Template talk:NPC infobox/Archive 3

Affiliation

I've noticed that the affiliation doesn't autolink like the other parameters, I think it should but I'm afraid to try and update such a widely used template myself. Do I just need to add double brackets around the {{{affiliation}}}? - HeWhoIsPale 13:40, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

It's sort of my fault. We never really reached a conclusion in the above discussion. I've been meaning to revive this, so we can implement this properly. I think it's interesting data, which can be useful in formating too. Backsword 13:56, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

With Affiliation we could finally link all the undead. Currently there are no notes in most creatures that are part of the Undead army. With this, we could set either the know army of 'Unknow' for them. It's something needed, specially for the Undead. MithTalk 16:19, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

A parameter that's not automatically wikilinking is a lot more flexible though, but I don't know if it's possible for a creature to have several affiliations? If they can, that causes trouble with automatic wikilinking. - anja 16:25, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

It's not possible. But sometimes the same infoox is used for several creatures that shares a name, in which case it could (obviously) be true. That's the same for everything else tho' Backsword 16:32, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

Shouldn't the affiliation be hidden if there's no value? -- ab.er.rant 09:17, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

I don't actually know of any cases of that. For now, it's mostly just that we haven't done them yet. Once we're fairly complete, perhaps it would be better. Don't have any strong feelings on that. Backsword 09:22, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

If two creatures have the same name but different affiliation, they are different creatures, so there is no problem in linking them. I do know that hostile behavior is set in each area, but affiliation is set for each creature: Unique ID, family, affiliatin and world. Two creatures are the same only when all those are the same. MithTalk 17:15, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

My main concern is when we're going to tackle it. Leaving it as "Unspecified" is just not a good idea. Firstly, do we know for sure that all NPCs have an affiliation? Otherwise, I think it best that we hide it first. -- ab.er.rant 02:42, 24 March 2008 (UTC)

It's a trait all creatures have. It may be set to Null for some, but I know of no such cases. I designed it as this as this is what we have always done with species, I only split it into type and affiliation. Buy I guess it's originally so to encourage 'normal' editors to provide the data.

As a comprimise, we could base displaying it on whether it has been updated, using the species parameter as our metric for this. Thus these wouldn't be displayed when the value is unknown or Null, but would if people simply haven't gotten around to update it. Backsword 13:10, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

Replacement NPC infobox

Basic proposition:

Replace this with this.

What this does is,

1. Splits species into two parts, affiliation and type.
2. Introduces significant automatic categorisation.
3. Some minor technical improvements.

Some examples of how this would look, onviously only relevant to 1 and 3, can be seen here.

Some issues with this:

• A. The parameter names I picked are based on my estimate of the ones most liked by the community, based on debate in earlier sections. But debate petered out before a clear consensu, and it was a while ago, so there might be people who would prefer something else.
• B. Changing the infobox will not change articles. We would need a bot run to split the parameters in the articles out there. (Unless someone feels like doing 2000+ manually)
• C. One issue with autocats is that when I tried to make it work exactly as it has been done manually until now, I found that while the infobox uses singular, some categories are in plural, which is a pain when the plural form is nonstandard. Basically, the code would have to list each nonstandnard case with it's correct form. Alternativly, switching to nonplural categories would be easier and less errorprone, but go against current practice.

Backsword

Wouldn't "Type" be just "species" again? (as in Category:Species) So, just leaving it with the old name while adding the affiliation paramenter could save some work later if this is aproved... (added) Also, may want to consider allowing the specification of "species" and "subspecies", and allowing the non-inclussion of affiliations for those cases where there is not clear one even exists.--Fighterdoken 21:56, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

Please check the examples page. Backsword 09:19, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

I'd welcome autocategorisation for species too, but to do that, as Fighterdoken mentioned, you'd need to allow subspecies to be specified in the infobox. At this point, I don't particularly care about the name anymore, but it's true that retaining "species" makes for an easier transition, particularly for future NPC articles created by users not aware of the change. But then again, if we introduce "subspecies", not retaining "species" does encourage those users to try and locate the how-to for the new infobox. And I'd rather we stick with plural categories. If it proves a little too unwieldy or too inefficient, we can always just leave it as manual categories for species. -- ab.er.rant 02:00, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

