userboxes that prevents this from happening. Opening that page while trying to get some work done with Photoshop in the background = a few minutes twiddling my thumbs, waiting for the system to become responsive again. --Dirigible 21:17, 12 February 2007 (PST)

Sigh.. :( I wish I hadn't clicked. - BeXoR 21:20, 12 February 2007 (PST)

Hah! I love that page! :P DeepSearch 22:31, 12 February 2007 (PST)

I am against any specific restrictions on user boxes and I'm definitely against not allowing them. --Gem (talk) 23:34, 12 February 2007 (PST)

At the moment they fall under the other restrictions: if it's not gwwiki or personally related it can be on the front page. If it's gw related it must be on your subpages. I do think situations like Blastedt's page shouldn't be allowed. - BeXoR 23:37, 12 February 2007 (PST)

Yes, the other restrictions apply. --Gem (talk) 23:41, 12 February 2007 (PST)

Let's leave it at that then, as per Auron's comment slightly above. We leave this to the user's discretion. If it's blatantly obvious that it's pointless, the user can be asked to remove them by several other users. Same thing with having too many user boxes. --ab.er.rant 00:42, 13 February 2007 (PST)

My last entry was half tongue in cheek. :P
But seriously, with just a few text lines on a talk page (one that contains the user's main subpage), and a pretty-much-anything-GW-goes policy for user subpages, everyone gets what they want; users, watchers, sysops, even the dog barking down the street. I too am against limiting personal expression. The current revision allows it, just not on the main user page. EMonk 11:23, 13 February 2007 (PST)

Talk page

Would stuff about your talk page be included in this policy? I think it's important that we say that your talk page should be used only for user comments. I've seen talk pages with user boxes (and a great deal more). It's in line with the motivation behind the user page restrictions - cutting down edits, easier to read, not big download, etc etc. There was a comment somewhere else in policy discussion about this I think, I'll try to find where it is. :S - BeXoR 21:35, 12 February 2007 (PST)

It was on the sign your comments page. Tanaric brought up users who colour their comments on their talk pages, and Gem mentioned users who are using coloured tables. I think it would be fine to perhaps bold your comments on your own talk page, but nowhere else. Even then it seems a bit silly. - BeXoR 21:40, 12 February 2007 (PST)

Easiest way to treat it (and I support it) would be to treat it like any other talk page. No special formatting, everyone must sign, archive when it gets large, and no removal of content. --ab.er.rant 23:33, 12 February 2007 (PST)

I would like:

• No special formatting on your talk page or all of your comments. Especially no tables like here.
• No personal information or data gathering as some people are soing in the GWiki. All this belongs to sub pages. --Gem (talk) 23:48, 12 February 2007 (PST)

This applies to all talk pages though, really. I think it needs its own policy with a subheading about user talk pages. - BeXoR 00:09, 13 February 2007 (PST)

Of course, when discussing Style & Formatting, it should be allowed to give Style & Formatting examples on talk pages. A discussion like this one is pretty much impossible without tables (I know that's not what you meant, I'm just being anal ;) ). --84-175 (talk) 00:14, 13 February 2007 (PST)

Of course, and it's not being anal, it's always good to be clear and give examples of when things do and dont apply. - BeXoR 00:17, 13 February 2007 (PST)

Too far.

I'm sorry, y'all, but this is just going too far. We've wasted a week legislating what goes on a user page and now we're wasting even more time legislating what goes on user talk pages (where the answer really should be "Whatever, but don't impose your stupid formatting on everybody commenting") and legislating freakin' userboxes, of all things. When will it stop?

A user page is for user information. It's stupid to say that a user page exists solely to list your in-game name and e-mail address. Yes, some basic etiquette should define what you do with a user page, but turning it into a big empty placeholder that just has three lines of text and then links to a page where you're allowed to actually post things is, quite frankly, dumb. What the heck is the point of that? How often do you go to a user page looking for someone's contact info? This is starting to get as inane as the whole "signature images make it hard for blind people to read talk pages" thing. I'm much more interested in limiting the amount of annoying policing that administrators have to do and making Joe User (who, once again, isn't like us folks talking about policy here today) happy than in reducing the amount of stuff that shows up on one person's watchlist.

