User talk:Varghedin Vikingfrost/Archive01

Elementals

Why are you changing Elemental to Elementals? --Cartier 11:20, 9 April 2006 (EDT)

For consistency with the categories "Demons, Humanoids, Beasts" etc. I'm just changing the category, not the actual entry itself. --Varg

Don't forget the create a good redirect for Elementals to Elemental. --Cartier 11:28, 9 April 2006 (EDT)

I won't :) --Varg

Deletion

When you nominate a page for deletion make sure you put the {{subst:Delete/Talk}} tag on the talk page and vote on that with the proper format. It is also helpful if you give a reason for why it should be deleted (especially if you are the one that nominated it for deletion), as well as sign your comments with ~~~~ Goto Project:Deletion policy for more information.--Ralthor 11:44, 9 April 2006 (EDT)

Will do, thanks. --Varg

Argent Dawn

So... much... Argent... Dawn! -- Pandaut 09:25, 28 April 2006 (EDT)

It needed a cleanup :P --Varg

Good work on that :) -- Pandaut 09:31, 28 April 2006 (EDT)

Thanks =) --Varg

Great work

Got to say it: You're doing some great work here, Varghedin! :) Tinkerer

Thank you! What can I say, I got inspired :) --Varg

Just wanted to say that I like filling out your contributions on beasties that can be tamed, Varghedin. Create the article, and I'll fill it out! --Presea 20:17, 2 December 2006 (EST)

I missed this comment before. Your fill-outs are absolutely beautiful! Great way to deal with the pictures too :) --Varghedin 02:02, 22 December 2006 (CET)

Pics

Lotsa nice pics there, but try to use the |thumb| tag a bit more ;) it cuts down on bad runarounds, and looks more neat in most cases. CJ 05:04, 2 May 2006 (EDT)

Thanks for the advice. I did try using the |thumb| tag earlier, but I found it screwed up the pictures who had earlier versions with different proportions. I'm not sure if there's a way to fix that. I tried tweaking with the proportions tag to no avail. --Varg

So many contributions

Doing a good job... I'm impressed at how much you've managed to add. --Fandyllic 10:25 PM PDT 3 May 2006

Thanks for the compliment... it's almost addictive once you really get into it! --Varg

Don't I know that! And I'm guessing several others of us would likewise testify. Schmidt 19:03, 2 June 2006 (EDT)

Maybe you should join the Cat Team?

I noticed you are also working on categories, maybe you should join the Category community team? I'll leave a note with the current leader, Anticrash to ask you about it. Please add a note to the WoWWiki:Cat_Team/Join, if you're interested. I think you'd make a great team member! --Fandyllic 10:58 AM PDT 19 May 2006

I think it would be cool to be part of the team. I notice I'm kind of fumbling around half-blind trying to fix categories into something resembling order, so becoming organized might be a great thing :) --Varg

Varghedin, I appreciate your work on the Cat Team, I really do. But do you think you could start marking your Cat changes as minor edits? I'm sorry if I sound a bit nit-picky. Thing is, I head up the Bookkeepers, and most of us operate day-to-day by checking recent changes on the lore pages and making sure that they're in standing with the lore avaliable. By now I know you're probably just fixing the categories, but since a lot of major changes are made without summaries, it really is needed for you to check the "minor edit" box on the edit screen. Again, I apoligize if I sound like I'm berating you. --Ragestorm 05:37, 7 June 2006 (EDT)

Ack! Alright then. I've just been doing the cats, yeah, and I'm doing them en masse so it's easier to just hit edit instead of marking every single one a minor edit first. But I'll respect the work you yourself do and comply. Thanks for notifying me :) --Varg

Thanks a bunch! I'm really sorry for any trouble, but contact within my faction is a little... unregulated (and there are one or two who are bound to complain). Great works :-)--Ragestorm 07:08, 7 June 2006 (EDT)

Not at all, I understand completely. The minor edit box is quite conveniently placed directly over the Save Page button, so the additional effort turned out to be quite minimal :) Hope I didn't step on anyone's toes. --Varg

I'm just gonna echo what Ragestorm said - great work! You're keeping yourself very busy :D -- Kirkburn 09:19, 7 June 2006 (EDT)

Glad the work is appreciated! When working on categories, I strive for consistency and completeness. I think I'll overhaul the creatures category next. You're in the Cat Team, aren't you? How's that application coming? =) --Varg

