Warcraft Wiki talk:Village pump/Archive23

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Icon-download-48x48.png This is an archive of Warcraft Wiki talk:Village pump.

Requests for adminship

Check out the new Requests for adminship page, and nominate someone you think qualifies for administrator or support/oppose one of the existing nominees. --Pcj (TDrop me a line!•C207,729 contributions and counting) 16:44, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

In the past becoming an admin was much more informal, so I hope this process doesn't get too political... Let me see, who's been nominated to possibly be an admin? Oh look the first one is Pcj! ;-) --Gengar orange 22x22.png Fandyllic (talk · contr) 9:40 AM PST 2 Jan 2008
Indeed. Down with politics! Kirkburn  talk  contr 18:01, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

Criticism of WoWWiki

I created Project:Criticism, because I figure we should have a place for people just to vent, if nothing else. If we're really doing a good job, the page will be short. Hopefully things will be added, but also disappear for good reasons. --Gengar orange 22x22.png Fandyllic (talk · contr) 3:30 PM PST 6 Jan 2008

People will vent just to vent... There are always people that hate some aspect of wowwiki. Be it because it has material from some source they don't like, or doesn't have enough material form a source they do like.Baggins 23:51, 6 January 2008 (UTC)

He is right, people are gonna go on there and complain that they HATE WowWiki cause the font is white...Aseh 02:45, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

In-game books and styling

Coobra and I were discussing how in-game book text should be displayed (such as on  [Legacy of the Aspects]). Should they be shown with a table using 'class="darktable"', 'bgcolor="black"', or in some other way? Project:MOS suggests using darktable as much as possible for tables, and I tend to agree. --Pcj (TDrop me a line!•C207,729 contributions and counting) 23:03, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

Where I think how darktable is for in-game books does not look good. Compared to how it currently is. Snake.gifSssssssssssssssssssssssss Coobra sig3.gifFor Pony! (Sssss/Slithered) 23:10, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

Coobra, note that we have to develop for MonoBook skinning as well, which is the coloring that wikipedia uses. Meaning, black text on a black bg doesn't work real well.
For others just joining conversation, see also User talk:Pcj. --Sky (t | c | w) 18:16, 9 January 2008 (EST)
Setting the bg to black is pretty bad, but I agree darktable may not be perfect for that. Perhaps a new CSS class? Kirkburn  talk  contr 23:25, 9 January 2008 (UTC)
Possibly...depending on what it is, of course. :P --Pcj (TDrop me a line!•C207,729 contributions and counting) 23:30, 9 January 2008 (UTC)
All I know is that its been black since 10-03-2006. I wouldn't have choose black either, but I didn't want to change it too dramatically. But yea what Pcj said, depending on what it is Snake.gifSssssssssssssssssssssssss Coobra sig3.gifFor Pony! (Sssss/Slithered) 18:36, 9 January 2008 (EST)
Should have left a comment: Personally, using darktable looks fine, though it might be prudent just to change it to .darktable in the css from table.darktable. --Sky (t | c | w) 23:32, 9 January 2008 (UTC)
It's not tabular data, don't use a table. Simple divs with border and background colours will suffice and require less code. --   07:16, 10 January 2008 (UTC)
Except, we can't use bgcolors (unless you wanna find a color that shows up on this Grey and Monobook's white and also displays legible text...) --Sky (t | c | w) 08:08, 10 January 2008 (UTC)
Hence the "new CSS class" idea earlier ;) Kirkburn  talk  contr 08:24, 10 January 2008 (UTC)
There's seperate skin css files for a reason.. change the colour to something appropriate for each skin, same as with anything. --   09:03, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

I would sugest a parchment coloured background, with black text, for all skins (to make it look like the in game pages). I would also suggest a common but less modern looking font for the text. —MJBurrage(T•C) 10:23, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

Sort of like this.
How about this:

I have done a great deal of research about the Aspects and their titan creators--as much as any human could in a lifetime. There were five Aspects when the titans left this world; they were mighty dragons tasked with protecting the world of Azeroth. Their tales are vast and varied, and even now, in spite of all the information I have fathered, I know that there is much more to be learned of these magnificent creatures.

Much of the knowledge I have now I could not have possibly learned on my own. Because of this, I am extremely grateful to the night elves. It was only with their help that I have as many details as I do. As a result of our interactions, I am under the impression that their beginnings are much more closely tied to the Aspects than I had first thought. However, they guard their secrets far too closely for even me to know for certain.

The information I learned of the Aspects I put here for others to reference in the future. I know it will prove useful, as I feel that these dragons will have a much greater effect on our world as time goes on.

Alexstrasza:

Alexstrasza, the ancient and powerful Queen of the Dragons, was named the Life-Binder by the titans. She was first to be created by the titans to protect the world after they left. It is said that she witnessed the birth of all modern races upon the face of Azeroth. Her red dragonflight, known for their proud demeanor, once ruled over all over dragonkind.

...
For some reason "brown" renders very red on my version of FireFox (2.0.0.11), so I'm using #382800 for the text and #684800 for the border (with #C8B088 as the background color, since "tan" is a little to reddish to me also). We also see in my example the problem with link coloring which we'll have to find a clever way of making not look so bad. --Gengar orange 22x22.png Fandyllic (talk · contr) 11:44 AM PST 10 Jan 2008
Very nice...and once the link situation is complete, this will make the in-game books/letter/etc look very professional. Snake.gifSssssssssssssssssssssssss Coobra sig3.gifFor Pony! (Sssss/Slithered) 20:12, 10 January 2008 (UTC)
By the link situation do you mean the colours? As I cannot read the links in the scrolling box. (the light blue is too close to the background.) Having said that, I love the scrolling box, although it would look better without the unneeded horizontal scroll bar. Also I would increase the height to 180px, and add an inverted (italic bold tan font on a dark brown background) title bar for the name of the book. (see below, note I am not sure how to change link colour within a division without adding a class to the overall style sheet.)—MJBurrage(T•C) 23:22, 10 January 2008 (UTC)
Book Title

I have done a great deal of research about the Aspects and their titan creators--as much as any Human could in a lifetime. There were five Aspects when the titans left this world; they were mighty dragons tasked with protecting the world of Azeroth. Their tales are vast and varied, and even now, in spite of all the information I have fathered, I know that there is much more to be learned of these magnificent creatures.

Much of the knowledge I have now I could not have possibly learned on my own. Because of this, I am extremely grateful to the night elves. It was only with their help that I have as many details as I do. As a result of our interactions, I am under the impression that their beginnings are much more closely tied to the Aspects than I had first thought. However, they guard their secrets far too closely for even me to know for certain.

The information I learned of the Aspects I put here for others to reference in the future. I know it will prove useful, as I feel that these dragons will have a much greater effect on our world as time goes on.

Alexstrasza:

Alexstrasza, the ancient and powerful Queen of the Dragons, was named the Life-Binder by the titans. She was first to be created by the titans to protect the world after they left. It is said that she witnessed the birth of all modern races upon the face of Azeroth. Her red dragonflight, known for their proud demeanor, once ruled over all over dragonkind.

...
I like MJBurrage's version the best, granted additional work for link color changes. --Pcj (TDrop me a line!•C207,729 contributions and counting) 23:24, 10 January 2008 (UTC)
My eyes hurt... the brown doesn't work on the grey as expected, :p. ...and no I won't change my skin.Baggins 23:33, 10 January 2008 (UTC)
I have checked this against each of the skins listed under User Preferences, and it works fine with all of them. I would suggest bold black for the links (see Human above), since a third colour would look busy even if readable. (I also restored Fandyllic's example to the way he posted it for comparison. —MJBurrage(T•C) 23:51, 10 January 2008 (UTC)
I also just fixed the borders on my example (I had left out a key word. —MJBurrage(T•C) 23:54, 10 January 2008 (UTC)
Awesome work MJBurrage, and I'd have to agree using the bold black for links...it looks nice, and it works. Snake.gifSssssssssssssssssssssssss Coobra sig3.gifFor Pony! (Sssss/Slithered) 00:00, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

So is there a proper way to change the default link color from within a division? or does the WoWwiki CSS file have to be changed? (either way, how does one do it?) —MJBurrage(T•C) 02:20, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

I have to say the worst bit is the links, the light blue is blinding. But I don't much like the brown on grey either.Baggins 02:25, 11 January 2008 (UTC)
Who knew Taurens could handle a pen so well.

Could always do something unqiue for them. Like how I did the Kodo Skin Scroll =) What do you think about that? User:CoobraSssssssssssssssssssssssss User:CoobraFor Pony! {TDon't hiss at me.•CIf you do things right, people won't be sure you've done anything at all.) 05:25, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

