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:With the considerable investment that Activision is making into Blizzard, will this be used to encourage R&D to stay ahead of the market? Also, will this mean an expansion in staff and perhaps the creation of a fourth Intellectual Property at Blizzard? A little risk would seem warranted considering the operating cushion and the fact that the last (and all) IP at Blizzard was created in the 90's. - [[User:Ansu|Ansu]] 05:14, 10 July 2008 (UTC)
 
:With the considerable investment that Activision is making into Blizzard, will this be used to encourage R&D to stay ahead of the market? Also, will this mean an expansion in staff and perhaps the creation of a fourth Intellectual Property at Blizzard? A little risk would seem warranted considering the operating cushion and the fact that the last (and all) IP at Blizzard was created in the 90's. - [[User:Ansu|Ansu]] 05:14, 10 July 2008 (UTC)
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:Will Activision leave Blizzard alone and let them continue to produce quality content? - [[User:AlexanderYoshi|AlexanderYoshi]] ([[User talk:AlexanderYoshi|talk]])
  +
  +
:Will Activision try applying the principles of spending extra polish time on their own games? - [[User:AlexanderYoshi|AlexanderYoshi]] ([[User talk:AlexanderYoshi|talk]])
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:What does Activision feel is the greatest benefit it recieves as a company by merging with Blizzard to form Blizzard Activision, beyond just money? -- [[User:AlexanderYoshi|AlexanderYoshi]] ([[User talk:AlexanderYoshi|talk]])

Revision as of 06:22, 10 July 2008

Template:WoWWiki:Village pump/Intro

Icon-edit-22x22 Start a new discussion!


MOS and capitalization issues

Now that there's been a lot of death knight info pushed out, we need to come to a consensus on capitalization. Blizz has been writing it in lower case, which works with the Manual of Style we already have for the other classes. But what about articles like Starting a Death knight (vs Starting a Mage)? Should they be Starting a death knight (and Starting a mage)? {{classnav}} and {{classfooter}} need to be updated one way or the other. --k_d3 16:55, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

I say keep things lower case. We do that for other articles, this shouldn't be an exception. Class titles are not proper nouns, and shouldn't be treated as such.Baggins (talk) 02:33, 12 May 2008 (UTC)
I agree with Baggins. --Gengar orange 22x22 Fandyllic (talk · contr) 10:49 PM PST 11 May 2008

So, is this a discussion to decaps all classes as well, similar to what we've done with races? Having a single simple rule would probably be useful. Note we will have to be more vigilant about whether articles refer to an RPG concept or the game mechanics. Kirkburn  talk  contr 07:05, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

No suprise i hate this. Even more so that i feel Baggins is making a seperation between lore and game terms where they don't exist. It's simply inconsistancy and incorrect grammar in Blizzard products. All terminology in fiction are proper nouns, including wow classes. --   12:08, 12 May 2008 (UTC)
In the real world, you do not have Accountants and Bakers, you have accountants and bakers. Why should a fantasy universe be any different? Stuff is capitalised in-game for mechanics reasons, but even Blizzard has moved a long way away from using capitals everywhere, as currently evidenced by referral to "death knights". Baggins makes no false distinctions - classes in WoW do not always correspond to the RPG types, or are a specific subtype of the general RPG type - thus why we have to be careful about what we refer to. Kirkburn  talk  contr 13:11, 12 May 2008 (UTC)
I'm not going over the argument again as i did with you specifically. You know i proved the captilisation usage in the real world, as well as how and why it them applies to fantasy. As to distinctions, i meant in using capitalisation to seperate the two, i ofc know for example there are 3 different usages of Death Knight, irregardless of capitalisation. Next i'll see the various Azeroths with different cases. ¬_¬ --   13:20, 13 May 2008 (UTC)
We're talking about making classes all lower-case. The current situation (capitalisation differences) is what you appear to be advising against. Kirkburn  talk  contr 18:31, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

Since the macro navigation template uses lower caps for classes (mages, druids etc) I don't see why the same shouldn't apply to the class navigation template.--g0urra[T҂C] 17:38, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