List of Orgrimmar NPCs

Great job on List of Orgrimmar NPCs. I assume you had some kind of software to parse it up, but that's something I didn't have, and I wouldn't have been willing to spend much time on it. Thanks. Schmidt 13:39, 30 May 2006 (EDT)

Actually, I'm doing it the old fasion way - running around town checking out the local color :) --Varg

Well if I was doing that, I think either my eyes or the colors, or both, would be bleeding. I don't think that's a good thing. Schmidt 14:13, 30 May 2006 (EDT)

It's not so bad, only takes about 15 mins of screenshots :) Although now that I think about it, there was that reaction to that radioactive measuring device when I looked at it yesterday. Hmm.. --Varg

Now you've outdone yourself. I can only imagine how long you've spent on that page now. Amazing job. Schmidt 20:04, 31 May 2006 (EDT)

I made similar lists for all the other cities as well, and the one I spent the most time on was Darnassus, where I actually went through and made articles for all the quests. That was just a bit too much work though, so I kept it to the NPCs in the other cities. --Varg

NPC images

Good work, but do we need to have pictures of every quest giver? unless storage space is not an issue at wowwiki.com . --SaudiGamer 06:15, 21 July 2006 (EDT)

Honestly, I don´t know if storage is an issue or not. If it is, you´re right in that a pic of every npc may not be necessary. If it isn´t though, I do think actually seeing the NPC helps a lot in getting a feel of it, knowing which race it is and such. --Varg

NPCs. Again

One day, one day you will run out NPCs to list. But this is not that day! /cheer =) -- Kirkburn 11:06, 31 July 2006 (EDT)

You're right! The enormous list of uncharted NPCs is slowly but surely getting shorter! Luckily, I'll eventually have the expansion to keep it going :P --Varg

But hey, is it really needed to create a separate page for every <weapon merchant> containing a one-liner? there is really no story and that line would also fit on the zone's list of NPC's -watchout 04:54, 19 September 2006 (EDT)

Story? Every character in the game can't have an extensive history and lore. Merchants are mostly there for other purposes than storyline, and an entry describing where they are located and what they generally sell is just a starting point. There are several vendor articles who have later been fleshed out by others to include what they specifically sell, even down to price and availability. If you want to write more in-depth articles on npcs, by all means go ahead. I personally prioritize bredth right now. ---Varg

Oh my, no way I'm writing down every bit they sell, my point was that you really don't need those pages, there's only one single line in it - better put it on the zone's NPC listing page. (some don't even contain that single line) -watchout 07:56, 19 September 2006 (EDT)

Many people will not start an article from scratch - without the excellent basis Varg is creating interesting articles may never be started. Every character in WoW has an interesting background (one of the wonderful achievements), and WoWWiki will be about the only place where such info may ever be found out of the game. We cannot decide which NPCs are 'valid' and which aren't, so, yes, I think they should all be listed. Plus this way they each get screenshots :) -- Kirkburn (talk) 10:48, 19 September 2006 (EDT)

I knew something like that would be written... You don't get my point anyway and you will probably never do, so there's no reason for me trying to force it. -watchout 03:56, 20 September 2006 (EDT)

Having one line of text, a picture, and categories of an article is better than having nothing at all. Yeah I could try to squeeze the info in on the NPC list, but in my opinion that would leave it cluttered and messy. ---Varg, Sept 20th 2006, 10:04 (CET)

Cats

RE: While I think Category:Ruins is a good idea as it fits nicely with such other categories as Category:Trees and Category:Waters, Category:Zone:Shimmering Flats is not. If every subzone in the game had a category of their own, the list of actual zones would be completely obliterated in a mess of smaller, useless categories. - Varg 04/08 2006 20:35 CET

I agree with you. The edits I was making were an attempt to REMOVE the zone:Shimmering Flats. In fact it was misplaced as a it's own subcategory under subzones and should not have been. Clicking subzone will show you that I have corrected this. (Link doesn't direct correctly) -- Rascilon

Enchant Cats

Not to shove things on you, but something I found while surfing random pages was that there are three categories of the same exact thing for enchanting. There's Category:Enchanting, Category:Enchanting Recipes, and Category:Enchantments, all which contain basically the same articles. I saw that the engineering cat was in a similar situation while I was at it too. -_-; Seems like a really big mess to me. When you run out of NPCs and things to categorize, this could be another thing to add to your list. You've been doing great work for the wiki though. Keep it up! (OTOH don't burn yourself out. =P) Pzychotix 12:13, 6 August 2006 (EDT)

