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Branching Out

Having learned so much, and having helped so many folks figure out what the hell is going on in the Guild Wars world, I would like to branch out. There's other games that need a resource as dedicated, uncluttered, and awesome, as this one. I will now open the floor to suggestions, ideas, and flaming. To Clarify: I mean branching out as in, creating new, seperate wikis for games, under a single banner, using the same user base. Example: You could login and post articles on a Planescape: Torment Wiki with your GuildWiki username. Gravewit 05:43, 13 Oct 2005 (EST)

You mean to have different games on the same wiki? That sounds like it could be messy. If different wikis are set up per game, it wouldn't matter, since they wouldn't really influence each other (and wouldn't make a difference to us here). --Fyren 07:34, 13 Oct 2005 (EST)

Admin privileges probably shouldn't overlap between wikis even if you can use the same login info. --Fyren 21:30, 13 Oct 2005 (EST)

flaming ON No 2 games in 1 wiki, the problems would grow exponentially with the number of games, dont dont dont flaming OFF. A big part why this wiki is working, is because it is all about one game. Much less problems with people using the same word and meaning different things, no 1000s of disambiguity pages, that would be lost by integrating more games --Xeeron 07:45, 13 Oct 2005 (EST)

Covering 2 games in the same wiki would be a huge MESS. There is nothing wrong with 2 seperate wikis on the same server though. Some of us might even help to build the basics, although we are all pretty dedicated to GuildWars. I don't see myself playing any other games anytime soon. --Tetris L 07:51, 13 Oct 2005 (EST)

I am going to assume you meant on a spearate version of the Wiki but on the same server so I will not flame. :) I am not much of a fan of other MMORPG, but I do think that these wikis are an excellent tool and are FAR superior to fansites. I wish I had a wiki when I was playing King's Quest I! :) So, the only concern I'd have is hosting performance and bandwidth. At times, the wiki pages take time to load and the demands on the server seem to be slowing its responsiveness. If you'll be branching into another game, then I suggest that it's on a separate hosting plan with separate bandwidth.

I would nominate Planescape: Torment as the next Wikified game! Even though it is out of print! :) --Karlos 09:12, 13 Oct 2005 (EST)

I didn't take that to mean to games in the wiki, just another wiki =P Skuld^‡ 23:58, 13 Oct 2005 (EST)

I'm all for it. However, hosting issues need to be resolved first. Further, we need to define some type of focus first. An easy one to do would be focusing on just MMOGs -- these are the kinds of games that benefit most from wiki format–fansites. Structure is the reason -- how do you separate everything otherwise? There are well-known abbreviations for MMOGs. If we start allowing wikis for both, say, Super Mario Brothers and Super Monkey Ball, we'd have namespace collision (whether because we're using gw.gamewiki.com or because we're using interwiki links with abbreviated names). Using subservers like that (there's a better name, but I can't think of it) also limits the ability to group things together -- how does one relate all Final Fantasy games if each one is under a completely different branch? If we're going to do this, I think structure and scope are the two most relevant topics to confer about. —Tanaric 13:56, 21 October 2005 (EST)

Interwiki stuff between two wikis is something that the mediawiki people (okay I'm done saying wiki, now) haven't quite got figured yet. The best I can do at this point is link user tables, so a single login works across sites. It's not much, but it's a start. The nature of the wiki is simplicity over technical nicities. If it were a custom designed system, then sure. Easy. But it's not. I'd say we would start any new wiki should be of a new game without a huge base of sites already. I believe our success with GW was due to it's newness, and how quick we could put out new information as compared to the other sites. Gravewit 06:41, 27 October 2005 (EST)

So how does anyone feel about a Civ4 wiki? Gravewit 12:05, 2 November 2005 (EST)

I love the game! Had to buy more RAM, though, as the huge map with 12 civs on max graphics caused my 768 MB to be painfully overwhelmed. That said, I don't know how useful a wiki for a non-MMORPG will be. The content in-game is static, so once documented, there's really no need for any further editing. However, regardless of my reservations, I'm happy to help—especially since I hope to be proven wrong. —Tanaric 18:57, 2 November 2005 (EST)