By the way, I put the scroll bars in just to make the box smaller, not as an example to use in an article. I wanted my example to have a substantial amount of text to see how it looks, but not fill up the Village pump. --Gengar orange 22x22.png Fandyllic (talk · contr) 9:53 PM PST 10 Jan 2008
While the desire to replciate parchment is well intended, it looks awful and ugly on the wowwiki skin. Just keep it matching the skin colour please, grey. Shouldn't be changing the expected link colours on users for special cases either, bad design practice.
As with {{tooltip}}, it wasn't designed to look like a the in-game tooltip, it was designed to be simple and fit with the default skin, just so happens the in-game tooltip did that anyway. Same goes for the infoxboxes, especially since the removal of the horrible border design which had no place on the wiki realy. --   08:43, 11 January 2008 (UTC)
Ignore the coding, as i'm simply using my existing template to show examples of styling atm, but how about one of the ones on http://www.wowwiki.com/User:Zeal/Sandbox#Book. And before some misguided person comments that they don't look good on other skins, they're not meant to, do it differently on other skins, merely proposing a wowwiki skin design atm. If any of those are liked, i'll do a template with greatly reduced coding (and change away from a <h2> for the title). Personally i prefer the 4th then 3rd. --   09:54, 11 January 2008 (UTC)
those look much better than tacky colors above.Baggins 09:59, 11 January 2008 (UTC)
Hmm, probably the fourth one. --Pcj (TDrop me a line!•C207,729 contributions and counting) 14:02, 11 January 2008 (UTC)
I would still suggest using a serif font for the text, and italics for the title. With the colours this subtle—which I don't dislike by the way—the font change would help clearly distinguish the quoted "book" from the rest of the text on the page.
I would also have the height be dependent on the content (so usually there would be no scroll bar), but with an optional parameter that would allow setting a height so that longer texts could use a scrolling box. (This would improve layout of already long pages.) —MJBurrage(T•C) 16:13, 11 January 2008 (UTC)
Sounds good to me. I'll give it a go a bit later then. --   16:39, 11 January 2008 (UTC)
Is anyone a CSS expert who can recommend a way of changing our MediaWiki:Common.css to only color links in book <div>s? --Gengar orange 22x22.png Fandyllic (talk · contr) 3:19 PM PST 11 Jan 2008
You mean "div.book a.link { color: rainbowtechnicolourfunkyness; }" (and then the various dynamic pseudo-classes too)? --   09:58, 12 January 2008 (UTC)
A sneak peak User:Zeal/Sandbox/Templates/book. Let me know what you think, things that need changing etc. --   12:28, 12 January 2008 (UTC)
Looks great, and I like all of the optional parameters you added, they will make it easy to fit on a variety of page layouts. I added italics to the title (hope you don't mind). If it were me, I would also put the title in a serif font, but that's pretty minor. As is, I would think this could be implemented now since no CSS changes are needed for this color scheme. —MJBurrage(T•C) 17:30, 12 January 2008 (UTC)
The CSS would still need to be implemented, there's some extra bits with can only be added via a CSS, and it's not going to display on all skins right now (unless i force a text colour, but it still won't be as nice). Plus i'd like to remove most of the style declarations in the code. Also like a few more people to throw their opinions at it.
As to the title being serif, i did initially try it, and being bold (and probably even worse now italic too) it wasn't as easy to read, so i left it as normal. --   18:03, 12 January 2008 (UTC)
I do not have any of your suggested CSS rules loaded in my preferences, and the template still looks great in the skins I checked (dark and light), so unlike the tan version were the links are unreadable, your colors work well (as blue links are readable on very light or very dark backgrounds (all of the WoWwiki skins).
Having quickly looked over your CSS suggestions there was nothing I saw–and I could be mistaken—that could not be done within a template. Of course a CSS class would allow for a light colored version that better matches the light skins, but a template would work as is.
With respect to the title, have you tried the Georgia Font, as you may know it was designed specifically to be a more on-screen-legible version of TNR, and is preinstalled in both Windows and Mac.—MJBurrage(T•C) 20:07, 12 January 2008 (UTC)
You apparently missed the :first-child::first-letter selector then. Such things can't be done from within the style attribute.
I'll give Geogria a try. --   23:16, 12 January 2008 (UTC)
I just noticed that when you added Georgia (looks great), you also removed the italics (which I prefer). Did you try Georgia each way? —MJBurrage(T•C) 19:02, 13 January 2008 (UTC)
Yeah, i did. There's enough visual off setting styles applied to the title already (bold, background, colour, border) that there was no need to add yet another one, plus it didn't really do much to make it look any nicer or anything imo. --   19:12, 13 January 2008 (UTC)
Well its look good to me, when can we expect to start using this? or does it have to be voted on first? User:CoobraSssssssssssssssssssssssss User:CoobraFor Pony! {TDon't hiss at me.•CIf you do things right, people won't be sure you've done anything at all.) 08:00, 15 January 2008 (UTC)
Dunno if people want to vote, doesn't bother me either way. I'm just waiting on the CSS being implemented, which is up to an admin to do. --   12:19, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

Just drawing some attention back to this...seems we let it sort of die... I'm assuming the CSS still needs to be implemented. User:CoobraSssssssssssssssssssssssss User:CoobraFor Pony! {TDon't hiss at me.•CIf you do things right, people won't be sure you've done anything at all.) 07:16, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

Unicode characters and their use

Computers have pretty much destroyed the correct usage of certain symbols and characters because they've typically been harder and slower to work with due to a lack of support by software and/or hardware.

Now i'd love to see correct usage of things such as dashes used, but alot of people don't know when and where to use them, and inputting the smybols or knowing the character references to use is difficult and slows down the editing process. Seeing such symbols used often confuses other editors too, so it's practice has clearly been avoided.

Therefore we could use a policy to either eliminate their use, or help in their use. I recently commented on User talk:Markkawika#dashes and asked him to stop, as if we're going to support these unicode characters, we should be consistant as not to confuse people.

WoWWiki is served as unicode, so straight away, there shouldn't be any XHTML character references in pages, but there are, and we should start converting them to unicode when seen or run a bot to do so.

As i said, i support their use and would like to see them used, but we need to both educate editors and provide methods to allow them to use them more easily. To solve the first problem, i suggest for a short guideline or more extensive help page that is linked to on the edit page, explaining their uses in regard to WoWWiki. As to the second, a cheat sheet that appears next to the edit box (as WP uses) to provide these symbols, either with javascript input, or simple copy&paste. As i'm sure there will still be confusion, a bot could auto-replace much of the previous and future incorrect usages, but it is a delicate process and not all symbols could be checked from a bot as they're context sensitive.

Thoughts? -- 

  11:53, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

I am a big fan of the proper use of hyphens (-), en dashes (–), em dashes (—), ellipsis (…), daggers (†,‡), and fractions (2+1⁄3). I also like more obscure typography like the numero sign (№) and typographic quotes (‘,’,“,”), although I understand that a number of common fonts render those last ones poorly at small sizes. I also wish that convention still supported typographic spacing—before typewriters full stops used to have 1+1⁄2 spaces after them, which became two spaces in monospaced typing, and than only one space under HTML.
Wikipedia has clickable symbols under the edit window for the common but hard to type symbols, and a simple fraction template. They also add common, but often misused bits of typing to the edit bar (like includeonly, nowiki, and ~~~~). —MJBurrage(T•C) 16:33, 13 January 2008 (UTC)
Agree, except for typographic spacing. It's an archaic practice born out of technical neccessity rather than styling conception. Today it's distracting rather than pleasing to the eye when reading. Hopefully when Kirikburn gets back this will get some more active discussion :p --   17:16, 13 January 2008 (UTC)
As I understand it the 1+1⁄2 spaces was by choice, and two-spaces was the typewriter approximation favoured by Americans. In some fonts two spaces is too much, and in other fonts one space is not enough. What I want is a half-space, but that's not happening anytime soon.
Along these lines, I wish CSS had a good way to align whole columns (center or right), rather than having to do it cell-by-cell. —MJBurrage(T•C) 18:25, 13 January 2008 (UTC)
Should have clarified myself. What i was mostly refering to was the practice of two spaces. The 1.5 spacing can still be emulated through an en space, but the idea is fonts now days are supposed to provide a space character than is the optimal width for inter-word spacing and after a full stop, which is typically smaller than a monospace at roughly 1/3 of an en space. --   19:26, 13 January 2008 (UTC)
Use of unicode and special characters (I prefer using HTML entities when possible, &code;) is fine, but we should be careful when using them in links. I'm not sure the linking mechanism handles unicode very well, but I haven't see many examples. I also highly discourage using copy/pasted or inserted characters when entities are available. Not everyone lives in the MS Windows encoding world and some of us actively resist. At minimum people should test their unicode with Arial or Helvetica fonts. --Gengar orange 22x22.png Fandyllic (talk · contr) 2:14 PM PST 14 Jan 2008
The XHTMl character references exist as a means to insert unicode characters into more limited encoding XHTML documents. When already served as unicode, they only provide a means of easy insertion because keyboards can only provide a limited set of characters. But they look a mess when editing, there's no need to do so. It also has nothing to do with MS Windows encoding, it's unicode, windows just happens to use UTF-8 unicode by default, which is good. Ultimately if you're serving your site in unicode (which WW is), you should use a unicode font (which we don't). Shouldn't need to test for limited character support with fonts that aren't unicode when serving unicode, that's just bad practice, so it's probably a great idea WW switch to a unicode font where available (Arial Unicode MS is a likely candidate with Windows and OSX support and a large character set). It's a case of standards pushing forward when the reality is still far behind (no font supports the full unicode character set and the ones that do still aren't readily available for free). Either way, most browsers support font substitution in varying levels of ability so many issues can go unnoticed. Read Wikipedia:Help:Multilingual support for more. --   23:33, 14 January 2008 (UTC)
Arial Unicode MS is not a good choice. As far as I know, it is not installed on Mac OS X by default, only if you install MS Mac Office.--Gengar orange 22x22.png Fandyllic (talk · contr) 11:26 AM PST 15 Feb 2008

Excessive category renaming

Renaming all the cats to begin with World of Warcraft, isn't that a bit excessive? Who made that decision? User:CoobraSssssssssssssssssssssssss User:CoobraFor Pony! {TDon't hiss at me.•CIf you do things right, people won't be sure you've done anything at all.) 01:22, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