Yes I've noticed some redundant categories as well, and the same goes for some articles. Merging articles can be quite messy, especially if there are two entries which contain lots of info but are basically identical in regards to content. Thanks for notifying me. I'll see about looking into it once I feel that the zone articles are starting to appear satisfactory.
--Varg 01:23, 7 August 2006 (CET)

Nice one

World:Azeroth nice and readable now, mostly due to your work I think. I cleaned the two old continents out, too, but I suck too much at Northrend geography to do anything there very efficiently. Ohwell. Nicely done either way :-)   --Mikk 08:19, 19 August 2006 (EDT)

Thanks :) You spurred me into action there, and I do agree it looks much nicer now. The good idea was yours though, thanks :) --Varg 16:41, 19 August 2006 (CET)

STOP

MAKE ONE MORE STUPID EDIT TODAY, AND I WILL BAN YOUR ASS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1 --FandylIic 17:29, 24 August 2006 (EDT)

I think the only one who will be banned is you when Fandyllic finds out you sabotaged his page. --Varg

You sir, are very wise. Ironically, if he hadn't messed with my user pages, I probably wouldn't have caught on as soon. --Fandyllic 5:11 PM PDT 24 Aug 2006

I, however, love your RC spam, Varg ;) -- Kirkburn 18:23, 24 August 2006 (EDT)

Pshhh. It rains hell on my trolling. =P Pzychotix 18:52, 24 August 2006 (EDT)

Heheh. Apologies for any inconveniences caused. I'll be done with removing NPC cats pretty soon, and then the edits should contain more content. --Varg

Jpeg compression

Heya, just a random input. I think you can compress your screenshots a little more without ill effects. The ones you just uploaded (200x400) are ending up 100KB in size, which seems a bit big to me.   --Mikk (T) 05:16, 12 September 2006 (EDT)

Yeah, I've not been compressing the character shots. I can of course do so with future pics, although I'd rather not go back and change aaalllll the ones I've done already ;) --Varg 14:53, 12 Sept 2006 (CET)

Check the new Irfanview, it provides the best compression and resampling (resizing) algorithms that I know of and it provides nice batch functions for trimming etc - you could create a simple frame addon that creates a "photo" rectangle on your screen to always get the NPC screens right. I'm don't really like your extensive one-liner pages (as stated above) but better compression and images will help the wiki imo since I dont believe you will only stop doing it because of my rants... -watchout 05:23, 19 September 2006 (EDT)

Thanks for that link - Infranview does look pretty neat! I'll be sure to check it out. I have been compressing the npcs a bit more now, with Photoshop, so hopefully they are more appropriately sized now. I'm also resizing and compressing old pics if I happen to come across them, but I don't actively pursue it. As for the npc articles, see above. --Varg 17 Sept 2006, 13:28 (CET)

Manic purging of "the"

I notice you moving lots of pages that have "the" at the beginning. I can understand why you might do this for alphabetizing purposes or general dislike of redundant leading "the", but some of the one you move lead with "the" for a reason.

Some examples are "The Park" and "The Mage Quarter" are now Park and Mage Quarter. Although this isn't a serious issue, it somewhat violates the Project:Naming policy, because these article are names based on how they appear in official in-game info (aka map of Stormwind). I've update the policy part that's relevant to make it more clear.

From Project:Naming policy#Other_Articles:

"There is an important exception to this rule: "the", "a" or "an" is included when it would be capitalized if it appeared in source info or text. This applies to location articles, quest articles, guild articles, titles of books, games, and similar works."

--Fandyllic (talk) 5:01 PM PDT 22 Sep 2006

Ah! Finally a voice of real information. I've been very bugged with how roughly half of those articles were kept with the articles, such as "The Hinterlands", while the other half were kept without, "Barrens". It's more for consistency than for alphabetizing purposes. If policy is that clear, then I am relieved because then I can put them all in that form. --Varghedin, 22 Sept 02:04 (CET)

I would have to disagree with Fandyllic. The policy, as approved, states that the exception applies where the definite article wouldn't be capitalized in text. If the name is used on its own, such as on a map label, "the" will almost always be capitalized, rendering the distiction meaningless. By this standard, locations shouldn't include "the" in the article name. I would approve of removing the remaining "the"s for consistency, though we should agree on the standard before proceeding. I've started a discussion at Project talk:Naming policy#A.2FAn.2FThe.--Aeleas 22:55, 22 September 2006 (EDT)