Personally, if anything is going to pull me away from Guild Wars in the near future, it's probably Civ4... so, uh, yeah, sounds ok to me. Also, to answer Tanaric: Just because the information is static doesn't mean it isn't useful. Having a wiki which is better than the Civilopedia is an admirable goal, for instance. --JoDiamonds 06:40, 3 November 2005 (EST)

DAMN! I forgot to upgrade the troops in my city that was building the SS Engine. The riflemen didn't have a chance against 5 Roman Gunship helicopters... Tanaric for the lose. :( —Tanaric 11:17, 3 November 2005 (EST)

Ads

As talked about in the Hosting section on his talk page, we're having money problems. The hosting will will be roughly $80/month. I would like to try putting a google ad (text only, unobtrusive as possible) on the site, for one week, to see if it performs at all. If it does not, then we'll have to figure something else out. If it does well, then I'll simply keep the ad up for as long as it takes to cover the site fees. We can play around with different options, only displaying the ad on every 3 pages a person views, only on the main page, only on pages from search engine queries, and so on. Continue the revenue discussion in this thread. Gravewit 12:09, 27 October 2005 (EST)

I'm in favor of trying this experiment and seeing how hard or useful it is. I'm no fan of ads, but if it's pretty unobtrusive and provides an ongoing form of support for GuildWiki, then I think it's well worth it. I'm particularly concerned about methods based on personal donations, because that is rarely maintanable in the long run. That said, bright ideas welcome. =) --JoDiamonds 14:33, 27 October 2005 (EST)

Agreed; go for it. However, if ads are added, user CSS needs to be disabled, for obvious reasons. It would also be nice if those who have donated don't see the ads, but I don't know how technically feasable that is. —Tanaric 00:38, 28 October 2005 (EST)

I'm definately thinking about that kind of thing. I'm pretty damn sure I can just do a simple bit of PHP code, and say if($username == "Tanaric" OR $username == "Gravewit") { no ads } else { ads } and so on. I'll be sticking up the ad sometime this week, and we'll see how Operation: Pay For Itself works. Gravewit

*holds breath* :) --Karlos 09:57, 1 November 2005 (EST)

Hosting

Wowsers. I just got the hosting bill for the month, and it was quite a bit bigger than I expected. It's approaching $120 a month! I am sort of getting desperate here. I know we could move to cheaper hosting, but I just don't think the support and reliability is there. The cashflow problem is a big one, guys and girls, and I don't know what to do about it. The easy thing would be testing out google ads or adbrite, and putting one in a portlet on the sidebar there, but I'm not entirely comfortable with that, and I'm not really sure how much it would work. We got a LOT of donations this month, and it almost covers it entirely, but I'm not sure what to do after that. Gravewit 13:57, 18 October 2005 (EST)

$175 is a lot of money. With a bill like that, I don't think donations will continue to work. (Though I say this without having donated, myself.) That leaves ads and sponsorship. I doubt ads will generate enough revenue (I guess I can't say that with certainty) and I have no clue about who might sponsor. How much bandwidth got used this last month? Can you also get stats on pageviews and unique views? --Fyren 11:59, 19 October 2005 (EST)

That is a large amount of money to try to get with donations, I agree with Fyren, in that, it may not be possible. I think one of the first steps would be google ads (they seem to be everywhere now). Guild Wiki has "been down" for us for about a week now, and we have missed it sooo much, so we are now looking to find a way to help more. udoh :)

I hope I'm doing this right as I've not used a wiki before. I enjoy this site immensely and like your ideas on expansion to other games, so I have registered in hope of helping out other than by cash. I have a dormant hosting account at datacities.com which has been charged for another year (expires 2006/08/) and so is going to waste and I would like it to be put to good use. If you are interested, please don't hesitate to contact me hardkopy@gmail.com so I can send you more detail in relation to the account.