Me. This is WoWWiki, but the name changes were required to ensure they're differntiated from non-wow items and lore from a game neutral view point. Also worth noting is that fact the vast majority of those categories needed to be renamed anyways, as they were against the naming policy (they were title case, which is wrong) and were inconsistant and had doubled up in places. --   01:30, 23 January 2008 (UTC)
But couldn't we just use WoW instead of World of Warcraft for the categories. Like Category:WoW in-game books, rather than Category:World of Warcraft in-game books. User:CoobraSssssssssssssssssssssssss User:CoobraFor Pony! {TDon't hiss at me.•CIf you do things right, people won't be sure you've done anything at all.) 02:41, 23 January 2008 (UTC)
Just don't forget to update the item boilerplate for the new categories.   Zurr  T ∙ C 02:46, 23 January 2008 (UTC)
Well the plan is people shouldn't have to categorize manually once {{tooltip}} and other templates can provide auto-catting based on the already provided info. But yes, i'll make sure the appropriate boilerplates and guides are updated once done. --   03:24, 23 January 2008 (UTC)
Ah, well it we get it to do it all automatically, that would make it a lot nicer. User:CoobraSssssssssssssssssssssssss User:CoobraFor Pony! {TDon't hiss at me.•CIf you do things right, people won't be sure you've done anything at all.) 04:56, 23 January 2008 (UTC)
I did originally plan to use WoW to save on typing and being lazy, but Sky said not to, so i changed to World of Warcraft :p I do agree that the full game title is probably best now though. --   03:24, 23 January 2008 (UTC)
Sometimes laziness is good...but yea...full title would be best...I guess User:CoobraSssssssssssssssssssssssss User:CoobraFor Pony! {TDon't hiss at me.•CIf you do things right, people won't be sure you've done anything at all.) 04:56, 23 January 2008 (UTC)
Zeal: Please! Tooltip changes FIRST! Please don't be breaking the wiki before you have the replacement solution in place! I'm seeing category changes, but I'd like to see a proof-of-concept on the auto-catting first. --Eirik Ratcatcher 01:32, 24 January 2008 (UTC)
  1. It was already broken. I'm creating something that never existed properly in the first, and what existed wasn't/couldn't be used.
  2. The changes do not require auto-catting, that's merely to ease the proccess so such changes and extensive catting will never have to be done again.
  3. You have to break a few eggs to make an omelette. You can not build a house upon poor foundations. Basically... not many major changes get done around here because of scale, and it just gets worse and worse the more it's left in the state it is, facing worsening problems and challanges later on. I detest the reliance upon bots to implement change, this is a wiki, it can always be done in by contributers collaborting, but a standard must be set first. That's what this is all about, getting everything in place for a framework so that even without full knowledge or understanding, anyone and everyone can help or have bots do.
  4. I don't want to have this same conversation yet again.
--   02:04, 24 January 2008 (UTC)
What I see is that this has been less than a week from proposal to execution, meaning that by the time I noticed it and started asking questions, it was already under way - 'so sad, you are too late'. I see the proposal itself splayed across several topics on Village Pump, instead of being given a page of its own - 'find out what is going on under your own power, we're busy doing '. I see a plan being floated without concrete examples of the problem, and without concrete examples of the solution. I see things being broken with the attitude "it'll be broken until someone else fixes it", when even pedestrian-I can see that the means to shorten the cooking time, to work with your on analogy, could have been prepared - but weren't.
You don't want to have this same conversation yet again? Then collect the problem, the solution, and the transition plan in one place, that isn't going to get swept away with the archive tides, and point us to it. --Eirik Ratcatcher 01:15, 25 January 2008 (UTC) --- Edit: Made a separate topic. --Eirik Ratcatcher 01:31, 25 January 2008 (UTC)
  1. There was no proposal, and i see no reason for there to be a proposal. Everything was already in place, just never implemented correctly or fully
  2. The problem was self evident, the solution was first proposed by Kirkburn. I implemented it in seeing that nothing was being done when it's soemthing i brought up before so long ago and knowing anything i did could only actually be an improvement. The state the categories was already, and always has been, unusable and inconsistant. Everything i've done has been by policy and by example, the rest was common sense which apparently people never thought far enough ahead about. It's fixing the fact that barely any existing categories followed policy, it's fixing the fact that the category tree could not be used for browsing the wiki.
  3. Will you please stop claiming that i'm breaking things and letting other people do the work to fix what i've done. It was broken already, it was never implemented fully. I've fixed it, it needs further implementation to be completed and is something i am contributing towards, but it's already well beyond where it was. Getting sick of you constantly commenting on my contributions with this same sentiment and attitude.
If anything i'm simply forcing WoWWikians to take notice and address something that has never reached conclusion and avoided. After than is a new policy is going to need to be decided upon. --   01:32, 25 January 2008 (UTC)
Do I really need to point out the fallacies in determining a policy change after the fact, in any context?
You're right, you are forcing change upon WoWWikians. And this one is resisting, with what he feels are good reasons. That's the nature of, and reaction to, 'force'. And I'll stop complaining about 'breaking' when things are no longer in transition. That is, after all, my point.
You illustrate my point about the need for a document describing the problem and the solution, saying that it was something you "brought up before so long ago". At the rate VP changes, this discussion will fall off the page in mere weeks.--Eirik Ratcatcher 22:51, 25 January 2008 (UTC)
No policy change is required, it's already following existing policy. After completion, a new policy would need to be written up as an extension becuase one has never existed that effects this, because categories have never been implemeted fully. There isn't one, because there's been no need for one. If someone wants to write a priliminary one, by all means, do so.
"forcing WoWWikians to take notice and address" not "forcing change upon WoWWikians.", there's a difference. Try reading what i said more carefully next time please.
The proposal i was referencing as "so long ago" was coupled with multiple other changes and poorly explained, so i didn't see fit to link it, but if you're set on seeing it, then User:Zeal/Proposals/Format. Iirc, you've read it before.--   00:10, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

Non WoW content

This is coincidentally related to the above topic - we don't really support non-WoW content well enough. Renaming categories as Zeal has done is actually quite a good idea as it makes everything much more specific to WoW (as these things are). It is quite feasible for us to carry information for every Warcraft game, but organising and advertising it is something to work on. For one, we're stuck with the name WoWWiki, so I think I still need to make some tweaks to the Main Page to make it more obvious we're not just WoW. Kirkburn  talk  contr 02:33, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

Put a little banner with every game's logo at the top of the page?--SWM2448 02:36, 23 January 2008 (UTC)
There's one excellent method Halopedia uses - a little icon at the top right signifying where this stuff appears (multiple icons for multiple games, etc). Example - http://halo.wikia.com/wiki/Master_Chief ... The reason this came up is because someone requested a Warcraft wiki on Wikia (again). Kirkburn  talk  contr 02:53, 23 January 2008 (UTC)
The Master Chief page renders totally horribly on my FireFox browser (2.0.0.11). Is anyone else seeing this? The Eras template seems to be broken for me, but only in normal view. It works when I edit and preview. --Gengar orange 22x22.png Fandyllic (talk · contr) 5:41 PM PST 23 Jan 2008
Okay, today it looks fine. My browser must have been munged by something else. However, the eras icons cover some wiki message:
  • Community links: Usergroup elections; Video editing for Halopedia? John-117
So we should make sure any thing we have that's similar doesn't conflict with other messages that might show up in the upper area.--Gengar orange 22x22.png Fandyllic (talk · contr) 11:40 AM PST 24 Jan 2008
Well the idea i mentioned to kirkburn, was that we should have an expandable area, like a bar, directly below amboxes, that would contain these icons. Alternatively it, at the very bottom of the article so as not to push down content with something which isn't of extreme importance. Having them in some sort of sidebar would be ideal (perhaps even at the bottom of the summary templates?), but that's not really plausible with our current skin and manual of style. I just believe with more and more wow sources being released, we're going to see it overloaded quickly and is unfair on those with smaller screens.. --   19:49, 24 January 2008 (UTC)
Had a chat with Kirkburn about this implementation and how we could change a few details and implement it here. Very promising and i'm throwing my full support and help behind it. --   03:29, 23 January 2008 (UTC)
Crazy idea, but http://www.warcraftwiki.com/ seems to be untaken (or at least doesn't seem to be taken by some ad spammer) :P ~ User:Nathanyelŋɑϑ 19:20, 23 January 2008 (UTC)
You're wrong, warcraftwiki.com is taken, see: http://www.networksolutions.com/whois/results.jsp?domain=warcraftwiki.com
It does appear to be just a GoDaddy domain squat, though. --Gengar orange 22x22.png Fandyllic (talk · contr) 5:50 PM PST 23 Jan 2008
Not sure what the name of the template is on halo (Template:Era?), but I know that this is also implemented on Wookiepedia at T:Eras. I personally like the look, so it could definitely be interesting. We even have the mini-icons which we use for -inline and -section templates. --Sky (t | c | w) 19:46, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

Our version of Template:Era could replace the templates like {{novel}}, leaving just the -section and -inline versions. As for clashing with wikipedia and language links - the wikipedia template links are mostly pointless now they deleted most Warcraft stuff, whilst the language links should mostly be interwikis now (e.g. [[fr:Tyrande]]). Kirkburn  talk  contr 20:05, 23 January 2008 (UTC)


Strange, but I really did think that wowwiki WAS World of Warcraft (the game)-centric. And from that viewpoint, I don't find the category name changes helpful at all. Could it not be a separate namespace, or something?

Assuming I'm shouted down, shouldn't the category changes be implemented by bot? (Or are they being so handled?) Further, perhaps I've simply caught Zeal mid-process, but I went from Category:Blacksmith (no name change signed) to Category:Blacksmithing Products (name change signed). Yet, almost all of the pages in both categories would fall under the new naming scheme. ... and I say 'almost' only because I haven't viewed every last one of the blacksmithing pages.

What I'm saying is, you're changing the names of categories, and moving their entire contents... so why did you change the name in the first place? Thus the "WoW-centric"... --Eirik Ratcatcher 00:31, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