Before we go on with all this, please stop and think about what the average wiki user would find most useful and desirable. Not me, not you, not the sysops, not even ANet. Just the average wiki user. Now, go make a convincing argument for why all the stuff on that other page is actually better for him. Then we can talk about what's best for ANet. Then we can talk about what's best for the sysops. And then, after all that, can we talk about personal tastes. — 130.58 (talk) 01:00, 13 February 2007 (PST)

My thoughts: keep it legal, no slurs, no rediculous amount of subpages. — Skuld 01:13, 13 February 2007 (PST)

Err.... We have all allready stopped discussing user pages and are just waiting if someone really would want to object. Otherwise this is a policy in the evening. What comes to talk pages, GuildWiki has shown us that they need some restrictions too, but as allready mentioned above, we are keeping them out of this suggestion for now. --Gem (talk) 01:20, 13 February 2007 (PST)

A much simpler and more effective policy would just be "Don't break ANet's basic rules, use subpages if your main page is longer than a certain size". Because that's what's really at stake here: the overall size of user pages. All these arguments about character info vs. personal info vs. wiki info and character portraits and all this other stuff basically amount to this: an overlong user page is bad. It's silly to point to character shrines, the most common cause of stupidly overlong user pages, and just try to limit those. If I can make a one-page user page that fits into one screen and contains everything about me and half of it is character crap, that should, in fact, be a valid userpage, despite all the character-specific stuff on it. If I fill up thirty screens with task lists and bookmarks and personal wiki projects, that's a bad userpage. There is no viable reason to specifically segregate game-related content on a game-related wiki, especially when all of the current discussion has been complaints about length. — 130.58 (talk) 01:34, 13 February 2007 (PST)

So you are basically wanting to start all over again now that we finally agreed on the policy? Great... --Gem (talk) 01:39, 13 February 2007 (PST)

The policy is dysfunctional. It doesn't do what it sets out to do. See the discussion above, where now even userboxes and "I like monks" are being shoved off onto subpages for no good reason, while the actual problems (giant userpages and userspaces filled with tons of unnecessary subpages) are largely ignored. If we're just going to implement something because it's been up a while, we might as well port over all of Guildwiki's policies wholesale without questioning them. — 130.58 (talk) 01:51, 13 February 2007 (PST)

I disagre with you. The policy in its current state does prevent massive user pages and if you read through it carefully, there is noting in the policy which prevents using user boxes or "I like monks" on your user page. The policy is what matters, not the interpretations or thoughts of one or two people on the talk page. No one is going to read these discussion later on. --Gem (talk) 01:55, 13 February 2007 (PST)

You're right. The actual policy is a lot more coherent than the meta-policy that's being built up on the talk page. "If it's GW related it must be on your subpage," which has been the centerpiece of discussion for the past day or two, is what I'm concerned about -- it's rather impractical and a bad idea conceptually, too. — 130.58 (talk) 02:03, 13 February 2007 (PST)

So I assume you're not actually against the policy proposal, just the stuff on the talk page. Good good. *wide smile* --Gem (talk) 02:08, 13 February 2007 (PST)

I don't like the implications behind "the average wiki user"? If you see the amount of work and time I have put into gwiki in particular, what does that make me? I consider myself "the average wiki user" - I come here to contribute and work with other people on this project. All of the problems I raised here have affected my use of the site. Because I posted them here, why has that made my concerns void? Because I spoke up? And none of this discussion will have been a waste of time if we find a way of doing things that works. - BeXoR 02:13, 13 February 2007 (PST)

Heh, now we've come full circle and I'm just repeating stuff I posted when similar issues were raised on Guildwiki (which was after everyone went and made a hideous user page and then there was an attempt to just destroy all user pages). This is how it works:

• Most users aren't editors. They don't even have accounts or user pages. They'll just come here to read things.
• Most editors aren't experienced with wiki code, haven't read more than a marbit of the policy section, and are generally making tweaks and corrections rather than big honking changes.
• The editors who start big projects, who comment on policy, who vote for stuff if there's a voting culture, who sit around on committees and write templates and think about who should be the next sysop, are one-percenters at best.