---

So are we talking US or Australian dollars? And how much bandwidth are we talkig about? I poked around your webhost's product pages and I think you really can find a cheaper host that offers good service and reliability. Before you write me off as crazy check http://www.jaguarpc.com/ . I don't work for them or make any money by sticking this here. But I've been a customer for over around a year now. I think you'll find that their prices for similar service are noticably less, even with the dollar conversion. I've had excellent and prompt results on the rare occassions that I've dealt with their support team. Their sales team was also very prompt in answering my questions when I was looking through providers. The servers are based out of texas (houston area, i believe) and rode through the last hurricane like a champ. I know it always seems like you get what you pay for and should be wary of the little guys... but the server host market is VERY competitive these days. There is no reason to be paying the same prices now that people payed 5 years ago. --Squeg 01:57, 20 October 2005 (EST)

May I also throw in India as a possible solution. Hosting on Indian servers is VERY cheap. Though of course, the level of service at some hosts may not be up to par. --Karlos 02:44, 20 October 2005 (EST)

I will definately check out some of these suggestions. We have a standard of quality as far as server uptime and performance that we need to continue. It doesn't help anyone if the site is costing $5/month if it's down 30% of the month. Squeq: I'm talking in USD, though the host is based in Australia. I've also read of people having a LOT of stability issues with jaguarpc. The other host I'm looking at is TextDrive. Gravewit 15:35, 20 October 2005 (EST)

I understand about stability being key. TextDrive has a good reputation, but is a bit more costly. I haven't worked with them personally. I'm curious, is guildwiki on a dedicated/virutal dedicated/or a shared host? Obviously that influences both price and stability. Given the prices listed here, I was assuming a shared hosting plan where you were having to purchase extra bandwidth because of overruns. Extra bandwidth almost always costs more than upgraded packages unless the overruns happen only very rarely.

As for jaguar's stability, I don't really want to sound like a sale's pitch, but i've used a number of shared and dedicated hosts professionally and personally, and the only one that's been more reliable than jaguar is theplanet.com which hosts our business server these days. And while my shared server at jaguar may on rare occassion have a hiccup, it has always either cleared itself up in less time than it's taken me to contact support or been fixed by support within a few minutes of being reported. Again,it's a personal site that runs a little guild forum on the side, so it's not high traffic, but i'm quite satisfied. Especially as I'm using their absolute cheapest plan. (I've had maybe 3 connectivity issues and a couple of issues with the traffic statistics in the year that i've had the server online.)

I tried running my site on a linux server at godaddy.com whose prices are incredibly cheap for the amount of bandwidth/diskspace they provide, but the support stunk, the server was poorly configured, and the programming resources were non-existent. So part of my loyalty to jaguar is that as a relatively small player they completely outperformed a big guy with lots of money behind it like godaddy. I'm sure there are lots of other small providers that could do the same thing. As for India, I hadn't thougth of that. It's an interesting idea, if someone knew where to start looking. (Oh, and i promise no more evangelizing. Sorry. :) )--Squeg 02:08, 21 October 2005 (EST)

It's hosted on a shared account. The price point is a bit hard to make work in our favor. I've upgraded to where we've got 60gb/month built in. I'm still working with the host as far as knocking some more $$$ off our bill due to the promotion we're giving them, right now we get 60gb a month for about $75 USD, which isn't bad. On the upside, we've got 4 gigs of storage we can use for images and stuff. Gravewit 15:48, 22 October 2005 (EST)

Hi take a look at AS-hosting, me and a few friends use this and it's very reliable and the staff are great and you can get 10GB disk space and 200GB b/w for £8.99 which is around $15? if you need more they do custom plans. Take a look anyway Skuld^‡ 21:44, 22 October 2005 (EST)

Repeatable Quests

Hi guys! You have the best GW resource I have ever seen. Seriously, what you do is much appreciated. I would suggest advertising a little more but over all awesome. I know each quest in UW and FoW are repeatable when the instance is refreshed, and GW in their latest release notes said that many in SF were too. So, I thought it would be helpful to have another category for quests that are repeatable. Thanks a bunch. -- Ravious Pretagata

Community/Current events

Both the Current Events and Community Portal have laid fallow for quite some time. Perhaps we should put them to some use? They're easily accessible and commonly editable, and would be a perfect place for recent stylistic clarifications to be put, non-vital questions to be asked, and polls to be conducted. --Talrath Stormcrush 14:32, 15 Aug 2005 (EST)

