User talk:Watchout

Welcome to the NP Patrol!

Read the NP Patrol tasks to begin with, but I don't enforce anything definite on how we review new pages. It's all good.

Don't hesitate to ask any questions. You can put them on my talk page, your talk page, or the NP Patrol Discussion page

--Fandyllic 1:12 PM PDT 15 Sep 2006

Yay! -watchout 07:13, 16 September 2006 (EDT)

Welcome back

Nice to have you back. :)

BTW, you're welcome on the IRC channel. Don't hesitate to wave in there if you pass by! --Adys 20:09, 26 December 2006 (EST)

Hi there!
Actually I was never gone, just a few weeks off to concentrate more on studying, WoW (and everything around it) is quite the timekiller...
Thanks for the invitation to the IRC, though normally I have problems idling in IRC channels and I end up having the irc running in the background totally unaware of it. So if you want something from me, it's better to drop me a message (here) than wait for me to come to the channel ;) -watchout 12:43, 27 December 2006 (EST)

Well it's still kind of an easy way to ask anything to the others ^^ --Patrigan - Talk - SH (EU) 10:14, 28 December 2006 (EST)

Greenwood Press

ROFL, typo on title. Moved. Thank you for the catch. =). --Voidvector 14:25, 27 December 2006 (EST)

Working on guilds.

I see you are busy working on the guild pages. I would like to show you the following (not so old) proposal which might interest your work:

Project talk:Guild pages policy#Change_to_the_Policy:_Naming

Seeing that you flagged the whole Sentinels guildlist as wrongly named, this change actually would have them deflagged. So you might want to take a look at it :)

thanks. --Patrigan - Talk - SH (EU) 10:13, 28 December 2006 (EST)

I did what? *confused*... I'll read your proposal, though I dont know what to think about it yet. Thanks for the hint anyway -watchout 05:59, 29 December 2006 (EST)

I was referring to the guilds on the server Sentinels :p You have them on your userpage as all with a wrong name. (could be ofc that your Userpage isn outdated >.>) ^^ --Patrigan - Talk - SH (EU) 07:07, 29 December 2006 (EST)

ah, now I remember... they had names like Guildname Server, that was just confusing ;) - outdated ofc. -watchout 07:11, 29 December 2006 (EST)

Guild policy changes

I noticed that you had a "No" vote for options 1 and 2, which have since been removed by Montag. Perhaps you might be persuaded to vote for option 3... :OSky (t · c · w) 16:01, 18 March 2007 (EDT)

Sorry

Hey sorry about those. I created those pages as placeholders because so many paged linked to them yet they did not exist. I intend to add content to them when said content becomes available. -Tetsuo86 16:58, 3 January 2007 (EST)

Bot stuff

Hey there, I see you are active again so I'll jump on the occasion. We are currently in a dire need of a bot experienced user (see Project:Bot requests) - particularly for the Elinks task. Do you think you'd be able to program Watchoutbot (talk · contr) to do that task? It'd be really appreciated - no problems at all if you can't ofc. --User:Adys/Sig 12:43, 6 March 2007 (EST)

Hey! Oh I'm quite sure it's possible, though I'm not sure how long it will take. And I have an exam on friday so I won't start before then - I hope :-). I'll set up a reminder for me though so that I won't forget... -watchout 13:23, 6 March 2007 (EST)

Oh I just realized... the bot would run and generate load on the server for a while and wowwiki seems a bit stressed lately. So it would be nice if you could tell me a good daytime where the bot should run (and please supply UTC timezone offset too :-P) -watchout 15:28, 6 March 2007 (EST)

Bot stuff revisited

Are you still active? If not I am will take the WSG, AV, and AB Mark bot request. Just wanted to let you know in case you are around. User:Kitan/Sig 10:13, 11 April 2007 (EDT)

I am, but I'm a bit busy currently - the bot is up and running already but it needs supervising and because of all those templates, its a bit hard to get a valid list of pages. And it does all {{cost}} stuff replacement not just the wsg,av, ab marks, so if you like I'm not holding you back, but it's actually there, working and ready. Just have to do some university stuff - writing a paper - for next week -watchout 07:30, 12 April 2007 (EDT)

I understand about University stuff. Good luck and I will stop working on this bot. Someone had just mentioned that you were more than likely inactive. Thanks for the response. If you have any other comments drop by my talk page. :) User:Kitan/Sig 11:32, 12 April 2007 (EDT)