Those one-percenters have enormous clout. And they deserve it, since the wiki is dead without them. But it's also dead without the huge group of passive readers who never make a single edit. This places us in a de-facto position of stewardship: the question we always have to be asking is "What is best for everyone, even all those people who will never come here and read this?" And, hell yes, we get to swing decisions in our favor, since we're the ones making them -- but there needs to be consideration for the larger spheres of users, because what works for us has to work for them as well.

A Wikipedia-style wiki is democratic, but not in the way a government is. It's democratic because anyone can Step on Up; but only those who do are really in charge. You right now, BeXoR, speak for something like 50 to 100 registered users any time you make a significant post here. So do I. I dare say you probably deserve to be in that position more than I do. On Guildwiki, where there are 26,000 registered users, each person in a policy discussion is effectively speaking for 1000 people or more (ever seen a policy discussion with more than 20 main contributors on Guildwiki?). There's nothing "average" about you. Your voice matters. It matters a lot. That's why you have to occasionally stop and think about what all the people who aren't talking would say. Because it's so easy for you or me or Gem or Tetris L or Ab.er.rant to just drown them out any time we want to. — 130.58 (talk) 06:59, 13 February 2007 (PST)

I tend to agree with 130.58, more and more. So far, every suggestion for any kind of meaningful restriction of content has been nerfed in discussion so much that we may as well drop the restrictions alltogether. That leaves us with "Anything goes, except illegal and offensive stuff. Apply common sense." This is already well covered by overall policies of the wiki. --Tetris L 02:23, 13 February 2007 (PST)

I disagree with dropping the restrictions. Even if they aren't very strict, they do serve a purpose. If a user makes something disturbing we can always refer to the policy if we want him to remove it. If we formultate the policy like you suggested he could just say that the policy doesn't disallow the particular thing he has on his user page. "Apply common sense" has a very different meaning to everyone. The policy restrictions however can't be interpreted too loosely. --Gem (talk) 02:41, 13 February 2007 (PST)

I completely agree Gem. And people seem to think this is just about page content, but it is not. The way pages are on gwiki is an inconvenience and an annoyance, both in editing and bandwidth. The way the policy stands at the moment is fine. What exact objections do you have to its content? - BeXoR 02:46, 13 February 2007 (PST)

BeXoR: I don't get it. First you say: "The way pages are on gwiki is an inconvenience and an annoyance, both in editing and bandwidth." To that, I agree. Then you say: "The way the policy stands at the moment is fine." To that, I disagree, very much. Have you read the policy? It doesn't prevent a repeat of the GuildWiki situation, not at all! All the restrictions that would actually stop people repeating the annoying stuff have been removed. What remains is meaningless bla-bla that the vast majority of users comply with anyway. You could wipe the whole page and replace it with "Be nice and helpful, follow the law, apply common sense." and you'd have essentially the same policy, except with a lot less words. --Tetris L 07:15, 13 February 2007 (PST)

Not quite. There is a moderate content restriction in there at the moment, which is quite different from how Guildwiki works. It's just that, well, the policy only serves to address the giant e-shrine issue, which is a subset of the overall problem, and it only does that by forcing all game-specific content onto a separate page. Not-so-effectual solution with an annoying side-effect. — 130.58 (talk) 07:20, 13 February 2007 (PST)

I only see restrictions for types of content that have never been a problem on GuildWiki in the first place. You're limited to game and wiki related content, so what?? I don't recall any user on GuildWiki who put so much "of topic" content on his page that it was anywhere near of a problem. Not a single one. The same goes for offensive content, except some few vandals and trolls, and those don't care about policies anyway. The only thing that has ever been a problem on GuildWiki in my eyes is the extensive documentation of characters. And the only restriction here is that I'm forced to do it on a sub-page instead of my user page. Wow, big deal, big restriction, .... not. --Tetris L 07:55, 13 February 2007 (PST)