Take the lead on it, and we'll see how it turns out and tweak it communitarily (is that a word?). Design by committee isn't useful, but critique by committee is. —Tanaric 18:06, 15 Aug 2005 (EST)

Categorization That Won't Die

I've noticed a few pages that just seem to not "decategorize." For example, Unlinked Skill is in Category:Skills for apparently no reason. The article itself doesn't show that it's in the category yet it's in the category's listings. I've tried purging both the article and the category to no effect. --Fyren 14:48, 19 Aug 2005 (EST)

Is it a holdover from the database corruption issues we faced? —Tanaric 00:13, 20 Aug 2005 (EST)

Doing a null edit (saving a page without changing anything) fixes it. Too bad I didn't keep a list of all the pages I noticed suffering from this problem. --Fyren 18:20, 21 Aug 2005 (EST)

Skill Templates

I hope I'm not the only one who noticed how absurdly wordy the skill template is. I've taken the liberty of compressing it into Template:Skill_New. Produces the same format, and is much less ugly. Check the old Dismember vs. the new. as is, it won't work for everything: It uses the pagename for the image title, and many skills can't use that (Anything with ' or " in their title. However, a space will work, provided the image has been uploaded with the space included (Or an underscore). --Talrath Stormcrush 15:29, 21 Aug 2005 (EST)

Bleh, you posted here while I was writing my comments over at Template talk:Skill New. This should be discussed there, or maybe better in skills' style and formatting. (Put a link in the recent events, too, if you want.) --Fyren 15:37, 21 Aug 2005 (EST)

Map with boss locations, elite and non-elite?

Does such a map exist with boss locations so that signet of capture users can find a particular skill on a boss to capture? Elite maps exist, but is there a map with non-elite bosses?

Such a work would be a huge undertaking, though not necessarily useless. I would have preferred to be able to get most "Air Magic" skills earlier by signet of capture than having to wait till Ventari's Refuge and Maguuma Stade just to get some decent skills. Personally, I do not know that any such map or site exists. --Karlos 09:35, 26 Aug 2005 (EST)

Not quite sure what you mean, but the GWFreaks tool (gwfreaks.com) might have what you're looking for. You can search for any skill in the game with this program, and the program will tell you where you can get it (any skill trainers, elite bosses, or Balthazar Priests), as well as provide a map of where it can be found, including precise boss locations.. not to mention a sort of simulator for builds, where you can set attribute levels and see how green numbers line up... actually, would it be OK to write an article on this app? I kinda wonder where it would be linked to from if it existed... perhaps the skill listing page? --Midk 16:42, 29 Aug 2005 (EST)

They don't list where you can capture non-elite skills. Which is what he was asking about. --Karlos 17:17, 29 Aug 2005 (EST)

Ah, I couldn't figure out what he meant by a non-elite.. boss/skill... never mind. :) --Midk 17:32, 29 Aug 2005 (EST)

I've looked through the boss list in the Prima guide and the boss lists on various websites for non-elite skills worth capturing. For monks I've added the bosses to the skill decription of the respective skills (for example Divine Intervention, Draw Conditions or Scourge Sacrifice), and I will do the same for other professions too, later. There is no map of non-elite skills though. --Tetris L 15:39, 30 Aug 2005 (EST)

Oh, and off course there is a map of elite skills by MOOMANiBE. Unfortunatly his host is down at the moment (too much traffic due to the large file size of the maps), but he said he will have found a new host soon. --Tetris L 15:39, 30 Aug 2005 (EST)

Help!

The SQL error about the duplicate key has resurfaced. --Karlos 04:27, 7 Sep 2005 (EST)

Yes, I have experienced it twice, too, in the last few days. It does not occur on every single edit but only sporadic, though. Which is good. Because I noticed that this error in fact does have inpact on the data integrity. When a new article is created and the error occurs, this article is not added to the categories correctly. I.e. I created Wroth Yakslapper, but he was not listed in Category:Stone Summit or any of his other categories. To fix that you only have to edit the article another time, it'll be added to the categories then. I also stumbled across some uncategorized articles from back when this error was rampant in the Special:Uncategorizedpages. :) --Eightyfour-onesevenfive 06:27, 9 Sep 2005 (EST)

Salvage Information

I was thinking it might be nice to have some way to reference what salvages into what. I couldn't find any section here on the Wiki that had that but I may have missed it. If it doesn't exist how do people feel about building one? I don't know a lot about using Wikis but i'd be willing to get it rolling.