Ok... that's confusing. I will leave well enough alone until this becomes cleared up then. Thanks for the input. --Varghedin, 23 Sept 11:19 (CET)

I'm going to follow current policy until otherwise notified. This terrible mix of "The Soandso" and "Soandso" is making me cuckoo. If nothing else, there should at least be consistency. Varghedin 10:33 (CET), 31 Sept 2006

I highly support standardizing everything, but by the current policy, Project:NAME, it should be done by excluding "the" from article names. I agree that consistency is important, and as I've pointed out at Project talk:Naming policy#A.2FAn.2FThe, trying to determine whether the "official name" includes "the" or not is extremely problematic.--Aeleas 11:02, 3 October 2006 (EDT)

Yes, I understand that. Not to mention the fact that some places have differing names! If you look at the Ironforge map, the entrance part says 'The Gates of Ironforge'. However, when you go to that location, the name you get on the screen is 'Gates of Ironforge'. When you enter the Wailing Caverns, what you get on the screen is 'Wailing Caverns'. But then as you head deeper in, it changes to 'The Wailing Caverns'. What a mess! Varghedin 11:09 (CET), Oct 4th 2006

22,500

That's the number of edits you've now surpassed ... you're in a category all of your own :P -- Kirkburn (talk) 14:41, 29 September 2006 (EDT)

Congrats! That's gotta be some kind of record. --Ragestorm 14:43, 29 September 2006 (EDT)

Lol! The 22,500 club :P Thanks for the notice, I hadn't been paying attention, hehe --Varg 21:22, 29 Sept 2006 (CET)

Quick question

Since I'm not sure where else to put this, I'll say it here. In a recent edit, you say that the Redridge Mountains has the highest level gap between it and another zone (Searing Gorge) - 30 levels. Shouldn't that be Tirisfal Glades/Western Plaguelands instead - from a level 1-12 zone to a level 50+ zone?

Ah, you're right, of course. I'll go back and edit it to clear that up. --Varghedin, 16:45 (CET), Oct 28th

Instance -> Battleground categories

Hey :) I was finding tad annoying and illogical the fact that Alterac Valley/Arathi Basin/Warsong Gulch were categorized as instances. Even though they technically are, technically EK and Kalimdor are instances too. Shouldn't they be categorized as Category:Alterac Valley, Category:Arathi Basin, Category:Warsong Gulch? --Adys 21:11, 31 October 2006 (EST)

EK and Kalimdor aren't instances because there's is only one of each per server at any given time. You don't enter "one of the Kalimdors" when you take the boat because "one of the other Kalimdors" are full at the moment. The same goes for Deeprun Tram - there's only ever one Deeprun Tram in the game at a time. Just because there is a loading screen doesn't make something an instance. Battlegrounds work like dungeon instances in that at any point in time there can be several active instances of the battleground, and each has a population limit.

That said, I'm not saying Category:Battleground makes no sense. The reason I put Alterac Valley in as an Instance category was because I wasn't going to make the other two, as they have no NPCs to fill it. Someone else did make them however, and thus the cats are better candidates to be isolated from the other instances. Especially considering we'll eventually get more BGs through the Caverns of Time once it's released. I'll go ahead and make the change. --Varghedin 07:07, 1 November 2006 (CET)

Sub Regions

Hey, thanks for commenting on my stuff. Just to reply... I would think that the locations shouldn't show up in the article proper. I was using Wikipedia as a model, and if you look at the articles, not many of them have listy type things. Lists look ugly and don't read well. Like if you read the article about the United States of America, there's no list of states except for the navigation bar at the bottom.

I hope we can reach a concensus on how to approach this. And by concensus I mean agree with me. LOLZ. Mind control...--Hobinheim 07:39, 10 November 2006 (EST)

The list of states in USA might not be included because they are numerous and well-known. The article on Norway does list its 19 counties. I should also warn you that I've only cleaned up the subregins for Stranglethorn Vale and lower level zones (Desolace is next), so you might want to consider not making bars for the higher level zones yet. Every single zone I've done so far have had wrong info in the subzones box. But the newbie zones, teens zones and 20-30 zones should all be clean now. -- Varghedin 14:55 (CET), November 10th 2006