So, in a sentence or three, what would you like to see? — 130.58 (talk) 08:03, 13 February 2007 (PST)

Since we've been through 130 kilobytes of discussion, BeXoR is probably saying he's fine with it just like everybody on both sides does in the end when the middle ground is found. To continue beating on the policy to get what you want is a waste of time. I agree that we need to fight for what we think the policy needs to be, but after a discussion by the group and a middle ground is found, we dont need to keep beating it. Unless there's something new to discuss. 08:28, 13 February 2007 (PST)

(She, fyi.) — 130.58 (talk) 08:41, 13 February 2007 (PST)

Kaya: The only thing regarding user pages that has ever been an issue on GuildWiki in my eyes was the abuse for extensive documentation of characters. This is the only thing I'm really concerned about, anything else is peanuts. And no restriction has been put up here. No compromise has been made. The current policy regarding character documentation isn't "middle ground". It's simply the ground of those who wanted user pages to be totally free. If that's what the majority of users want, fine. But don't make it sound like it's a compromise. It's a majority overruling a minority. Which, as somebody who believes in democratic principles, I will accept. But don't say I didn't warn you. ;) --Tetris L 08:56, 13 February 2007 (PST)

More accurately, I'd call it a compromise created by stitching different sections of an opposed policy together rather than actually mixing them to make a middle ground. — 130.58 (talk) 08:59, 13 February 2007 (PST)

Reset Indent
Thanks 130.58  ;) I knew that too. Just didnt catch my error. Sry Bexor! Anyway, I felt the compromise in regards to character documentation was to keep it off the main page. The main problem being that those users who wanted to visit a user’s site for wiki purposes had to load a bunch of pictures they didn’t care for, and because of that were wasting valuable time. Bexor's suggestion to keep all non-wiki content on sub-pages gives any user the opportunity to avoid this problem all together not to mention this keeps junk out of watch list (if you watch talk pages). That's where the middle ground was last positioned... giving users more like Bexor distance from any non-wiki content all together, and yet still allows users like me the ability to have some personal gw info in their wiki. Only other problem I can see with regards to character documentation is edits in recent changes, but still those are easily filtered with a little effort. And this would be the only place you would even know of the existence of a users personal character documentation. Maybe I'm not seeing what other problems character documentation poses. 10:15, 13 February 2007 (PST)

The policy mostly works except for this line...

"Your main user page (User:Example) must be restricted to content described under the 'Encouraged' heading."

Err, no. What you really want is "Your main user page (User:Example) should fall within this size limit: <length criterion>." Because a 30-page-long userpage that I fill up with content only from the "Encouraged" category is still a bad user page.

What's a good length criterion? Discuss... — 130.58 (talk) 07:07, 13 February 2007 (PST)

The problem I see with trying a length restriction is how are you going to enforce it? Lets say the restriction is a screen and a half. Well, that's fine but what if I edit at 2048x1536. Now my version of a screen and a half it probably 3 screens on an 800x600. What if you restrict it by line count? Well, how do you enforce that? Count them all? Who's going to volunteer to do that? Even with a script to grep it or pipe the output into wc its going to be a pain to try and keep track of. In my opinion its better being something along the lines of : keep it to a reasonable length. In that manner if someone comes across a problem page it can be brought to the attention of an admin and handled. I really don't think user pages will cause that much of a problem. Personally, I don't read or even see that many of them unless I decided I want to look someone up. In which case I've basically asked to get whatever they decide to put there. Yes, some people make a hundred minor edits to their user page a day so if you watch the recent changes page they all show up but I don't think that's a good reason to restrict an activity that many people seem to enjoy. In keeping with the above mentioned : average wiki user idea. I doubt very many if any of the people who just come to the site for information, i.e. never create a login, really care about user pages. If they want to find someone, they will, and if not, they'll never seem them to be bothered by them. The category of people who are bothered, I think, are the ones who are more familiar with the wiki and know how to deal with them. i.e. ignore them. Lojiin 08:24, 13 February 2007 (PST)