This has been started at some point with categories like Category:Contains wood, Category:Contains iron and the like. But the items section is still rather incomplete. --Eightyfour-onesevenfive 00:20, 8 Sep 2005 (EST)

Good idea. The guide from Prima has an appendix that contains all this information.

- I Would also like to see this, especially on weapon upgrades, and rare'er crafting materials.

Unique Item List here

Can we please place a link to Unique Items List here in the quick links box? --Karlos 22:18, 13 Sep 2005 (EST)

Thanks, sire. And I too think it's only temporary. --Karlos 16:52, 14 Sep 2005 (EST)

Ok, its been more than a month since the update with unique items and just shy of a month since it was added to the front page. Maybe its time to remove the NEW! tag? --Rainith 16:15, 12 Oct 2005 (EST)

GuildWiki:User Questions

How about adding the new GuildWiki:User Questions to the "Getting Started" section?

items with chance ?

Hi,

if i have an item that gives you a condition maybe recharge faster (chance 10%). What does chance mean ? Is chance 10% better or chance 20% ? Higher or lower ?

It gives you 10% (or 20%) chance that the skill used will recharge faster (i don't know how much faster, but i would guess 25% or 33%). --Geeman 06:12, 15 Sep 2005 (EST)

Here's an example: A wand gives you a 20% to recharge Air magic skills faster. That means that while fighting you'll notice that one Air skill out of every five you use will recharge very quickly. My guess would be twice as fast since I equip one of those and notice my Lightning Strike Charge in nearly 2 seconds. --Karlos 06:46, 15 Sep 2005 (EST)

I also believe the faster recharge is 50%. Perhaps this should be noted on weapon upgrades? --Fyren 10:29, 15 Sep 2005 (EST)

I put it there, but we also do not know if perhaps it is less for the smaller percentages. i.e. it could be that at 20% chance it makes recharge 50% but at 10% it makes recharge only 75%. --Karlos 15:13, 15 Sep 2005 (EST)

Scattered Information vs. Overviews

Here comes my rant. (Beware, long read. :))

I have a general problem with this Wiki: We have a strong tendency here to scatter information as much as we can. It seems to me that we create a separate article for every tiny bit of information. (Granted, this is a tendency of all encyclopedias.) Even worse: We split up small articles when it really makes no sense. I hate it when I have to click through 20 pages to gather information that I can find on one page on many other websites. I assure you: This is not what our users want.

For example, take the Collector lists. (I'm surprised it hasn't been ripped apart yet.) Instead of just listing the names of all collectors and linking to them for details, it lists the complete information, with location and item details. This page is one of the most popular pages on GuildWiki for a reason!! All the information in one place. 'Nuf said.

There is nothing wrong with having a detailed separate article for every bit of information, as long as there are still overview pages, tables and lists. And an overview should be more than just an alphabetic list. Which is why I think category lists - in most cases - are a poor solution for an overview list. A real overview list, in an article, properly formated and structured, may require more maintenance, but covers the topic much better, which makes the additional work well worth it.

Related to this problem is our policy to separate lists from defintion articles. In my humble opinion this makes sense only if the list is growing very large. As long as I can read both the defintion and the list on 1 page, with just a few turns of my mousewheel, there is really no need to split up the information.

I know there were concious decisions made about this structure by the admins and the main contributors as some point in the past. I don't know if I was already a contributor myself at that point. Sorry to bring up the point yet again. If the majority of contributors want to stick with the policies, I'll give in. But I ask everybody to reconsider.