It's WoW centric, but it's not only WoW content. There needs to be generic names to encompass all sources. Items are a clear candidate for that, so "World of Warcraft" prefix is needed to make the source clearer and disambiguate for all of the previous item cat names. There are no seperate namespaces or such things within a namespace, and the name would still be just as long. My original proposal i made so long ago, further placed more restrictions and accuracy in naming, but it never got anywhere, so this is pretty much the same thing but a level below in strictness.
This is a big undertaking, and will take several days (perhaps weeks) to get everything working properly. Right now, the closest one to being completely finished is Category:Books. What you've described is a case of where i've tried to find (extremely hard due to all the problems with the previous structure) all the existing cats, mark them as incorrect, pointing to new cats, then going through to create the new cats, then again going through to recat all the articles.
The plan is, to have the summary templates ({{tooltip}} and infoboxes) to categorize pages based on their type (books, games, series, items, quests, servers, etc.) and the information they're already provided about it (sub-types and such), so eventually we won't have to rely on users knowing, remembering, typing and sticking to an existing structure, and only expanding upon it after some discussion. The second part would be the introduction of the templates discussed above, replacing some of our existing templates. This way pages are then further categorized by relationship to sources. beyond that, when you get down to the highly accurate and deep categories, manual cating will be needed or yet another template, as it gets too specific to automate (well, foxbot could probably handle alot of it based on info from the armory along side it's current information). --   01:00, 24 January 2008 (UTC)
I'm somewhat concerned about this unilateral move to rename all the item categories with the World of Warcraft prefix. Although I understand the intention, it seems like a cumbersome solution and a way to make WoWWiki not really focused on World of Warcraft, but more of a general Warcraft wiki, which in my mind is only a secondary purpose and should not not guide the structure of the wiki. Zeal, you might be taking, be bold, a little too seriously and verging on reckless. Do other warcraft games have enough similar item categories to justify prefixing all the World of Warcraft item categories? I don't see why we can't just prefix the non-WoW item categories. --Gengar orange 22x22.png Fandyllic (talk · contr) 11:51 AM PST 24 Jan 2008
Seperating wow and other source items is a secondary concern, the primary one is so that there is a generic structure. Otherwise all items, including non-wow items would be under the wow items strcuture, and how messy would that be. Theres also the matter of the fact the previous one had long fallen into disarray because no one had ever agreed on a standard or gone the whole way with ideas for restructing/renaming. I don't think there was a single item category other than "Items" itself that followed policy, and the same can be said for pretty much all other categories too. The reason why the prefix remains is so that there is no confusion and that there's an obvious consistancy in place for people. You don't go changing the wording all of a sudden on a user, just because you fancied something shorter and could get away with it in a few case.
Servers don't need a prefix, as there's no other kind except WoW. Same goes for quests, it's something that only applies to WoW. The WoW prefix is implied there. Its not the same case with items, spells, books, characters etc. Zones is a nice case of a term that applies to wow only, but can still fit into a generic structure for everything else as cartography, regions, towns, cities etc. I probably could have gotten away with "Loot" for items in wow, but really it's too obscure a term to use for people who might not understand it's relevance.
The focus is still and will always be on WoW, it's just these changes were needed so everything else can co-exist with WoW.
As to being "bold". I think this the first time i've done something so "bold", and while it might be seen as reckless right now, i think it'd be worse if i was to stop half way through. Besides, it's the categories i'm having a major impact on. No ones navigates them or categorize consistantly, so i can only improve things. -   20:24, 24 January 2008 (UTC)
Something i want to point out, is that as i discussed on IRC and Kirkburn hinted at, is that these templates should replace the existing templates for this sort of thing, eg. {{Novel}}, {{RPG}}. That means they should be seperate templates for each one. They should not be in a single template as the other wikis have done. This is a large array of sources that are going to be ever growing as Blizzard release products, and if it's in a single template, it will be on pretty much all pages, so updating it that often isn't feasible --   03:08, 25 January 2008 (UTC)
I can only guess, that you discarded the idea of prefixing everything that was not WoW? Being in the vast minority, and destined to stay that way. My viewpoint is skewed, though, by my focus on tradeskills instead of NPCs. Still, there are only so many NPCs that are going to cross over between realms.
I can but smile at you advocating the breaking up of templates. That was an argument I made about {{Tooltip}} when it was first announced. I was ignored then, too.--Eirik Ratcatcher 23:53, 25 January 2008 (UTC)
Another wiki that leverages heavily on templates is Paragonwiki. (eg, Invention: Accuracy) While there are advantages to heavily templating, it makes editing pages much more cryptic and exclusive (as opposed to inclusive). The more useful the template, the more cryptic. I ask for caution in this process.--Eirik Ratcatcher 00:10, 26 January 2008 (UTC)
If you read more closely, it was not primarily about seperating sources, it was about generic naming required to encompass everything, so your argument of minority is moot.
I've no idea why you're smiling at that, considering it has no relevance to {{Tooltip}}. That is something that should rarely change, and has no need to split while this is something that will change often, so does. There's also the fact that all that is being done is the replacement of existing seperate templates as well as creating new ones where needed and giving them a new format and functionality, nothing more. --   00:19, 26 January 2008 (UTC)
I'm also confused/wary about the major changes to categories. If the point is not to separate WoW from non-WoW, what is it? (I can't find an explanation of "generic naming to encompass all sources".) I understand making the site more friendly to non-WoW content, but I also think since it's wowwiki, it's been more than adequate for content to be assumed to be WoW-related, and noted when it's not. Is there a policy page where this is written up? -- Harveydrone 13:46, 29 January 2008 (UTC)
Basically what it means is that there is a genericly named category structure for which to browse the WoWWiki by. So Items, would contains all items, WoW and not, while WoW would have it's own sub-cat, as with all sources, so that you can view only WoW items. The alternative is Items being used for everything, yet WoW not having it's own sub-cat, so people wanting to view WoW only items, can't. --   18:10, 29 January 2008 (UTC)
I don't suppose there are examples of pages where this is the case? Such as, an article for an item not from WoW? Or, say, a mount-related page that belongs in [[:Category:Mounts]] but not in Category:World of Warcraft mount items? In other words, if I want to only see WoW-related mount pages, what other pages are getting in my way at [[:Category:Mounts]]? I'm just trying to understand the problem this is intended to solve. -- Harveydrone 19:51, 29 January 2008 (UTC)
I already gave the example for that case. What you're refering to now is slightly different and something i cover further up in this topic. Basiclaly about consistancy, ambiguous terminology, implicit WoW prefixs etc. --   20:49, 29 January 2008 (UTC)
Can you point to the example? I reread the last two sections and didn't see it. I'd like to get behind this but I need to understand first. -- Harveydrone 23:08, 29 January 2008 (UTC)
The example was simply Category:Items, and i already fully explained it. If you're refering to the latter part of my reply, i'll guess i'll quote it ¬_¬

The reason why the prefix remains is so that there is no confusion and that there's an obvious consistancy in place for people. You don't go changing the wording all of a sudden on a user, just because you fancied something shorter and could get away with it in a few case.

Servers don't need a prefix, as there's no other kind except WoW. Same goes for quests, it's something that only applies to WoW. The WoW prefix is implied there. Its not the same case with items, spells, books, characters etc. Zones is a nice case of a term that applies to wow only, but can still fit into a generic structure for everything else as cartography, regions, towns, cities etc. I probably could have gotten away with "Loot" for items in wow, but really it's too obscure a term to use for people who might not understand it's relevance.

--   03:11, 30 January 2008 (UTC)
Sorry to not be clear. I meant I'd like an example of a specific item page that would go in the Items category but not in World of Warcraft items. When I look at Category:Items now, it looks at first glance like it's all WoW. I'm assuming there are lots of potential non-WoW item pages and I'd just like to see what those would be (since I'm not familiar with WC outside of WoW). -- Harveydrone 20:28, 30 January 2008 (UTC)
No problem. One such item could be Brox's axe, which currently has no such article as it's not a WoW item, yet had great significance and history in the War of the Ancients Trilogy as well as speculation on it's current location and possible future appearences in the WoW or the rest of the Warcraft universe. --   20:48, 30 January 2008 (UTC)
OK, thanks for that. I can see that a hypothetical Brox's Axe page would fall under Category:Axes as well as say Category:War of the Ancients. One point: with only one article, there would not yet be reason for Category:War of the Ancients axes (according to Project:CAT). Thus, if all of the WoW axes were put into a new Category:WoW axes subcategory, the "Axes" category would then contain maybe one article (Axe) and just one subcategory, which is also against policy. So I see that eventually there could be a use for "WoW axes", but until there is, it's better to keep all the existing axe articles directly in "Axes". -- Harveydrone 23:52, 31 January 2008 (UTC)
Problem is WoW Axes would also be a sub-category of WoW, not just Axes, yet Axes would not be for just WoW Axes so could no be sub cat of WoW. So the category needs to exist for the structure and navigation to work. Theres also the points i mistakenly quoted further up, and that it would be an exception as explained Project:CAT --   00:08, 1 February 2008 (UTC)
Saying, essentially, that Categories that exist for the purpose of holding other categories are an exception to the "needs N entries" guideline. Yes? --Eirik Ratcatcher 00:56, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

Predicted icons needed

Per the above dicussion, if we list all the ones we're likely to require here, we can see how much space we'll need. Add more if you know of any. I don't feel the icons don't have to be that specific, the citations and -section and -inline templates can cover that better. Kirkburn  talk  contr 22:21, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

  • Warcraft I
  • Warcraft II
    • Expansion
  • Warcraft III
    • Expansion
  • WoW
    • BC
    • WotLK
  • Novels (one icon?)
  • Manhwa
  • Graphic novels (and comics)
  • RPG books (one icon?)
  • Artwork books
Is there anything unique to WC2 Battle.net edition that would merit an icon? Also, how is Manhwa distinct from Manga and do Manga get lumped into Graphic novels? --Gengar orange 22x22.png Fandyllic (talk · contr) 5:13 PM PST 24 Jan 2008
Not as far as i know.
As to manga and manhwa, i clarified the issue about the naming on it's page. Manga, and manhwa, as with pretty much all comics are originaly released in a comic format, which may be a stand alone issue or in a compilation comic/magazine. Graphics novel is only applied to books, which is why i made the distinction in the category structure. Its not a standardized term, though does apply to pretty much any story book that makes use of images to tell the story. It's more marketing than anything, but it's been previously popular for comic and manga publishers to market volumes in various trade paperback formats as graphic novels. Now, they've started to move away from the term, and usually just using TPB manga/comic or manga/comic book. So the key terms device up a bit like this.
  • Book
    • Graphic Novel
      • Comic Book/Volume
  • Comic
    • Comic Issue/Magazine
As to icons, we should use actual products, not series or groupings mainly as grouping into series is something that can change and requires made up naming, it's better to be more specific for accuracy and the purpose of catting. No point in me listing here, as the list is fairly long. --   03:03, 25 January 2008 (UTC)
If someone would make some suggestions for what to use as icons, especially for the fiction, RPG, and artwork categories, I'd love to get working on a template for this.
The only thing I have to say about what to include is that I'd keep it far more general than that, Fandy. I would suggest just including WC1, WC2, WC3, WoW, Fiction, RPG, TCG, and Art. Remember that many articles would need more than one icon, and we don't want them taking over the headlines. --DuTempete talk|contr 00:30, 29 January 2008 (UTC)
I too am eager. I enjoyed doing the Wowhead, Thottbot and Allakhazam icons, so i intend to give this a go too. But i disagree that subjective and bold generalisations as you've suggested is the wrong way to go.--   20:49, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

New instance boss navigation!