I'm with you as far as the "when I go to your user page, I want to see whatever you think you should be showing me". As such, I don't care about length restrictions either way (that means I won't be heartbroken if we have some draconian length restrictions, too). But that's essentially what most of the complaints about user pages are about: too much, too big, too garrish. So I'm trying my best to cut to the heart of that without getting bogged down in a bunch of rules that just amount to "keep your stupid character shrine on a separate page" (because the complaints are about something more general than character shrines). — 130.58 (talk) 08:40, 13 February 2007 (PST)

What's wrong with the current proposal? It seems to me that it should nake everyone happy. The main user page isn't allowed to host a lot of content, but everything the users wants is allowed to be put on a sub page. Those who want small, clean user pages get them, those who want freedom of content also get what they want. There is no reason why that information should be on the main user page instead of a sub page. It's not hard to get to if a proper link is set on the user page and it stays away from the eyes of those who dislike character info etc. --Gem (talk) 11:39, 13 February 2007 (PST)

I don't see how the current proposal actually assures small, clean user pages. It just moves one type of particularly long and garish user page to a subpage. If you want small pages and clean layout, write that out explicitly. (To answer the question of length posted above, it's pretty easy to snap one's browser window to a smaller size and then scroll a bit to see how big a page is -- figuring out what your page looks like at different resolutions is standard practice for any kind of web design. Or, alternatively, to do a "print preview" and use that as a guide.) — 130.58 (talk) 12:56, 13 February 2007 (PST)

I realize that its standard practice for web design. What I meant to point out is, it is not standard practice for an end user. Lojiin 13:07, 13 February 2007 (PST)

The main issue for most users complaining about user pages seemed to be the personal guild wars information so that's what the policy restricts. Other forms of disturbing content weren't discussed at all as no one complained about it. --Gem (talk) 13:18, 13 February 2007 (PST)

"There is Guild-Wars-related information on your Guild-Wars-related wiki user page!" is a silly complaint. It's as flat-out unreasonable as the whole conversation about how images make it hard for blind people to read talk pages (in the signature policy discussion): a way to grab onto a detail rather than the big picture and try to write a policy based around that. The real complaint has always been about long, slow-loading, bloated userpages. "Personal information" is just a strawman. It represents bloat, but it isn't bloat. And the only thing that actually matters here is bloat. All bloat is bad. Non-bloated GW-specific "personal information" is fine, because that's actually more relevant than most of the stuff in the "encouraged" list right now. The current policy is a well-written but misdirected thing; it attacks the actual problem in a very piecemeal way, not truly fixing it while causing a fair bit of collateral damage in the process. — 130.58 (talk) 17:04, 13 February 2007 (PST)

Too far (2).

...nothing helpful has been discussed, past where 130.58 pointed out how this discussion is mostly friggin pointless. It looks like certain users aren't ever going to be happy with whatever the "general consesus" is, and so we keep altering the "general consesus" to no avail. Read the entire section titled "Too Far." Nothing good comes out of it, because people keep skirting around the point; we aren't here to make policy for the sake of making policy; we're here to make policy that works and makes sense.

Restricting the userpage doesn't make sense, unless the userpage already makes no sense (i.e., 300+ userboxes, 30+ pages of character shrines). I agree so much with Tetris L that this page can be reduced to "Be nice and helpful, follow the law, apply common sense," that we should reduce it to that just because we've obviously lost sight of what we came here to do.