Inactive

I can't contribute for a while I think. Too much other things to do at the moment. -watchout 09:24, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

• Im looking for some help with getting php to login to wowwiki and deal with the sessions and tokens. Figure you might be able to help rather then spending my time pulling my hair out getting it to work. I would rather not reinvent the wheel. Laurly 13:19, 2 July 2007 (UTC)

Quest template

I don't suppose I could convince you to explain what you mean by "an destroys overview-pages" on the quest template vote? Either here, or there? --Eirik Ratcatcher 17:30, 29 August 2007 (UTC)

Pages like Warlock quests should ultimately include the same quest chain templates as the single quests. And this page would definitely be harder to read with the proposed format. The other reason for my no vote is that its just not necessary just for some "border creep" (and there's still so much space on my small notebook screen, guess how much there is on a 20" wide screen display?). Also if you stick to the list-type-1.25 dimensional-variant any version you come up with will be equally bad because they can never show the full possibilities of quest-chains: multiple endings, multiple starts, forks, etc. To display those you would have to do some SVG graphics or alike or some very ugly tables.

I'm curious however, other voters gave no reason at all why they voted yes - did you ask them out too? -watchout 17:56, 29 August 2007 (UTC)

Bad case of "they agreed with me, and my reasons are" by definition "good". And in general, disagreement is more valuable than agreement - it indicates deficiencies that may or may not be correctable.

There's absolutely no reason (that I know of) that quest chain pages cannot be transcluded in non-quest pages in the same fashion they are included in quest pages. I had, early on, included a link to the quest chain within the summary section of the chain page. I've since decided that that was an error, for precisely the use you mention.

Multiple endings, multiple starts: I put forth the invention that these quest chain descriptions can have text in them describing the nature of the paths. This is equally useful for simple indented schemes.

I do not disagree, that having a leveled array of quests has value in some situations. (The examples I put in the "quest progress" section of the preload page display this as well.) But where the progress is mostly linear, I see no value in indenting each subsequent quest.

Quest_Chain:The_Hand_of_Gul%27dan shows many of the possible things you mention: multiple starts, forking. It is also an example of my attempt to deal with this whole issue. Compare the current version to this older one. Do you really prefer the latter in all regards, over the former?

My QuestBranching page is (essentially) a sandbox). I invite you to play with the Hand of Guldan section, in an effort to find a format we both find useful. I do not want to promote a scheme that cannot work, and you have shown a willingness to criticize. I'd like to take advantage of that before your attention wanders too far elsewhere. --Eirik Ratcatcher 22:29, 29 August 2007 (UTC)

You know, you just showed (in the gul'dan chain) how to add a single ending from forks in the old style, I didn't think of this method but it fits and has some logic. In this case the old style is definitely better - where you need additional explanations in the flat version, you didn't need those in the hierarchical one. The quest chain should be an overview not a story.

I agree that the flat one *looks* a bit better - cleaner, but thats all, sorry -watchout 23:01, 29 August 2007 (UTC)

I invented the quest chain category for the stories told by the chain of quests. The summary section of the chain should be just an overview, though.

The reason I disagree on the hierarchical model for that particular chain is that *I* did not, in fact, understand the information as presented, until I actually sat down and read through the quests themselves. I understood it much better once I had completed the quests, sure. But you can't beat the perspective, coming from a position of complete ignorance. And I admit, it was that particular chain that got me off on the tear about "mostly flat", and annotated chain descriptions.

I would be interested in seeing a diagram of the centaur quests in Desolace. There, I may well have painted myself into a corner. I suppose I'll find out if/when I get to it. --Eirik Ratcatcher 20:22, 30 August 2007 (UTC)

ps - thanks for taking the time to respond. And... perhaps you can fiddle with the quest chain on my sandbox page, to show me your current thinking? --Eirik Ratcatcher

Watchoutbot

It stopped updating Project:Guild stubs. I is a sad panda.