After some discussions on the topic recently, the instance= paramater has been added to the {{npcbox}} template. What does this mean for those of you who don't speak MediaWiki-ese? The navigation templates that used to appear along side info boxes (e.g., the list of bosses in the Ruins of Ahn'Qiraj) now appears in the info box itself. Take a look at any of the AQ20 bosses, like Ossirian for example. The very last line of the box now lists the instance that boss is in. Click on the "[show]" text and you can quickly navigate to all of the other bosses or important NPCs in that instance. Enjoy! --k_d3 17:24, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

This was after a several hour (and sometimes heated) discussion on the IRC channel btw. The problem to be solved was that several people want the links at the top of the page, rather than moving the boss list to the bottom like most navboxes (due to the list style and how they're used, as sequential navigation). Thus the idea is to keep it up top, but merge into the instance infoboxes. Note this means another push to get all bosses properly formatted.
The next step in my opinion is to set up Prev/Next links in instances that support it, such as are used on the patch pages atm. I personally also want the bottom, horizontal nav bars in addition, for consistency.
One other issue that came up was regarding how we link to lore pages - the outcome seemed to be that we should endeavour to put both on templates where needed, but the strat link takes precedence for these templates, because that's what the nav is for. (Thus any bottom horizontal bars should also make that obvious in their title, since they may be shown on the lore pages too). Kirkburn  talk  contr 17:32, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

Wow, that is an elegant solution to that problem - it looks great! I will help change what bosses I can, though I have been very busy with school lately. --Jiyambi t || c 18:05, 1 February 2008 (UTC)
Looks like the instance pages and how they use the instance templates aren't super consistent, so that will need work also. --Gengar orange 22x22.png Fandyllic (talk · contr) 1:41 PM PST 1 Feb 2008
I modified the {{Wailing Caverns}} and {{Molten Core}} templates as examples of hopefully how to make them usable as both vertical nav boxes and without a box (pass nobox=true to instance template) for use in the T:Mobbox, {{npcbox}}, and {{infobox instance}} templates. It seems to work decently. So, now the other instance templates need to be updated also. When bosses= param is used with infobox instance template, you need to pass instance template with nobox=true. --Gengar orange 22x22.png Fandyllic (talk · contr) 5:56 PM PST 1 Feb 2008
Why? The idea of this change was to eliminate vertical navboxes. --Pcj (TDrop me a line!•C207,729 contributions and counting) 02:03, 2 February 2008 (UTC)
There are a few cases where there was no npcbox to add instance= to. Until the npcbox gets added, a vertical navbox is still useful. Besides, what did you do? Tongueout.gif--Gengar orange 22x22.png Fandyllic (talk · contr) 1:05 AM PST 2 Feb 2008
It would then be simpler to add the npcbox rather than have all the extra code for something which is being deprecated. --Pcj (TDrop me a line!•C207,729 contributions and counting) 14:30, 2 February 2008 (UTC)
Only if I had time to go through every instance boss, which I don't. --Gengar orange 22x22.png Fandyllic (talk · contr) 9:26 AM PST 2 Feb 2008
Then leave it for other people to handle instead of making it harder on them. --Pcj (TDrop me a line!•C207,729 contributions and counting) 19:56, 3 February 2008 (UTC)
Love the new instance-nav templates :). However, as I updated the Zul'Aman nav template (and the Zul'Aman articles) I noticed a couple of things:
1) It looks kinda silly to have what appears to be redundant Location info. There is a "location=" field and now an "instance=" field that is almost always the same thing. Furthermore, when displayed in "mini-mode" the "instance=" field produces a link to the same thing as Location does. These duplicate links are also sometimes right on top of each other. (see Nalorakk as example).
2) I'm fairly savvy, but the usage of the "Show"/"Hide" was not obvious at first. What I initially saw was the instance name link, and I clicked on that hoping to see a list of bosses. Nope. Only later did I realize I had to click on "Show".
I'd apprediate any input on this. One suggestion is to not make the Instance name a link in "mini-mode". That encourages the reader to notice that "Show" is a link. It also removes a (little) bit of what appears to be redundant links. -- User:Adonran/Sig1 23:42, 7 February 2008 (UTC)
<----- unindenting...
When I added the instance parameter, I considered the location parameter. However, the existing location parameter has no formatting added to it by default, and as such most of them have links around them, thus: |location=[[Zul'Aman]]. This wouldn't work with the usage of the instance parameter, which would make it something like {{[[Zul'Aman]]}}- so deleting the "extraneous" instance field wouldn't really work. Making the "mini-mode" link work to pop open the box might, however. --Pcj (TDrop me a line!•C207,729 contributions and counting) 00:03, 8 February 2008 (UTC)
I like it Smiley.gif. I didn't realize that the default was no links for the Location. In addition to your change, perhaps then it's also just a small matter of removing any links that people added in the Location field. That way at least only one of the locations will be a link (and hence seem a little less redundant), and it will expand to show the bosses. -- User:Adonran/Sig1 00:44, 8 February 2008 (UTC)
I have a bit of a problem with that - sometimes the location link is actually more specific than just saying that the mob is in the instance (example: Captain Skarloc). So I would personally prefer to see both links stay, but it's not that big of a deal. On a side note, it would be nice if the box were a bit bigger - on that same example, the full instance name overlaps with show/hide because there is not enough space. --Jiyambi t || c 02:02, 8 February 2008 (UTC)
Good point. Maybe I'll just remove the "Location=" fields in npcbox'es where they do provide repetitive info/links. -- User:Adonran/Sig1 05:02, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

Display issue that I've noticed. I updated the {{Blackfathom Deeps}} template and updated the Lady Sarevess boss entry and the new drop down sits underneath loot boxes (at least on my browser). Best method to fix this? -- User:Kochira/Sig 23:37, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

I just wanted to add the new instance boss navigation is very elegant and well designed, good job! Smiley.gif Daos 23:20, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

We should get on WoW-Europe.com fansites list

I was looking at Project:About the wiki and noticed we are on the official US fansites page, but not on the EU one! What are you people across the pond doing!? Stop playing WoW or anything remotely productive and start badgering the Blizzard EU folks!

Seriously, is anyone working on this? I know we do have some representation in the general area... Winky.gif --Gengar orange 22x22.png Fandyllic (talk · contr) 12:55 PM PST 1 Feb 2008

Correct race

I've been noticing a confusion on which race name to give to the undead forsaken. On some of the forsaken members in the npcboxes, are marked as race = Forsaken, while others race = Undead. Shouldn't the correct the race be declared as Undead, since Forsaken is just a group name? User:CoobraSssssssssssssssssssssssss User:CoobraFor Pony! {TDon't hiss at me.•CIf you do things right, people won't be sure you've done anything at all.) 21:52, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

If you select one of the forsaken they actually come up as humanoid, not undead. This is distinction Blizzard made so that spells and abilities that were designed around undead didn't affect players of that race. Ultimately I think the idea that they went with in order to explain this was to create the Forsaken, a race of thinking and independent undead, rather than the scourge who are either unthinking or under the control of higher and more sinister powers. Basically you can think of them all as Undead, but separate races through a sort of evolution, just like we have Caucasian, Oriental, and other races but we are all human. --User:Mucke/sig 23:36, 1 February 2008 (UTC)
Right....I know the history, I'm just asking to the correct way to label the forsaken undead in their npcbox. Cause I see them being classified as both. Here's two examples: Apothecary Zamah and Apothecary Lydon.
Zamah under race is called Forsaken, with Humanoid as their creature type.
Lydon under race is called Undead, with Humanoid as their creature type.
What I'm asking is which is the correct way to label them? Forsaken, or Undead.
Ultimately, in-game every creature that is classified as something is shown as their creature type, not race type. Race is how we see it to be... And even though they are classified as Humanoids, they are Undead...and they're known as the Forsaken. User:CoobraSssssssssssssssssssssssss User:CoobraFor Pony! {TDon't hiss at me.•CIf you do things right, people won't be sure you've done anything at all.) 01:16, 2 February 2008 (UTC)
I would put "Forsaken", since they are really distinct from just any kind of "undead". For example, most Abominations like Mob Glutton and Mob Ramstein the Gorger are listed as Race: Abomination and not undead. By your logic these creatures would be race "Undead", but known as "Abomination"? All Forsaken NPCs should be under race "Forsaken" with mobs being only classified race Undead, if we don't really know what type, but we usually do (see Undead#Types of Undead for a start). --Gengar orange 22x22.png Fandyllic (talk · contr) 6:10 PM PST 1 Feb 2008
Thinking on it further, I understand your confusion, since there are abomination guards who affiliate with the Forsaken and perhaps some banshees and other sorts, but I think we can still use the rule that for those NPCs and mobs who have free will and were once humans we can use Forsaken as their race. Do we know of that many non-ex-human Forsaken NCPs? --Gengar orange 22x22.png Fandyllic (talk · contr) 6:16 PM PST 1 Feb 2008
After reading what you said Fandyllic I just realized that if anything is classified as undead it's under creature (type) not race, silly me. So yea...Forsaken would work as race for the Forsaken Undead NPCs ... unless they are ghosts/banshees, abominations, etc. User:CoobraSssssssssssssssssssssssss User:CoobraFor Pony! {TDon't hiss at me.•CIf you do things right, people won't be sure you've done anything at all.) 04:12, 2 February 2008 (UTC)
Of course...we could always label Forsaken Undead as Zombies under the race line... User:CoobraSssssssssssssssssssssssss User:CoobraFor Pony! {TDon't hiss at me.•CIf you do things right, people won't be sure you've done anything at all.) 04:15, 2 February 2008 (UTC)
I think zombies are an entirely different "species" as it were. Kirkburn  talk  contr 11:59, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

Dear lord this place should have a Suggestions Portal

Its not like this is a burning desire or anything, but its not even about the game anymore for me- its about...idk things that make sense happening, good vs. evil or w/e. When I read something like this: http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=4184984703&sid=1 I swear I can feel a migraine coming on.