I don't really get what you mean by subspecies. GW don't have them. You're not getting it mixed up with some other game? The only thing I can think of in that direction is morphology in model use (thus reskins), but that's a trait of the model, the NPC simply uses a certain model. Backsword 09:19, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

When it comes to plural categories, doing it manually won't work. We'd have to know they needed it for us to do it manually, and if we do, we don't need to do it as it could be in the code. The tricky part is predicting all irregualr plural forms. I'll post my current list. Backsword 09:19, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

I like this change, type seems a bit easier than species sometimes. But how do we get to know affiliation, what's the definition? (I haven't been following this huge species discussion that was before) Do we need to link affiliation, are we going to keep articles on them all? And also, could we make lists of all types and maybe affiliations in game, like we have an (incomplete) list of species at Creature atm? I think having such a list would be great to be able to put new NPCs in, since you have a set to choose from. (A guide on how we classify them would be even better, but maybe over the top?)
I think the plural categories should stay. I'm not opposed to keeping them manual, but if you are willing to work the oddities into the autocat, all love. - anja 09:39, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

I think much of the material is already on the wiki, just spread out over a number of pages. Creature has some, but it's wrong in some places. The creature project is peobably the best listing. Army has some, tho' that's mixed up with lore. My sandbox have a limited listing, and I know Gordon has done stuff related to it.

The way I've set it up, any NPC who is lacking one of the affiliation and type fields get put in a category for such articles, which one could run a project around. Or probably just hijack the creature one, seeing as it's sort of silent and we have enough dead projects as it is. Would also be the place to clarify issues.

As for articles on all affiliations, I think we should and already do for the more interesting ones. The more generic ones may be too boring for anyone to write about them, so I imagine we'd oft just redirect them to their region article. At least until someone feels up to writing them. Perhaps we could do a {{Creature table}} template, like with skills, and create DPL lists. Should be easy enough with this new infobox. Backsword 12:23, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

The Creature article is just weird, imo. We don't use the term creature anywhere else really, so I think merging it into NPC or similar would be more logical. Aren't NPC the main name we chose for everything, both hostile and friendly? - anja 14:00, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

Creatures would include the payer's charater. The have the same traits like livel,profession and type:Human so skills like disease works on them. Tho' I think the real reason we use it is because Anet has a creature team, not a NPC team. But agreed on the article. Could do with a major rewrite. Backsword 01:53, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

Type plural list

              | Afflicted = [[Category:Afflicted]]
              | Asura = [[Category:Asura]]
              | Charr = [[Category:Charr]]
              | Dredge = [[Category:Dredge]]
              | Dwarf = [[Category:Dwarves]]
              | Forgotten = [[Category:Forgotten]]
              | Gaki = [[Category:Gaki]]
              | Grawl = [[Category:Grawl]]
              | Harpy = [[Category:Harpies]]
              | Kappa = [[Category:Kappa]]
              | Kirin = [[Category:Kirin]]
              | Krait = [[Category:Krait]]
              | Incubus = [[Category:Incubi]]
              | Jelly = [[Category:Jellies]]
              | Mursaat = [[Category:Mursaat]]
              | Norn = [[Category:Norn]]
              | Shiro'ken = [[Category:Shiro'ken]]
              | Skale = [[Category:Skale]]
              | Skelk = [[Category:Skelk]]
              | Tengu = [[Category:Tengu]]

Plural of Kappa is Kappa. Do we still the "Fish -> Fishes"? Also, aren't the human subgroups affiliations rather than type? -- ab.er.rant 04:57, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

Ah, true about the Humans. - anja 10:21, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

Undead too. Type would be skeleton and so on. About Kappa, looking it up I find some have manually put it in kappas and other in kappa. The Japanese original is Kappa, as there is no plural grammar in Japanese. I guess the word is common enough that some thinks it should have a plural s. Backsword 12:15, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

