WoWWiki talk:Village pump/Archive23
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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 (T•C) 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! ;-) --
Fandyllic (talk · contr) 9:40 AM PST 2 Jan 2008
Criticism of WoWWiki
I created WoWWiki: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. --
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? WW:MOS suggests using darktable as much as possible for tables, and I tend to agree. --Pcj (T•C) 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. 
{T/C) 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 (T•C) 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 {T/C) 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. --
- There's seperate skin css files for a reason.. change the colour to something appropriate for each skin, same as with anything. --
- There's seperate skin css files for a reason.. change the colour to something appropriate for each skin, same as with anything. --
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)
- 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. -- Fandyllic (talk · contr) 11:44 AM PST 10 Jan 2008
- 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)
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.
...- 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. {T/C) 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)
Could always do something unqiue for them. Like how I did the Kodo Skin Scroll =) What do you think about that? 
{T•C) 05:25, 11 January 2008 (UTC)
- 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. --
- 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. --
- 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
- those look much better than tacky colors above.Baggins 09:59, 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)
- 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.
- Sounds good to me. I'll give it a go a bit later then. --
- Sounds good to me. I'll give it a go a bit later then. --
- You mean "div.book a.link { color: rainbowtechnicolourfunkyness; }" (and then the various dynamic pseudo-classes too)? --
- You mean "div.book a.link { color: rainbowtechnicolourfunkyness; }" (and then the various dynamic pseudo-classes too)? --
- A sneak peak User:Zeal/Sandbox/Templates/book. Let me know what you think, things that need changing etc. --
- A sneak peak User:Zeal/Sandbox/Templates/book. Let me know what you think, things that need changing etc. --
- 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. --
- 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)
- 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).
- 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. --
- 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. --
- 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. --
- 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. --
- 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. --
Just drawing some attention back to this...seems we let it sort of die... I'm assuming the CSS still needs to be implemented. {T•C) 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? --- I am a big fan of the proper use of hyphens (-), en dashes (–), em dashes (—), ellipsis (…), daggers (†,‡), and fractions (21⁄3). 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 11⁄2 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 --
- 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 --
- As I understand it the 11⁄2 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. --
- 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. --
- 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. -- Fandyllic (talk · contr) 2:14 PM PST 14 Jan 2008
- 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. --
- 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. --
- 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. --
Excessive category renaming
Renaming all the cats to begin with World of Warcraft, isn't that a bit excessive? Who made that decision? {T•C) 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. --
- 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. --
- 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. --
- 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. --
- 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)
- It was already broken. I'm creating something that never existed properly in the first, and what existed wasn't/couldn't be used.
- 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.
- 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.
- I don't want to have this same conversation yet again.
- --
- 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)
- 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
- 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.
- 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. --
- 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.--
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. -- 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.-- Fandyllic (talk · contr) 11:40 AM PST 24 Jan 2008
- Okay, today it looks fine. My browser must have been munged by something else. However, the eras icons cover some wiki message:
- 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. --
- 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.. --
- 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.. --
- 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. --
- 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. --
- 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 ~
ŋɑϑ 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. -- 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). --
- 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. -- Fandyllic (talk · contr) 11:51 AM PST 24 Jan 2008
- 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. --
- 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. -
- 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. -
- 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 --
- 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 --
- 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. --
- 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. --
- 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. --
- 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. --
- 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. --
- 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.
- --
- 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. --