That nice long list of wallish text and tightly packed ideas has a shelf-date on those forums for about what, 1 day tops? A week of desperate bumping maybe? It could instead be here nicely formated with internal links and such, not getting pushed off by clones of complaints and dumbage. The sheer weight of sense that this makes to me is cliff-like.

Somethings just fit certain formats-wikis are for keeps, forums are for disposable info- ie. conversations. Imagine if their was a lore forum, or a raid strat forum to replace WoWwiki. Gods that would be torture. Webs of Stickies, their links dieing like flies every few months and everytime your portrait becomes a sweet. Unfortunantly the Suggestions forum hasn't made the Wiki leap yet, so "Ret pally form" must follow "Player housing" who is desperatly trying to rundown "AV fix" who is beating "New AV fix idea" to death with a 2H stick.

Heres my cheap and too-simply formatted example of a Paladin one User:Talgar/Paladin Suggestions. I would urge anyone and everyone who has ever thought of an idea to improve the game, or wants to engender some change to it- make a suggestions page, merge them with others, and publicise it on the forums.

-- Talgar 13:29, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

Wowwiki is not a forum! You are welcome to host your own ideas in your namespace if you want, as long as it does not get to big. Also, does Wowwiki of Blizz control the game? Why would blizzard listen to us more than anyone else, or at all?--SWM2448 15:32, 2 February 2008 (UTC)
Aye- its so much more than a forum, with so much more potential for the stimulation and gathering of ideas. There is a large section of the community that is interested in giving their thoughts on improving the game- its all nigh but wasted! If there was a common pool of ideas then people can inspire each other. I can understand a nervousness that the madness of the forums would descend, but i think its unfounded, in truth. I'd see the Portal as a repository of all the gems gleaned from the silt of the Forums.
I believe Blizzard is interested in our ideas, the very existence of the forums are evidence enough of that. It follows that any measure to improve those ideas, and the ease of reading them, would be welcomed. They'd listen to 'us' because the highest quality of ideas would congregate here, as the highest quality of information has- and to stress this again- its so much easier on the eyes. This is a role the Wiki could play. --Talgar 16:08, 2 February 2008 (UTC)
Your ideas are not unfounded, but they yearn for more than I think WoWWiki can provide. Blizzard has always sought to distance itself from WoWWiki (though I'm not sure why) and has never responded to WoWWiki as far as I know on WoWWiki or given us a liaison. However, they have responded repeatedly to forum posts, even if usually not with much detail or useful feedback. What you're hoping for would probably find more success as a "sticky" post on the forums.
We do host speculative ideas on WoWWiki, so I'm not opposed to having a page for desired changes to the Paladin class here. However, your page lacks some important elements before it should go in the main namespace. Here are the ones I can think of:
  • You need a {{speculation}} tag.
  • Your page title really doesn't seem to describe its contents or the contents need change or be organized to better fit the title. Your title suggests a general set of changes, but the goal and suggestion seem oriented toward a particular type of Paladin... aka hybrid leaning toward PvE. You should put these ideas under a section with a subsection goal describing it, not put it forth as an over-arching goal.
  • Make your suggestions more constructive with detailed evidence and examples. Currently the list looks more like a litany of complaints with solutions that have very little or not enough context.
  • Comment more on balance with other classes. This suggestion list looks like a typical, "why can't paladins be uber and make other classes suxxor?!" rant. You can't just expect Blizzard to add abilities without weakening some or strengthening some countering abilities of other classes. I could say as a warrior, "sure give them all that stuff, but take away their bubble!" How would you feel about that?
  • You can go ahead and add your personal subpage to the Paladins category. It should be obvious to others that these are your personal suggestions, since it's under a subpage.
That's all I can think of at the moment, but it should give quite a bit of work. --Gengar orange 22x22.png Fandyllic (talk · contr) 9:47 AM PST 2 Feb 2008

Thankyou for the critique, I'll do some work on it. If Blizzard does read the Forums then the least that could be acheived with this idea is an increase in the quality of ideas. If you get the playerbase, you'll get Blizz, one way or another. No sticky can match Wowwiki for this, I conjour for you again the spectre of a Lore forum, or Raid strat one. Painful.

Its intended to be a compilation of ideas, so a litany does kinda appear. While my personal prefference is no doubt shining through, well its going to when I'm the only one contributng to it sadly. I've left out detailed arguments as those familiar with the class will generally understand the ideas placed there, and the forumes are a better place for a discussion to ensue.

With regards to my own ideas I have tried to consider class balance- most of mine will have negatives aswell as positives for the player, and address areas that are of a particular weakness, or not that fun a mechanice to play. To keep balance alive I'd hope that the other classes continue to be developed too. I've included others ideas that might be a little imba, and I don't think are the most developed- if nothing else it stops people from needing to post the same imba ideas again and again- and it can lead to a more balanced idea being formed.

Oh and considering how the ideas often overlap and thus would never be instigated together, if you gave us all these things at once, we wouldn't need a Bubble. :P --Talgar 00:14, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

User pages in new classes, class suggestions, etc.

I noticed the paladin suggestions one above, and someone's user page in the "New classes" category, is this fine for WoWWiki? It seems a lot of people will have these types of suggestions and ideas, and clutter up the pages, but perhaps not if this was done.Minionman 22:18, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

If what was done? A suggestions portal?--Talgar 07:10, 4 February 2008 (UTC)
People adding user pages with new clasdses and suggestions. (sort of like what you did adding your suggestion page to the paladin category, though you were free to do that.). What I am wondering is whether it is fine for someone to just go and add their user page to, say, new classes, shaman, etc. categories, since a lot of people may have ideas, some good, some bad, but the large amount of user pages in those categories might clutter them up.Minionman 20:50, 4 February 2008 (UTC)
No, you should not add your user page (aka [[User:username]]) to any category unless it is a list of users. You may add a user subpage to a category if it is directly relevant to the category, i.e. speculations about paladins to Category:Paladins. However, a bunch of ideas lumped into a poorly named page or subpage disqualify it for being added to a category.
Also, you must add the {{speculation}} tag to any user subpages you plan to add to categories. It is also a good idea to explicitly note at the top of your subpage what your wishes are concerning changes (i.e. Please do not alter the contents of this page without the permission of <username>.). --Gengar orange 22x22.png Fandyllic (talk · contr) 1:52 PM PST 4 Feb 2008
O.k., just curious after the paladin suggestions, and a new class category article.Minionman 22:50, 4 February 2008 (UTC)


Hopefully I'm not breaking things...

Hi there. I'm been using this site for awhile now, so I thought I'd help out! Problem is, I don't really know what I'm doing yet. I've done HTML editting and programming in several languages before, so that part isn't hard. I read all the editting help pages and usterstood what was there, but there seems to be a couple things missing. For example, it shows how to make new sections using '=' section name '=', and how to link to them, but not how to make a table of contents. I found the instructions for making a table, and I'd assume it has a preset style or some such, but I can't seem to find it. I also can't find anything on how to align things, except for a center and a frame for images that aligns right. If I've missed it, feel free to point it out. I'd have asked all this on the ICQ channel, but my computer hates connecting to ICQ. Ever. At all. Thanks in advance! Decibal 14:15, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

Table of contents is generated automatically when there are 3 or more headings on a page. You can also force the TOC by placing __FORCETOC__ on the page. --Pcj (TDrop me a line!•C207,729 contributions and counting) 14:30, 5 February 2008 (UTC)
__TOC__ works as well. I believe FORCETOC can be placed anywhere, and the toc will always appear above the first heading, whereas TOC will place the toc where TOC is placed.
As for future help, see Meta's help pages. --Sky (t | c | w) 23:10, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

Neutrality

Seeing as certain recent news may have slightly confused the issue - news which I'm not going to link to, since I don't want a flame war starting - I'm going to mention that WoWWiki is as neutral as ever, and we link where the community wants us to link. Where WoWWiki content appears doesn't affect us, I'm just glad more people are getting to see the fruits of all our labours. Oh, and we're now in the top 900 sites on Alexa, so congrats all round :) Kirkburn  talk  contr 14:16, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

How Do I Ask a Question?

Attempting to enter a comment about a little-known area in 1000 Needles. 4 paragraphs (got carried away with the details). Tried to "post" it. Not sure what happened. How do I retrieve the text? But more to the point, how do I ask the question "How do I retrieve the text?" Took me 20 minutes & multiple loops to get here and I'm not even sure where "here" is.

Hate to mention "competitors" but I have been a contributor to Thott for 3 years. Would like to do the same here but... how? -- Artificial Intelligence + Virtual Reality = Artificial Reality 02:48, 7 February 2008 (UTC)

You may wish to look into editing help pages. Editing on Wikis is relatively easy, but there's a learning curve involved. --k_d3 03:05, 7 February 2008 (UTC)
What page was it at, Wimbleton? --Sky (t | c | w) 03:41, 7 February 2008 (UTC) ----Roguefeather Cave/Cavern in Thousand Needles. An interesting place (may be included in a Horde quest but I've never seen an Ally quest there) with some farming possibilities but with one nasty little surprise I thought was worth mentioning.
BTW, Thottbot isn't a competitor, it's a complement. Thottbot et al are database sites, whereas WoWWiki is an encyclopedia. It's like saying a thesaurus and a dictionary are competitors. --Pcj (TDrop me a line!•C207,729 contributions and counting) 15:51, 7 February 2008 (UTC)

Server speed.... or lack of

I remember we got moved to wikia to improve server speed at one point.