Guess this means that the categories should be renamed as well (eventually) -- The [Category:<class> Abilities], [Category:<class> Spells], etc. Since now it's only going to be confusing since 'Death knight Abilities' is odd to have and 'Death knight abilities' wouldn't match the others. 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.) 02:33, 13 May 2008 (UTC)
Those categories are incorrect according to the MOS anyway. It should always be [Category:<class> abilities], with the second word lower case. --Jiyambi t || c 02:58, 13 May 2008 (UTC)
They are also named incorrectly according to WW:CAT#Category_naming. --Gengar orange 22x22 Fandyllic (talk · contr) 3:49 PM PST 14 May 2008
Zeal, I'm completely confused on what you were argueing about... I didn't move "death knight" to lower case because of the RPG, I moved it because the lore background article on the WOTLK website had it lower case (except in the articles title). In uses in sentences it was always lower case... To make matters worse, people were going about capitalizing every instance of the term despite the word being uncapped in the original copy of the source...Baggins (talk) 19:42, 19 June 2008 (UTC)
In another discussion that overlapped this, i saw you trying to create a distinction between a death knight and Death Knight and suggesting it was the same for many things. That's where i disagreed with you, and i brought it up here, but apparently i only confused the matter, as it seems this one is a back track on that idea. My stance on proper-nouns and fiction is know, so not going into that. -- Zeal (T/C)  21:14, 19 June 2008 (UTC)

It seems you might have something from a couple of years ago confused with things currently... However I can state that you are wrong on "death knight", as you said "All terminology in fiction are proper nouns, including wow classes". Actually no this is not true. In most sources death knight is not used as a capitalized proper noun and is always written lower case. This is true of Warcraft III manual, the RPG, and the official site. The only exceptions that exist where if a specific organization was being named, an article title, or as a character title, IIRC. This is an example off the top of my head, I apoligize in advance if I misquoted it; "Arthas, Death Knight of the Scourge". The only source I can think of that capitalized death knight in all uses was the Warcraft II manual, but that source capitalized everything including race names, and unit names, building names ("Farms", "Foundry", "Catapult", :p).Baggins (talk) 21:35, 19 June 2008 (UTC)

It was a recent discussion, formerly on the same page as this one... WoWWiki_talk:Village_pump/Archive25#Death_Knights
I think i did say i wasn't going to go into that... ¬_¬ The last thing i need to hear is an example of how Blizzard do it, you may as well have told me that scrolls of lore write it that way. Just leave it. -- Zeal (T/C)  21:46, 19 June 2008 (UTC)
Well I don't know what discussion your talking about, if you can find the history link for it, so I can see it for myself? I've had alot of things on my mind, and busy life outside of Warcraft over the last 8 months. Well, I'm still incredibly confused on why you were arguing with me above, if you don't want to go into it a reason... and want to "just leave it" alone. I guess I'll just have to stay confused...Baggins (talk) 22:10, 19 June 2008 (UTC)
I linked the discussion already. :/ http://www.wowwiki.com/index.php?title=WoWWiki_talk%3AVillage_pump&diff=1359245&oldid=1359046 That was the part i contested in relation to this.
I was asking that you leave the latter argument alone, as it's dead and burried and wasn't aimed towards you or anyone else, i shouldn't have even bothered to mention it again. -- Zeal (T/C)  23:02, 19 June 2008 (UTC)

Weddings

Have you ever married in World of Warcraft? Are you planning to? The page Wedding tries to give some advice and collect useful information. Any suggestions and edits are welcome! --Tharbur (talk) 07:23, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

Very nice work! Kirkburn  talk  contr 10:18, 12 May 2008 (UTC)
It has been moved to Guide to roleplaying a wedding.--Sandwichman2449 (talk) 20:14, 12 May 2008 (UTC)
Very good written article! /Congrats Tharbur! But one thing I miss: The tool tips. If you have your mouse over the rings, for example, you can't view the item's stats or other information. This aside, it's a very creative and cool article.