OK, I think I have a complete list now. The one thing that stands out is the Japanese loanwords. Should we consistently keep them to Japanese or English plurals? It's very haphazard right now. Backsword 13:49, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

Keep them singular, because if you search a dictionary, you won't find it with an 's'. -- ab.er.rant 04:55, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

That's the way I have it. But I wouldn't trust a dictionary on anything relating new words in the language. They tend to lag badly there. Backsword 01:50, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

what will be done with the species integer now? even if we add the species category with other plural forms maually to the pages, this will leave a non-existent, red-linked category...

i'd suggest to add an species category parameter to the template. the diffrent category would still have to be done manually, but like this there wouldn't arise any wrong categories. —ZerphaThe Improver 01:12, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

nvmd, your method is better :P —ZerphaThe Improver 01:13, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

Plural of Shiro'ken is Shiro'ken. MithTalk 13:54, 18 August 2008 (UTC)

Profession

I propose we make the profession = a required parameter and if left blank it will just say Unknown. My reasoning behind this is that according to the person at ArenaNet who designs all of the monsters, every creature in all of Guild Wars has a profession, so why don't we list them? Also, I'd like it if it is left blank or x or unknown in the profession parameter, it auto categorizes in a catoegory such as Category:Creatures missing profession or Category:Creatures with unknown profession. — ク Eloc 貢 22:29, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

Not all NPC's are creatures, I doubt they picked a profession for Bob the dye merchant in lion's arch --Lemming 00:09, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

'Bob' is a mesmer with Ether Feast, IIRC. Backsword 07:22, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

If we can find where the monster designer posted it, we'll see. — ク Eloc 貢 08:43, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

When they are allied to the party, NPCs always show a profession in their health bars. Even if they have no skills. That profession is usually monk o warrior. That's because all NPCs have a profession. But putting an 'unkown' in most articles is unnecesary. It's completely impossible to know the profession of almost all NPCs that never use skills. We should put 'unkown' if we had a way to know the profession later on. MithTalk 10:21, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

If we knew what the profession is, then couldn't we wouldn't need , right? At the very least I want to add a parameter for . Sort of like how you type in E into the box and it gives you Elementalist, I'd like to at the very least do that for as it would be faster than typing it out. — ク Eloc 貢 17:02, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

I had that in a early version of my update. However, I removed it as one: it doesn't look good to me, and two: it's not neccessary. In the context of the infobox, knowing that all creatures have a primary profession, a missing profession cvan only ever mean one thing: unknown. Hence adding it provides no service. That's different from an NPC listing where a missing profession may well mean 'haven't checked the NPC article for it yet'. Backsword 07:21, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

Yup. Being a slot thet will never be filled is not necessary. In such casses a simple note in the NPC article stating that all NPCs have profession, family, army, word and unique ID is enough. Then, as we'll probably never know the profession and the unique ID in many of them, we simple do not put that as a default empty slot in the infoboxes, but as slots that will appear once filled with data. MithTalk 12:24, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

Putting "unknown", "unspecified", "to be added...", "more info later..." has always been discouraged. If something is not in an article, it's either "not known" or "not applicable". If we start applying "unknown" to things that we don't know, it indirectly and incorrectly implies that those without "unknown" are known. -- ab.er.rant 02:42, 24 March 2008 (UTC)

Affiliation (2)

How come the infobox link for Affiliation brings you to the creature page while when you search Affiliation, it redirects you to the Army page? — ク Eloc 貢 00:57, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

Krait

According to the Eye of the North manual, Krait is both singular and plural, if no one objects, I'll change the template's auto-categorization to reflect this. -- Gordon Ecker 06:08, 18 August 2008 (UTC)

Hm... let's see... "The Krait" "The kraits"... "Krait" sounds better. MithTalk 15:19, 18 August 2008 (UTC)

Same here. -- ab.er.rant 13:22, 19 August 2008 (UTC)

Agreed. Calor 17:33, 19 August 2008 (UTC)

As nobody wanted to do it (but still requested deletion for the still used category), I implemented it. poke | talk 22:14, 21 August 2008 (UTC)