Now, as has been stated, nothing is in the policy that keeps userpages short. Unless we all want to put something into the policy that explicitly gives a maximum userpage length, the policy is done. -Auron 14:10, 13 February 2007 (PST)

The policy in its current state does make sense. It prevents making any of the most irritating user pages which we have seen on GWiki and therefor it clearly is more usefull than you think it will be. --Gem (talk) 14:39, 13 February 2007 (PST)

When have we had... (quote)

• Libel or defamation
• Material patently offensive to others, including ArenaNet's competitors
• Material breaking the wiki's policies
• A periodical blog of your real life activities
• Personal opinions on matters unrelated to the game or the wiki
• Discussions of a nature not related to the game or the wiki"

On anyone's userpage? Ever? The "most irritating user pages" are still within policy. -Auron 14:50, 13 February 2007 (PST)

If you read the paragraphs following the bulleted points you will find additional restrictions including but not limited to: Personal information relating to guildwars must be kept off the main user page, information about your guildwars characters is considered personal information, the image size limit is 100kB (though several have argued against a hard cap), it is not appropriate to upload large image galleries of all your characters armor sets. These are all more restrictive than what exists on guildwiki and have been found on many user pages there. Lojiin 14:58, 13 February 2007 (PST)

You're looping back to the faulty logic that got us into this mess in the first place. I quote 130.58 "I don't see how the current proposal actually assures small, clean user pages. It just moves one type of particularly long and garish user page to a subpage. If you want small pages and clean layout, write that out explicitly." He's right. You only make small, clean user pages by saying that you want them (and stating exactly what you mean). Putting character info on a subpage is a bunch of crap that doesn't solve anything. Oh, and I disgagree with that anyway; my character is the point of the game. If I have to shove him (my main one or two, not all of mine, as they are already on subpages) onto a subpage, there's no point to having a userpage aside from saying "my IGN is blah." Please think out this policy and what it fails to accomplish before thinking it's the end-all-bad-userpages fix. -Auron 15:05, 13 February 2007 (PST)

I disagree that its faulty logic. Reasoning: The main complaint I saw in the discussion above is people having problems with load times and garish user pages. Moving the information to a subpage means that unless you go looking for it, its never seen. Thus, the people that have issue with it, don't have to see it, and those that don't can if they choose. Personally, I don't think we should be restricting user pages except in rare cases or the bulleted points you, Auron, listed above. However, some people felt that due to having watch lists which include user pages (since you can't watch a talk page directly/only) that they, the main pages, should be kept simple. Lojiin 15:13, 13 February 2007 (PST)

GAAH. Please read this quote of my last post under the previous heading: "The main issue for most users complaining about user pages seemed to be the personal guild wars information so that's what the policy restricts.". Clear enough? The lenght of user pages is not the problem for those complaining, it's the personal GW content. --Gem (talk) 15:14, 13 February 2007 (PST)

Yes... this has been stated over and over again. Why are we bringing it back up? 15:19, 13 February 2007 (PST)

The thing is, we don't care about your random wammo or ranger with 15k armor, he/she looks just like any other character and uploading a picture of them only takes up space. As a side note, if you MUST upload a picture of your paragon do something original at least. 99% of paragon character pictures I've seen have been the "air hump" --FireFox 15:22, 13 February 2007 (PST)

This is why they're restricted to sub-pages, so you dont have to see them. And space isnt the issue. :O 15:25, 13 February 2007 (PST)

Quote from Auron: "If I have to shove him (my main one or two, not all of mine, as they are already on subpages) onto a subpage, there's no point to having a userpage aside from saying "my IGN is blah."" The idea was that the people can open user pages without needing to see all of the stuff they aren't interested in AND their watch list doesn't get hilighted when your main character details need to be changed. The user page is now used for personal stuff and the in game stuff goes on sub pages. Ofcourse you can just add a link on your user page to a sub pages which acts as if it were your main user page. --Gem (talk) 15:24, 13 February 2007 (PST)

Like I said, I have no problem keeping my minor characters on subpages, but I don't agree with throwing my main two in the pile as well (not only would it screw up the entire layout of my page, the first thing people would see is "account accomplishments" unless that also falls under the category of personal information. Saying "Hi, I'm Auron, and here's my list of things that make me awesomesauce" is incredibly arrogant, and I think a buffer [my main character information, for example?] is fine. ). Keep in mind that more people don't abuse that policy than people that do, so keeping that piece of policy hurts more people than it helps. Like I've stated, if it's stupidly long and/or a trouble to read, it then falls under "common sense." But for the majority of people with userpages, that *was not* a problem. And oddly enough, if someone was merely looking to find my IGN, it's technically above my character information, and therefore they wouldn't have to see that info if they didnt' want to.