Hewbie (talk) 10:59, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

I noticed somebody had fixed it now. Good job!

Hewbie (talk) 13:26, 9 June 2008 (UTC)

Problem reporting

I'd just like to bring attention to Special:ProblemReports - each article has a link in the footer where any user (even anons) can report issues with pages - try clicking it! This is intended to be for major issues (e.g. completely broken pages, spam, vandalism, etc) as opposed to content. However, it is inevitable that some content issues may appear on the list.

Admins can mark issues as fixed or closed or elevate them for Wikia staff to look at. However, it would be much appreciated if non-admins could help out checking through the list! If you fix something, just make a note of it in the edit comment or suchlike. You can find out more on Help:ProblemReports on Wikia Help. Thanks! Kirkburn  talk  contr 13:03, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

Is there someplace on there for a "this is up here because of <problem>" that I'm not seeing? Because I'd love to help go through some of the things up there, but not really sure why some of them are up there. Magister's Terrace, for example. What content are we not... (*giggle*) content with? --User:Innocentlysassy/Sig 21:09, 14 May 2008 (UTC)
You need to click the problem report ID/number (i.e. #9.036 for the current Magister's Terrace problem report) and not the article link the problem references. --Gengar orange 22x22 Fandyllic (talk · contr) 3:53 PM PST 14 May 2008

(Outdent) Please when possible put a comment along with the problem report when you close or fix it. Comments for problem reports live at [[WoWWiki_talk:ProblemReports/####]]. I have noticed some problems marked closed or fixed without a comment. --Gengar orange 22x22 Fandyllic (talk · contr) 4:00 PM PST 14 May 2008

Suggestion for the interface of WoWWiki?

Hey guys,

I really hope that I am making this in the appropriate area. If this is incorrect, or impossible to make, then please let me know and I can remove this. One of the things I do on a daily basis is I like to compare my WoW Equipment to the things I look forward to obtaining. It becomes annoying, however, when I have to switch back and forth between www.wowarmory.com, and this website or others to look at my armor and new armor, respectively. In game I have an addon (not sure if it's stock!) that when holding shift while hovering over a piece of armor / weapon, it displays the tooltip for that item, and next to it displays a tooltip for the item I currently have equipped for that slot, effectively allowing me to easily compare the two.

Is it possible for account holders on this website, to either obtain their statistics from www.wowarmory.com, or to input them manually... then set it up so that we can also do an equipment compare, to make it easy to users to compare new equipment? I believe this would be an invaluable addon, as it will bring more users to this site in hopes to find the information their looking for.

If this has been suggested, please let me know so again I can remove this.

Thanks!

-- Kaltes (talk) 16:09, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

I had something like that working, but removed it because it was too technical for users to set up. I'll try to figure something out that's a bit more user-friendly. --PcjWowpedia wiki manager (TDrop me a line!C207,729 contributions and counting) 17:21, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

How to kill a ....(class) pages

Do anyone else feel the title misleading? All the class PvP guide pages use this kind of title. E.g. How to kill a ....(Hunter) => which at first glance gave me the impression that this was a page talking about how you could kill a hunter! Only after I had read several sections then I realized that it is a page talking about how a hunter can kill the other classes in PvP. Someone probably felt this confusion as well and converted all the subsection of How to kill a... (Warrior) to How to kill a Rogue, How to kill a Warrior, How to kill a Priest, etc..

Should we renamed the title of those pages with more understandable wordings? Better with the word "PvP" included.

-- WakemanCK (talk) 03:40, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

Something like: Killing others with a <class>? or PvPing with a <class>? Or you can just add a word... "How to kill with a... (<class>)" 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.) 03:43, 13 May 2008 (UTC)
Honestly, those pages just need some cleanup to be more in line with their title, I think,a as the pages are rather unfocused. --Sky (t · c · w) 03:55, 13 May 2008 (UTC)
I suggest changing it to "<class> PvP class guide" - shows clearly that it's focused on what to do against other classes in PvP. The "Working with a... (<class>)" could probably use some work too.-g0urra[T҂C] 06:40, 13 May 2008 (UTC)
"<class> PvP class guide" sounds good. If everyone agree we can convert all the nine class PvP pages to this format. WakemanCK (talk) 01:38, 14 May 2008 (UTC)
I'm thinking "<class> PvP" would be better. Likewise for the other pages, which could probably be converted to "<class> PvE" or something. --Sky (t · c · w) 05:32, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