Any chance you stop by often enough to give it a poke or two every once in a while? :) --Sky (t · c · w) 05:46, 24 October 2007 (UTC)

Oh, I'll check it out ;) -watchout 08:18, 24 October 2007 (UTC)

Hm, it seems to be a server configuration issue, I'll have it fixed soon ;) -watchout 22:27, 24 October 2007 (UTC)

fixed ;) -watchout 19:51, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

Yay! Thank you much watchout! --Sky (t · c · w) 22:04, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

It stopped updating again. --Pcj (TDrop me a line!•C207,729 contributions and counting) 22:52, 4 April 2008 (UTC)

Yeah I know, I couldn't find an error though, has to do with the mediawiki update I think... -watchout 19:00, 5 April 2008 (UTC)

I think I found the error, the whole script runs for a while though and I didn't want to start the thing by hand either, so I'll just wait for the cron-job to pop and see if it works ;) -watchout 12:39, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

It works! --g0urra[T҂C] 15:27, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

Bad guild names

I would post the problem with bad guild names at Project:Server_requests#Possible_and_probable_bugs. You might want to ping Kirkburn also. -- Fandyllic (talk · contr) 2:49 PM PST 7 Apr 2008

Guild stubs category changed

Project:GS isn't being updated appropriately because someone changed the category to Category:Guild stubs. --Pcj (TDrop me a line!•C207,729 contributions and counting) 16:15, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

Sounds like an easy one, I'll check it out -watchout 16:51, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

Looks like it was just changed back... --Pcj (TDrop me a line!•C207,729 contributions and counting) 17:08, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

OK, so we've decided Guild stubs is the way it is, so proceed with that checking out part. --Pcj (TDrop me a line!•C207,729 contributions and counting) 17:30, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

Now that's odd, the page at Project:Guild_stubs/List already contained the correct list, but the Project:GS did not. I edit-updated the page for now, and I hope this doesn't happen too often ;) -watchout 08:28, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

Ze bot, it not happy

Heya! Watchoutbot isn't updating Project:Guild stubs/List - we just moved to MediaWiki 1.13, so it may be a small API tweak. Think you can fix? Cheers! Kirkburn  talk  contr 13:14, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

most probably something on the page layout changed... there's no direct data access api yet, I suppose? -watchout 13:50, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, there has been, http://www.wowwiki.com/api.php for details. --Pcj (TDrop me a line!•C207,729 contributions and counting) 13:52, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

Oh, that looks promising, I'll see if I can use this -watchout 13:54, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

Got it working again, still playing around with some parameters though, so don't get sad when something's wrong again ;) I'll post a message when I'm done -watchout 18:27, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

Ok I'm done there, the bot purrs like a kitten... or well it would purr if it could, maybe I could build in audio so that it really purrs when working fine and hiss or growl when acting up... hmm...

by the way, action=edit seems non-functional in the current api.php - or did I miss something? -watchout 18:49, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

It's nonfunctional in the build Wikia just installed, but the Wikimedia servers are running the latest build of MediaWiki, which happens to have had the action=edit just turned on about a couple weeks ago. You may want to consider coding the bot for when that's turned on. --Sky (t · c · w) 18:57, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

I had it coded, it's there and actually should already work... I was a bit confused when I got 20 meters of return message from my edit request. And oddly enough the api.php reports itself as version 1.13.1, while the documentation states that action=edit appears in 1.13 ... *sigh* The happy world of documentation :) Thanks for the info though -watchout 19:10, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

It appears in 1.13, but apparently is really buggy in our release, so it was withheld. --Sky (t · c · w) 19:12, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

All guilds on Project:Guild stubs/List appears with "-1 days" left, what's up? g0urra[T҂C] 21:43, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

Now that's odd *sigh* I'll check what's up ;) -watchout 21:47, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

Ok, some script seems to have touched all those pages and so changed the "touched" attribute, so I switched the bot to just read the timestamp of the latest revision - should work now ;) -watchout 22:20, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

Dates on Guild bot

The page history says that Watchoutbot last updated on January 4, yet the page says it was updated on December 29. g0urra[T҂C] 16:39, 4 January 2009 (UTC)

Yeah I know the, clock of the server has issues - they're too much for ntpd to fix, working on it... ;) -watchout 17:55, 4 January 2009 (UTC)

Alright, thanks for letting me know. g0urra[T҂C] 18:03, 4 January 2009 (UTC)

I never thought seeing a plain time value would be such a wonderful thing, but I finally subdued my server and it's actually showing the perfectly right value! -watchout 01:31, 22 June 2009 (UTC)