Currently it takes me anywhere from 2 seconds to 2 minutes to open a page... The server is pretty random and slow as hell at the best of times... am i the only one with this problem? User:CrazyJack/Sig 12:20, 7 February 2008 (UTC)

I've noticed poor performance from time to time, but I think the problem is WoWWiki is much more busy than we probably imagined early on and Wikia is really helping us keep from getting swamped rather than making WoWWiki a speed demon. CJ, did you think WoWWiki would break into the top 1000 web sites in the world by traffic when you first started contributing in 2005? I didn't even think it was possible when I first started and am still pleasantly surprised when I think of it now.
Of course someone at Wikia who has access to the server infrastructure guts and reports could give a better answer as to whether WoWWiki is taxing their setup. I know Rustak made the transfer to Wikia, because he foresaw his inability as an individual to keep up with WoWWiki's growth. --Gengar orange 22x22.png Fandyllic (talk · contr) 8:30 AM PST 8 Feb 2008


Google search and all that

Curiously enough, "Pilferer" turns up pages that "Pilfer" does not, even though the latter is a subset of the former... --Eirik Ratcatcher 20:20, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

...and? That would be a Google search issue, not anything we can solve or otherwise address. --Pcj (TDrop me a line!•C207,729 contributions and counting) 20:27, 8 February 2008 (UTC)
I found it worth commenting on. Perhaps there are search alternatives out there. You never know unless you ask. --Eirik Ratcatcher 19:20, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

Need to add to potion list

When searching for potions, an excellent list comes up, there are two additions to make 

        1) In the list of healing potions,  add Minor healing potion 70 to 90 heal 
        2) In the list of mana potions, add Mad Alchemist potion 1650 to 2500 mana

I didn't add them, as I don't know HTML -- CaJorgensen 21:19, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

lol, also add Crystal healing potion, cost 50 Apexis Shards from the Ogre'la
Fel Mana potion 3200 mana restored over 24 seconds, char will also lose ( 25 spell damage and 50 healing) for 15 min
-- CaJorgensen 21:29, 8 February 2008 (UTC)
The nice thing about a wiki is that you generally don't need to know HTML Smiley.gif. Regarding this specific issue, which article/web page are you referring to? -- User:Adonran/Sig1 21:48, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

when I use the search function and search for potions, it's the list that shows up as the second web result —The preceding unsigned comment was added by CaJorgensen (talk · contr).

The potions list is lacking entries for Magic Resistance Potion, Minor Magic Resistance Potion, and the Fel Mana potion also decreases you healing abilities by 50 for 15 minutes also.
Would someone who is knowledgeable in HTML plz add this information :-) -- CaJorgensen 21:52, 8 February 2008 (UTC)
You don't have to click the  Comment  to respond on a talk page. Just click the "edit" link nearest to where you wish to reply. Don't forget to sign your posts on talk pages with 4 tildes. (~~~~). Additionally, be bold and try updating the article yourself! We don't bite all that much. ;) --k_d3 21:58, 8 February 2008 (UTC)
I bite sometimes...but it's in my nature... User:CoobraSssssssssssssssssssssssss User:CoobraFor Pony! {TDon't hiss at me.•CIf you do things right, people won't be sure you've done anything at all.) 22:16, 8 February 2008 (UTC)
Okay I added the following to the potion tables: T:item|Minor Healing Potion}}, item|Minor Magic Resistance Potion}}, item|Magic Resistance Potion}}, and item|Crystal Healing Potion}}. I also updated the info for item|Fel Mana Potion}}. The tables were kind of funky and probably need to be redone to make them easier to edit at some point. Knowing HTML would not have helped. Knowing how wiki tables work would have helped a little. --Gengar orange 22x22.png Fandyllic (talk · contr) 4:13 PM PST 8 Feb 2008
Forgot to add item|Mad Alchemist's Potion}}, so I added that too. --Gengar orange 22x22.png Fandyllic (talk · contr) 4:24 PM PST 8 Feb 2008

Spellstone

In my attempt to move the page for the item Spellstone from  [Spellstone] to Spellstone (item) (in order to get some space for generic information about Spellstones, not only the specific one), I probably have messed up the associated table page (Spellstone/table). For some reason, the page now also shows information from the Spellstone page (even though the code does not). Furthermore, the table page does not correctly link to the item page. Unfortunately I'm a noob in this regard, so I'd be really grateful if someone could undo this for me.

Kind regards. --bfx 17:26, 9 February 2008 (UTC)

Hopefully fixed it. There was a place in the table that still referenced the old spellstone page. Let me know if that worked, since I'm not 100% it was the problem you were talking about. --Jiyambi t || c 19:26, 9 February 2008 (UTC)
Thanks a lot, looks fine now. --bfx 13:19, 10 February 2008 (UTC)
Instead of moving Spellstone, I would recommend making a page called Spellstones and linking from the various item pages to this page. --Gengar orange 22x22.png Fandyllic (talk · contr) 3:55 PM PST 11 Feb 2008
I made Spellstones, so please add generic info there. --Gengar orange 22x22.png Fandyllic (talk · contr) 5:52 PM PST 11 Feb 2008

Requesting some Wiki code help

I'm trying to make a sortable table of my servers Raid progress (See User:Syzgyn/Sandbox). Now, the sortable part is easy, the tricky part is getting the header row to stay on top the whole time. I know theres a "sortbottom" class, is there some alternative I can use to keep it on top instead? -- Syzgyn 06:33, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

The best I could think of is at User:Syzgyn/Sandbox/Header2. I just mushed all the stuff you didn't want to move around into the header cells. The sort buttons don't line up very nicely, though. --Gengar orange 22x22.png Fandyllic (talk · contr) 1:22 PM PST 11 Feb 2008

table of Glyphs plz

Plz add a table of all possible glyphs which can be had with the information 1) Name of Glyph 2) type 3) Equip buffs 4) Use buffs 5) where 6) requirements 7) purchase price

Tables are beyond me - I cribbed this list from Throttbot. List hidden by commenting


  • price varies with characters reputation with the group selling the glyph

-- CaJorgensen 20:29, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

I can't make sense of most of the data you have pasted here, do to the loss in formatting from the original source. I tried making an example for you from what I see here, from it you should be able to figure out how to do it on your own.

Using the code: 

{| class="darktable"
|-
! Glyph !! type !! Equip !! Use  !! where !! Requirements !! price *
|-
| Glyph of Deflection 
| trinket 
| Increase block rating 12(1.5%)<br>Increase block value of shield 23 
| Increase block value of shield by 235 for 20 sec (2 min cool down) 
| Drops from Sapphiron in Naxxramas || na || na
|-
| Glyph of Arcane Warding 
| head armor 
| adds 20 arcane resistance 
| 
| 
| honored with Sha'tari 
| 100 gold 
|}

You get:

Glyph type Equip Use where Requirements price *
Glyph of Deflection trinket Increase block rating 12(1.5%)
Increase block value of shield 23 		Increase block value of shield by 235 for 20 sec (2 min cool down) Drops from Sapphiron in Naxxramas na na
Glyph of Arcane Warding head armor adds 20 arcane resistance honored with Sha'tari 100 gold
If you would like to learn more about how to make tables, see Help:Table. --Jiyambi t || c 21:48, 11 February 2008 (UTC)
hrm... Glyph wasn't good enough for you? :/ --Sky (t | c | w) 08:17, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

Patrollers and rollback, sitting in a tree...

Members of the patrollers group (that is, the "Watchdogs") now have rollback privileges - this is essentially one click edit reversion, and is shown by a [rollback] link on edit logs. Please only use it in cases of vandalism! Enjoy! Can someone archive this page, plz? K thx. Kirkburn  talk  contr 19:01, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

NOTE: When you rollback, it will rollback all the consecutive changes of the last user. Or that's how it worked the last time I did it. So, in the case where the last few changes are by the same user, but you only want to revert that last change or not all the last changes by that user, please do it the old fashioned way:
  1. Click history and click the date/time of the change at a good state
  2. Click edit this page, select all in edit area, and copy.
  3. Click edit this page make sure you are editing the current page, select all in edit area, and paste.
  4. Click "Save page" button.
--Gengar orange 22x22.png Fandyllic (talk · contr) 6:54 PM PST 14 Feb 2008
By the way, here is the list of patrollers and "Watchdogs" --Gengar orange 22x22.png Fandyllic (talk · contr) 6:58 PM PST 14 Feb 2008
Or, if you didn't want to bother to copy and paste...in the history page just select the two revisions you want to compare (i.e, the revision before the first edit you wish to erase and the last revision you want to change), click "Compare selected revisions". On the next page, click Undo above the right diff. This will show you the changes being made, click "Save page" at the bottom to commit. This also allows you to compare intermittent revisions and remove certain revisions without overwriting newer acceptable edits. --Pcj (TDrop me a line!•C207,729 contributions and counting) 05:12, 15 February 2008 (UTC)
Your steps 2 and 3 appear to be redundant - if you click "edit this page" on an out-of-date version and save it, it'll function more or less like a revert. -- Foxlit 08:36, 15 February 2008 (UTC).
The Starlightfox speaks truth! All you need do is click on the version wanted, click edit, and save. --Sky (t | c | w) 09:11, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

Missing icons from 2.4

Could someone upload to WoWWiki icons for new 2.4 items (such as  [Blade of Life's Inevitability],  [Wand of Cleansing Light] and many others)? I'd be really appreciated. -- Vysogota T / C

Please put items you would like icons for at Project:WoW Icons/Patch 2.4 Wanted Icon List. --Gengar orange 22x22.png Fandyllic (talk · contr) 6:39 PM PST 14 Feb 2008
Added some of them, more to come later. --Vysogota T / C
All missing icons up to 2.4 are now uploaded. --   15:52, 15 February 2008 (UTC)
Thanks. --Vysogota T / C


New set of pages

I am creating a new set of pages. I am going to group them under a new page most likely named "Healing Like a Pro". They will focus on healing properly for the end game. an example is on my talk page Priest Healing . If you have suggestions then make them at the top of the talk page under the "READ THIS BEFORE TOUCHING". Make your comments there. Until I move it to a real you are not welcome to edit it, only tell me what you think needs to be changed.