(indent) So changes would be:

  • "Working with a... (<class>)" => "<class> PvE guide"
  • "How to kill a... (<class>)" => "<class> PvP guide"

Sounds good to me.--g0urra[T҂C] 14:33, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

Moved.--g0urra[T҂C] 16:05, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

Nice! :) WakemanCK (talk) 11:28, 15 May 2008 (UTC)
Coming in a bit late here, but I think "<class> PvE guide" is not the best rename. Those guides are specifically for playing <class> in a group, with specifics relative to the class of the other player. "PvE guide", to me, indicates it would also contain info for solo PvE, which it does not. "Working with" made a lot more sense to me. -- Harveydrone 19:44, 19 May 2008 (UTC)
Well shouldn't a PvE guide contain solo info? Even if it doesn't (as you say they don't), perhaps it's because no one has helped add such info? But since you state that these pages have the scope reduced to groups, then yes we should have 2 pages for PvE (under the current standards): "<class> group PvE guide" and "<class> solo PvE guide". --Notmyhandle (talk) 02:17, 20 May 2008 (UTC)
I know this is quite confusing. The Working with (class)/PvE guide pages contain information about how to work with the others in PvE settings. So it maybe more appropriate to call it "<class> group PvE guide" at its current state. To add to the confusion, most of the class tactics pages contain solo PvE information. Some of the class tactics pages also have group PvE information as well as PvP information. (Actually it turns out that the name "(class) tactics" is the most confusing, as many people have no idea what to include or not.) --WakemanCK (talk) 03:11, 20 May 2008 (UTC)
I will reiterate my point from above: these pages need cleanup badly; proper sectioning, as well as proper prose rather than lists. That said, I have some ideas:
  • class tactics pages can either be eliminated, or rewritten to support general knowledge of how to use a class. I'm on the fence for this one.
  • PvE can be how to use a class in PvE, solo, group, and raid, if these are different from class tactics, as well as information on interaction with other classes in group and raid.
  • PvP should be on (only) how to use the class in solo / duo / arena / BG PvP, going into detail about what other classes will do when fighting that class, as well as general strategy and such. These pages need the least cleanup, but they could definitely all use a little bleach. --Sky (t · c · w) 03:28, 20 May 2008 (UTC)
My point above was simply that the "working with a" pages were already fairly well written and named. It does make sense to have a general PvE guide (solo & group), but the existing pages will need additional rework in that case, not just a rename. Basically what Wakeman said. (I do admit to my own bias though -- I interpreted "tactics" to mean what I do most of the time -- solo PvE. Makes sense to label it as such and not just "tactics", now that I think about it.) -- Harveydrone 21:57, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

Please Create a new Topic - Enhancements

Is it possible to ask for a page (more likely a project) to be created? What I would like to see is an "Enhancements" (Armour and/or Weapons) topic. For instance, I would like to enhance a piece of head armour and need to know what my options are, i.e. enchantments, inscriptions, jewels, or anything else that may help with my character spec. Where are these enhancements available, player (enchanter, JC) or NPC (vendor, faction, etc.) I am thinking of something like the spell-damage gems page, but oriented toward a piece of armour or weapon type. The path would be something like Armour > Cloth > Head > Enhancement. I hope I've expressed what I want adequately enough for you people with the 20-pound brains to create what I would like to see. I think it would be very beneficial to your readers.-- TheRugger (talk) 13:58, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