Thanks for reading all this. --Tetris L 19:03, 18 Sep 2005 (EST)

I absolutely see your point, Tetris. But I think you ask the wrong question. It should be: Usability vs. Maintenance (as already mentioned in your rant). Or: How much work are the contributors willing to take to do it as easy for the user as possible. Granted, normally usability should be one of our prime objective. But overview lists in the form like you suggest tend to create a lot of redundancy and that is something I hate. ;) Redundancy often creates a lot of additional work and since this is a user-build database we should also see to it that it is as easy for the contributors to add information as possible. Which means to find a given piece of information in one place, so you only have to edit it once. If there was a way to create overview pages without creating redundancy (and without just simply stuffing everything into one big article) I would happily approve. We shouldn't load ourselves with more work than necessary. --Eightyfour-onesevenfive 19:53, 18 Sep 2005 (EST)

To avoid redundancy I really like what Karlos (?) did with Molenin and Makar Thoughtslayer on the Weapon and charm collectors list. I think this is the way to go. If we create articles with the possibility in mind that an article (or a part of it) might be used as a module for an overview list, then we have no redundancy, but still nice overviews. --Tetris L 22:57, 18 Sep 2005 (EST)

We already talked about that at Talk:Weapon and charm collectors. The short version is maintaining the index pages is still too much trouble if they move the collectors to different zones or whatever.--Cloak of Letters 23:16, 18 Sep 2005 (EST)

That's the thing; I think such maintenance is necessary.--Cloak of Letters 23:16, 18 Sep 2005 (EST)

If minimizing maintenance work is the #1 criterion for our design decisions, then I think we're clearly moving in the wrong direction here. We should create this Wiki with a maximum of quality and user comfort in mind, not the minimum of work. Speaking only for myself, I'd gladly spend a few hours to create an overview table and also make a commitment to maintain redundant information in the table in case ANet changes something. Having said that, I hope that the game will soon reach a state where ANet has to make only minor adjustments, and not change half the game in a patch, like they did in the big Summer '05 update. --Tetris L 04:38, 19 Sep 2005 (EST)

The number one criterion for a successful wiki is "Correctness." If users start to find that the info on the wiki is outdated/incorrect/not useful, then the site will become irrelevant. When we allow information to be replicated in several articles for the sake of usability, we are putting our correctness at risk. Let's say ANet changes Molenin's name to Molenski. We update only 5 of the 7 pages that talk about him. Then they change Willa's elite to "Contemplation of Impurity" and for whatever reason we update only 3 of the 5 pages that mention that. In time, we will end up with an inaccurate Wiki, we will lose credibility.

The solution you propose, that you will put in extra hours to maintain the lists, is not one we can take. Not because you won't live up to your promise, but because it is wrong of the site to rely on a specific person to remain correct. The Wiki should not rely on Karlos or Rainith being there to remain credible.

With regards to Definitions and Categories. It's simple. We cannot use Category articles as the main entry, they look ugly, they are cumbersome to type and they have issues with redirects. And we cannot use definition articles for listing because we will soon have a BIG mess of replication and innaccuracy. Here, let me show you how the big boys (Wikipedia) suffer from what I mean: This is the article Sword and the Category:Swords. Notice the large discrepency between the Sowrds in the Sword article and the ones in the Swords category.

Categoris provide an invaluable service by linking content together. There is nothing we can do to match that. How else can I be reading about "Mountain trolls" then click on trolls to see what other trolls are there, then click on "Jungle Trolls" to see how different they are from Mountain trolls and finally discover that there is an area in the game called "The Falls"??

I propose a ban on any alphabetical listing outside of categories. If anyone wants to devise a list, it has to be a view interesting to users.. Like, weapons that do fire damage (and then link to it in the Ice Golems) or monsters that are resistent to blunt damage (and then link to it in hammers). --Karlos 18:43, 19 Sep 2005 (EST)

You have a point about redundancy. I wish we could find a way to link articles together such that the info origin is in one place and is automatically "pasted" into overview lists and tables. As far as I've understood, you can automatically embed a complete article in an other article, but you can not include just a section of an other article.

For example

Test

will work, but

Test

will not work.

How about we create sub-articles that we can then include in a definition article as well as overview lists and tables? For example, we create a sub-article Captain_Osric/Skills with a list of skills offered by Captain Osric. This sub-article could then be included in the main article Captain Osric as well as Trainer locations. What do you think? --Tetris L 19:20, 19 Sep 2005 (EST)

I was once again reading the documentation (cough cough) and found the and