To sum up; it isn't about vanity, it's about basic layout. A page that merely states "My IGN is Auron Elessedil" is stupid and pointless. If someone cared enough to want to contact me, they wouldn't mind looking on a real userpage (and most likely, they already would have). -Auron 15:29, 13 February 2007 (PST)

Your watchlist consists of pages you specifically decide to watch. Unlike recent changes, unlike categories, unlike every single other organizational interface on the wiki, the watchlist is nobody's responsibility but yours. There are several other ways to straightforwardly fulfill the same overall goal. Moreover, watchlist spam comes from MAKING TOO MANY EDITS, not HAVING A REALLY BIG PAGE. Some of the Guildwiki users I watch have pretty big pages, but they've never done anything to my watchlist (which, incidentally, has a "mark all visited" button so that you can just clear edits that target a userpage rather than its associated talk page).

Most of the time, when you consult a userpage for fun, you'll be looking either for a way to contact a person (that's why we have a talk page, not to mention an e-mail link that's available from their talk page as well as their user page -- how often are you just cruising through dozens of pages trying to grab IGNs?) or specifically for that "personal GW information" (you want to know what guild they're in, whether they do PvP, whether they have any characters of type X so you can ask them for armor screenshots, whether that guy you saw in HA two nights ago was one of their characters, &c.). I, personally, have never gone to a userpage without at least a mild interest in what somebody actually plays. Even if I spent all day coordinating giant multi-user projects, I'd still fundamentally need to know mostly their GW "personal information," since that strongly influences their actual ability to contribute data about the game.

Now, "TMI! TMI! I really don't need to hear about your exact Canthan Explorer percentage or read about your 10 wammo farming builds!" is a fair criticism, potentially. The answer to that issue is to promote short, concise pages that link to longer pages for those who are interested in minutiae (or, ideally, short pages that don't reference minutiae at all). I agree with other posters in so far as I don't want to see a huge shrine to your characters when I visit your user page. But I don't want to load your userpage just to see your overlong treatise on how to help out on the wiki or a big diagram demonstrating how best to crop images, either.

This is a case where presentation is more important than content: short and to-the-point is superior to long-winded and bloated, no matter what's on that page. But to say that you don't want to see any Guild-Wars-related info when you go to a page on a Guild Wars wiki? C'mon. At that point, you just shouldn't be looking at userpages at all. — 130.58 (talk) 16:54, 13 February 2007 (PST)

Sigh. If only you guys could've more vocal earlier on then we wouldn't have to have taken so many steps forward only to find ourselves at the beginning again. Could you guys that seem so happy to totally reject everything that's been worked on draft something up? Then I don't have to jump around the sections to find all your refuting points on why each and every section of this policy isn't really helping/is pointless/is open to abuse/is stupid/fails to accomplish anytinhg. Then, I believe, we should restart the whole policy discussion on a fresh talk page. Otherwise, we're never gonna be able to bridge the split. And oh, I also think the "sign your comment" policy should require that all signatures have a direct link to the talk page. --ab.er.rant 18:49, 13 February 2007 (PST)

To my mind, 130.58 and Auron have the crux of the matter, you don't need to visit or watch userpages. The only time you will ever see one is if you want to visit it. Also you could still make a huge page that scrolls many, many multiple screens and is really annoying under this policy. Liberal use ob <BR> tags among other things will do that easily. The only thing that really ever concerns me on userpages are the things that could get the wiki in trouble (this goes the same for GuildWiki and here), illegal content, porn, etc... --Rainith 18:59, 13 February 2007 (PST)

I know. Which is why I lamented that they didn't mention it earlier. And is also why I suggested that talk page links on signatures is mandatory, to make it easier for those who don't want to go to the user page. --ab.er.rant 19:03, 13 February 2007 (PST)

I can take a crack at it. Would you rather I clobber the original page, make a Guild Wars Wiki:User page/Draft2 article, or dump it in my own user space? — 130.58 (talk) 19:36, 13 February 2007 (PST)