See Enchantment.--g0urra[T҂C] 18:42, 13 May 2008 (UTC)
I think he may have been looking for Augment. --Sky (t · c · w) 19:31, 13 May 2008 (UTC)
Augment is the right article, I think, but it needs some cleaning up to be as useful as Rugger describes. I will see what I can do. --Jiyambi t || c 22:15, 13 May 2008 (UTC)
After poking around a bit, I found Equipment slot. In addition to describing each slot, the page includes an "Upgrades" list for each slot. This actually lists augments, and should be changed to the correct word. Anyway, this may be what you were looking for. It would also be possible to represent it in table format. However, were you thinking more of something listing specific augments for each slot? This could be a very large and unweildly list if that is the case. --Jiyambi t || c 22:26, 13 May 2008 (UTC)
After even more poking around, it turns out Gourra was correct. This page does exist: it is Enchantments by slot. All this has told me is that our current pages and system of organizing enchants and augments is a bit convoluted. First of all, that page is named incorrectly. It should be "Augments by slot", since it lists a lot of options which are, in fact, not enchantments. Secondly, all the articles mentioned thus far should be cleaned up and linked to eachother as needed, so information is not duplicated and is easily found. I will work on this if no one else gets to it first. --Jiyambi t || c 22:39, 13 May 2008 (UTC)
WoWhead calls enchantments and all other permanent equipment buffs "enhancements" - perhaps we should adopt this convention, rather than somewhat misleadingly calling everything enchantment? --Jiyambi t || c 05:08, 14 May 2008 (UTC)
I liked the term enhancement, but it conflicts easily with Shaman enhancement talent tree, so I think we should choose something else. The term "enhancer" or "enhancers" has been used, but it would be good if we could all agree on something. I don't like the other term that someone established which is imbue. The in-game meanings of augment, enhancement, enhancer or imbue are all pretty much arbitrary as they are not used officially anywhere, so I think we just have to decide for WoWWiki.
Here is the way I would prefer we use the various terms (this would require a bit of rewrite of various articles and categories):
  • Augment - An item that adds a permanent, but replaceable improvement on another item similar to an enchantment, but only for the target item.
  • Enchantment - No change. This is official.
  • Enhancer - An item that adds a temporary improvement on another item similar to a buff, but only for the target item.
  • Improver - A catch-all for Augments and Enhancers.
  • Imbue - Obsolete term for what is now an enhancer.
  • Inscription - Blizzard has sort of made a mess of this. It means a type of augment currently in Bc icon, but may also refer to the new Wrath-Logo-Small profession and the thing it applies to spells/talents.
-Gengar orange 22x22 Fandyllic (talk · contr) 5:01 PM PST 14 May 2008

<outdent> I'm not sure I like the sound of "Enhancer" and "Improver", but I can't really think of anything better given the shaman argument, which does make sense. So, vaguely dissatisfied but in agreement :P --Jiyambi t || c 09:31, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

Unfortunately, I agree. I couldn't think of anything better either. --Gengar orange 22x22 Fandyllic (talk · contr) 1:59 PM PST 16 May 2008

Me no workie wiki rites...

Yes.. See... im fail at making Wiki pages. and best ive managed so far is my Profile kinda thing. but that was from copy and paste of the code from NPC Profiles

Anyway, Not sure if anyone uses it here, but on the site guildlaunch.com. you can make a Wiki for your Guild. what i want to do is set up a list of Profile for everyone to add their own too, ive tried to copy the code over but it failed. Any suggestions for how to get it working? as i somewhat stuck.

Sorry if this makes little sense, its 3:21 in the morning and i should kinda go sleep now... anyway! Hope someone can help me

-- KingStoph (talk) 02:23, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

What code were you trying to copy? You can create a page for your guild here and link separate pages for your guild members. If you want a place to discuss your guild you should get a forum. -- User:Arcanedeath/sigx 04:08, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

What's new on WoWWiki?

Time for a quick status update on the wiki, partly reposted from WoWWiki:News.

  • Major upgrades are in place.
  • Many new extensions are now active.
  • The new "Monaco" skin is of course active.
  • The OpenSearch plug-in for IE7 and Firefox is finally fixed! Go to your browser's search box and add us!
  • Our user database has merged with Wikia's - you can use your account to log in to Wikia wikis.
  • The main page portals have been overhauled with a cleaner design and new functions.
  • Many other little tweaks around the site to improve performance and usability.