Now what I need to know is, how to keep this protected until its ready for public consumption? Do I just need to keep it a talk page? What if some twit steps in a posts them as pages before I am done? -- User:Sharlin/Sig 15:42, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

Those twits will edit it anyway, after it's all done. But I would just recommend leaving it in your user space for the time being. Most people ignore user space edits. --Sky (t | c | w) 03:25, 15 February 2008 (UTC)
If you want to protect it from being edited by someone else, don't keep it on any wiki. That goes against the nature of the wiki and is counter-intuitive. If you don't want people making changes and User namespace isn't secure enough, save your work in a text file on your computer. --Pcj (TDrop me a line!•C207,729 contributions and counting) 05:17, 15 February 2008 (UTC)
I was unduly harsh. But Pcj makes a valid point; if your User namespace isn't secure enough for you, don't release it until you're done. That said, one suggest I would make would be to change the name to "End game healing," or "Raid healing." Healing Like a Pro is... a weird way to say what you want to say as a title. --Sky (t | c | w) 05:23, 15 February 2008 (UTC)
Well I haven't determined a final name. I have two pages currently under development, http://www.wowwiki.com/User_talk:Sharlin/HealingShaman and http://www.wowwiki.com/User_talk:Sharlin/HealingPriest. Of course I will need to get Paladin's and Druid's covered. I would like to group them under one page with links to the other four. Don't think this just about healing for raids, a lot of it works for any five instances User:Sharlin/Sig 07:02, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

Collapsable Table of contents

Is there a way to collapse a table of contents further, so that after you click off hide you don't see all the contents at once, just the largest headings to begin with?

-- Talgar 10:18, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

Not any easy way. If your concern is about the village pump, we will be archiving several threads soon, so the TOC should shrink. --Gengar orange 22x22.png Fandyllic (talk · contr) 10:10 AM PST 15 Feb 2008

Ren' Dorei

Although elves are probabally getting boring with their numerous sub-races, but i have hought of another faction. The Forest elves. These are the elves that the Pandarean tribes truly accepted into their presence before they heard of the High Bournes dabbaling in arcane powers. Although the Pandarean empire severed most links with the Elven factions, they could not leave these forest elves to be warped by the dark energys and instead, used them as soldiers, training them up in the laws of Pandarean warfare and teaching them how to harnis the elven druidic potential to that of which no other druidic race could dream of. They are the true druids of the Elves. They have powers to merge with the forces of nature, shifting into the very trees and hills. They call upon nature to create and destroy. They live in peace with the pandarean. No other Azerothian or Outlandish race knows about them. The only records held about them are in the lost librarys of Lordaeron, that not even the forsaken have found. I am suggesting that i could make a fan fiction page about them. Whos with me? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Jarkimond (talk · contr).

You are perfectly allowed to make a fan fiction page under your namespace, just be sure to follow the guidelines. Is User:Jarkimond/Ren'Dorei a good name?--SWM2448 21:37, 15 February 2008 (UTC)


Sure...that sound kwl...i will hopefully be adding the information soon!!

Suggestions for improving my navbox?

So I started writing a guide. It got too long, so I broke it into separate pages and wrote a vertical navbox to link them together. With all the subsections, even the Navbox got too long, so I monkeyed around with it a long time until I figured out how to make the navbox sections collapsible. Unfortunately, the navbox is now hideously ugly, and I'm out of ideas on how to improve. I haven't finished the navbox (need to linkify to sub-section anchors, etc.), but could anyone help me out with this before I work on it more?

Currently, the navbox is a darktable. Each section is, in turn, a cell of the main navbox that contains a sub-table with class="collapsible collapsed". The section heading is the title of the table. This works fine, but looks terrible.

I'd like the heading of each section to use the "title" style, not the table heading style. Or something. In particular, I'd like them to be left-justified, not centered.

Also, the sub-tables don't go out to the full width of the navbox. It is already kind of wide, so I'd like to avoid the blank space.

The navbox is at User:Kathucka/Hunter's_Guide_to_Karazhan/navbox currently. Any thoughts?

On another note, since the guide uses sub-pages, the headings of the articles show some rather ugly titles by including the parent page names. It looks awful. Is there any way to force a cleaner title?

-- Kathucka 23:08, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

Well, I got the section headings to be left-aligned, but they're still ugly. Just not quite as ugly.... Kathucka 23:41, 15 February 2008 (UTC)
I love it... --Sky (t | c | w) 20:27, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

Best Pet? (at lvl 40)

Moved to the correct place --> the warcraft pump User:CoobraSssssssssssssssssssssssss User:CoobraFor Pony! {TDon't hiss at me.•CIf you do things right, people won't be sure you've done anything at all.) 08:22, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

Loot in Instance Pages Inconsistently Displayed

From one who spends a lot of time on WoWWiki looking through the instance pages to see the loot in each, it's mildly frustrating to note that there's no consistency between the pages. Some pages display the BoEs as the graphical images (which is wonderful to do visual comparisons with instead of having to hover over the names of items) while others don't, BoEs are variously titled (BoEs, Elite Mob Drops, etc. All equating to the same thing), some pages have so many bosses that their loot isn't displayed on that page, and you get redirected (a lot of the time the redirection just has the list of items to be clicked on, and some not even hoverable - i.e. BRD). You get the picture. I'd like there to be more consistency here. Even if the instances with an insane amount of mobs needs to be redirected, at least it could be displayed in a consistent manor as most other boss loot displays. Any ideas/comments? It doesn't seem that hard to do, but I just started poking around here. =)

-- Innocentlysassy 11:50, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

Many changes are currently taking place, older articles won't be like newer ones as the times have changed, new ways of doing things have changed, and new members are contributing. If you feel things are not how they should be, step up and improve it. There's over 53,000 articles... everything can't be changed in a day. User:CoobraSssssssssssssssssssssssss User:CoobraFor Pony! {TDon't hiss at me.•CIf you do things right, people won't be sure you've done anything at all.) 20:09, 17 February 2008 (UTC)
Don't feel overwhelmed by a task, though. Start making one instance article the way you want it to look and ask people here at the village pump to use it as a model. However, your current complaint seems not so much about consistency, but not meeting your particular requirements and your complaint is vague. Please give a specific example of an instance loot section you like and one that you don't. That way people can see how you want it and either disagree or agree. If there is widespread agreement, people will start making changes without doubts about whether someone might want to change it back. --Gengar orange 22x22.png Fandyllic (talk · contr) 1:18 PM PST 17 Feb 2008
One thing I noticed is that not all instance pages have a loot section or page, but instead the user must look at individual boss pages for loot. I think it would be good to have a loot section or subpage detailing all loot in an instance for all instances. --Jiyambi t || c 23:34, 17 February 2008 (UTC)
That is something that caught my attention, Jiyambi. As for examples... The Deadmines page, for instance. It has all the loot you can get from that instance smack dab on that beginning page. There's no need to be searching for links to see what you can get there. If you want the strategy for each boss, then there's a section where bosses are linked to the storyline for them as well as the strategy and loot you can get. But you don't have to click on each individual boss just to find the loot, because it's right there. If you ever thought to yourself, "I wonder what mail drops I can find in this instance?" you don't have to click through every single boss just to find the mail drops. Also if you wanted to bring up 2 wowwiki pages to see the comparisons between the mail drops between DM and WC it's right there for you. All at once. Then there are pages like that for BRD that link you to a loot page itself. I can understand why. My god BRD has 3 bazillion bosses, but looking at the loot page can you immediately tell what each type of item is and if you can utilize it? If you've been playing long enough, maybe by what it's called. But what if you're a newbie? And then it's a matter of clicking through every item to see if it's good for you (or clicking on the bosses on the off chance that it'll display all the loot visually). Visual loot displays are extremely handy and as it seems like a simple function to make it so, more pages could definitely be utilizing it. Also if it's all on one page, special items like Enchant Boots - Fortitude will have a home. Currently not listed on the Mana-Tombs page as it's a drop from a trash mob, and not a boss. I've no problem with stepping up and helping out with it, I just wanted to see what input others had and if there was a reason it should stay the way it was (before accidentally stepping on toes). -- Innocentlysassy 02:03, 18 February 2008 (UTC)
Or perhaps even doing the opposite and make every instance page have a link to the instance's loot? So that the pages that have a million and then some won't flood out the informational page. The point still remains to keep it consistent. -- Innocentlysassy 02:26, 18 February 2008 (UTC)
I think having loot as a separate page will be the best solution, especially if we go with a format that has the full tooltip displayed. I really like the way the Karazhan loot page is set up, so there are columns for types of loot and rows for different bosses, making it easy to tell what you might be interested in. However, it doesn't show the full tooltip without mouseover. Still, it could potentially be modified to show the full tooltip (though this causes the table to become very large). --Jiyambi t || c 05:00, 18 February 2008 (UTC)
I agree with that (minus turning it into full tooltips). When I go to an instance page I don't care about the loot information that I can either find on the encounter itself or a quick checklist. Having the Full tooltips with loot of every boss/trash mobs on the instances' page really makes it more annoying to find things... I could only imagine how more annoying it is with a normal size laptop screen. User:CoobraSssssssssssssssssssssssss User:CoobraFor Pony! {TDon't hiss at me.•CIf you do things right, people won't be sure you've done anything at all.) 05:08, 18 February 2008 (UTC)
<----- outdent

So it seems the best solution is to have a separate page, linked from an easily accessible section of the main page, which displays in table format but does not include full tooltips? This keeps the page small enough to fit on a screen, keeps the main instance page uncluttered, and still displays info in an easy to access fashion. Specifically, users can see at a glance how much loot from a particular instance is applicable to them. --Jiyambi t || c 05:31, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

That is a very well displayed and organized layout. I'm impressed. =) If that's fine with others then when I have time some pages will start moving over to that kind of layout, getting rid of loot from the instance screen. If there are any other suggestions, I'm all eyes.  ;) —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Innocentlysassy (talk · contr).
Take a look at the Zul'Aman loot page, the SSC loot page, and the TK loot page for a very similar but slightly different (and better imho) layout. -- User:Adonran/Sig1 20:56, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

Any hope for in-page spreadsheets?

Is there any method for putting small spreadsheets into a page. Specifically I'd like to build a page with a small form. The user would have text-entry cells (say to enter a Resilience), and computed cells (reduced chance for a crit, reduced crit damage).

Currently, the best alternative seems to be static tables, such as

Resilience Player damage Rating required
Level 60 Level 70 Level 80 Level 85 Level 90
1% - 1% 9.292 14.652 30.467 92.316 310.0

but I believe targeted calculators would be more helpful.

-- Erdluf 14:52, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

This would require some JS to operate. I could code it if there's support for the idea. --Pcj (TDrop me a line!•C207,729 contributions and counting) 23:34, 18 February 2008 (UTC)
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