I recommend clobbering. The historical version as of now is recorded as oldid#11804 in the history. It's hard to keep track of multiple concurrent proposals, especially if each one sprouts its own talk page. S 19:40, 13 February 2007 (PST)

Will do. Thanks, S. — 130.58 (talk) 19:42, 13 February 2007 (PST)

"The only time you will ever see one is if you want to visit it." Not true. If I want to see someone's page it is for wiki related uses, not to download 20 images, or see a million user boxes. If I watch a user's talk page it is for wiki related usage. Does anyone care about trying to improve the way things are run here? GWWiki shouldn't have to be GWiki2. - BeXoR 20:49, 13 February 2007 (PST)

"The only time you will ever see one is if you want to visit it." Not true. If I want to see someone's page it is for wiki related uses, not to download 20 images, or see a million user boxes. The emphasis in the quote is mine. I reiterate, you want to see the page for wiki related uses, you go there, no one is forcing you. A very easy thing to do, if you don't want to see things like users characters, info about them, whatever, is don't go to their user page, don't watch it. Worried you'll miss something in their talk page? Go to recent changes, set it to however many changes until you last looked and use ctrl+f to find User talk:example. I fail to understand why people feel they are forced to look at these pages that bother them so much. --Rainith 21:03, 13 February 2007 (PST)

It's also easy to just watch "my contributions" instead of a watchlist. Or to filter your watch list by category. — 130.58 (talk) 21:38, 13 February 2007 (PST)

The policy doesn't address the issue you're actually experiencing directly. Like I said above, your complaint is about these two things:

• The number of changes made to a page.
• Its overall size.

Neither of these are content. It's pointless to make up all these rules about content instead of just addressing those directly (working on that atm). — 130.58 (talk) 21:38, 13 February 2007 (PST)

Can we accept this as policy?

The only issue I have currently with what's written is the hard cap on file size but I don't feel motivated enough to pursue it. (Similarly motivated on the discussion above) On top of which if most people think its needed then I'm fine being overruled on it. Does anyone have anything they feel strongly enough about that needs to be changed? Either from the discussion above or something new? If not can we accept this in its current state. Lojiin 15:26, 13 February 2007 (PST)

I'm in the middle of disagreeing with it. I also have a problem with the image file size, but nobody seems to have responded to that complaint. Yay, they found it. -Auron 15:32, 13 February 2007 (PST)

Having chimed into this discussion for the first time right now, I'll state that my personal opinion towards Userpages is "Be nice and helpful, follow the law, apply common sense" (Stolen from above). However, if people feel we should have a better outlined policy (as apparently some do), then the current policy works for me. VegJed 20:28, 13 February 2007 (PST)

Someone up above mentioned that you should consider your main (User:Me) page as sort of "the cover of a book". I think that if you extend that simile a little bit and say your userpage should be "like the frontmatter of a book", then you've got a good idea of what your main userpage should be like. A book's frontmatter includes stuff like the title page, the publication page, the table of contents, and any applicable preface/foreword. In the same way, your userpage should include an informative section (About Me), a "table of contents" for your userspace, and perhaps a short introduction or description of yourself. Anything beyond that would be the book's content, including (but not limited to) character shrines.

It seems like this takes care of both the "character shrines should be on subpages!" and the "you can still make absurdly huge userpages!" camps. Of course, it's probably very similar to what Auron or 130.58 were already thinking of, anyway. —Dr Ishmael 20:59, 13 February 2007 (PST)

Working on it. Here's the synopsis: set an overall layout size limit for the main user page (I'm saying "three pages in a 1024x768 browser window," which is about two pages in a 1280x1024 window -- we'll figure out how better to actually label that later) and set an overall bandwidth limit for the page (currently, I'd say 100 kb for all images on the main page put together). Those specific values are, of course, highly negotiable, but that's the big idea: size is a problem, so we limit size. Almost done with the draft... — 130.58 (talk) 21:42, 13 February 2007 (PST)