I've also given WoWWiki:Server requests an update with the status of stuff reported there. Basically there are three places for upgrade news and info - WoWWiki:Upgrade early 2008 for general info, WoWWiki:MediaWiki 1.12 changes for the new stuff, and WoWWiki:Server requests for requests. Kirkburn  talk  contr 09:03, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

Two slightly random notes to append to this - WoWWiki:List of common misspellings has been updated with search links for misspelled terms, so much of it is easier to check. And a note to patrollers/admins - only use the rollback button in cases of vandalism. Any non-vandalism reverts should have explanatory edit comments, which rollback does not allow - so undo or do a manual edit. Thanks! Kirkburn  talk  contr 12:08, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

We need to do better at filtering out bad ads

In the upper right corner of the page while looking at the Wacraft universe portal I saw the following ad:

W0W Items for Sale
Mss Mts in the AH? Cme to Hre, Online Mats Site for W0W, 24/7 Help
www.itemstores.com

This is obviously an ad for item selling which is equivalent to gold selling to Blizzard. We need to filter these things out. This ad is clever in that it uses 0 (zero) instead of O (oh), but still... --Gengar orange 22x22 Fandyllic (talk · contr) 5:38 PM PST 16 May 2008

Fair point. I need to advertise this more, but to all: please email any bad ads, with info on what they say, where they link, and where they appeared to: kirkburn at gmail dot com. Kirkburn  talk  contr 21:16, 17 May 2008 (UTC)

Crazy Shaman's DPS & AEP calculator

The link to the popular shaman dps simulator is blocked by the spam filter: ht tp://theorycraft.narod.ru/ -- Tramana (talk) 04:03, 17 May 2008 (UTC)

Added http://theorycraft.narod.ru/ to the whitelist. Kirkburn  talk  contr 21:19, 17 May 2008 (UTC)

WotLK Friends and Family Alpha

Whether or not it has started, I feel I should remind everyone that leaks cannot be posted to WoWWiki, and must be removed. Blizzard have asked us to remove images before, and I'm sure they would again. Kirkburn  talk  contr 21:16, 17 May 2008 (UTC)

To expand on the above - that applies to images. Text mostly falls under the same banner - however, I feel exceptions are reasonable for correcting information on site. For example, if we have a section of text that is knowingly incorrect, you are okay to correct it. I know this is a bit weird, but I think we have to balance keeping to the NDA, and misinforming the masses (which can be as damaging). We'll have to monitor how it goes, and how open Blizzard is. Kirkburn  talk  contr 17:21, 18 May 2008 (UTC)
Additionally, there's a big red warning on the upload page with regard to F&F Alpha screenshots. So do NOT upload F&F Alpha screenshots to WoWWiki. They are considered DNP content while the NDA is active. Here's the old Burning Crusade DMCA Takedown Notice. Let's try to not get one for Wrath... --k_d3 18:09, 18 May 2008 (UTC)
It has started, I've seen personally map of Northrend in one place. I would say only one: it's not what I expected. Need to warn more clearly. --Naga MaleShargas the Naga (blearrgglaerrgall) 19:57, 18 May 2008 (UTC)
I'm starting to get annoyed... It's hard for anyone to enforce this rule without people showing their sources for the publicised info from the alpha phase. Tbh, it seems like the answer is simple. Any public WotLK (or any future expansion) alpha info must be sourced/referenced/cited, otherwise it needs to go. I'm seeing alot of suspect info without references, which i can't find public sources for and because of it having trouble checking what is right and wrong in the articles let alone what is breaking the NDA. The desire to nuke alot of the utgarde keep info is building because of this... ¬_¬ -- Zeal (T/C)  06:45, 28 May 2008 (UTC)
The purpose of the wiki is to consolidate Warcraft information into one easy to access knowledge base. The best solution for dealing with alpha content (ie. talent trees & class skill information) is clear denotation on any article containing such info as 'speculation' (in much the same way as Lore is handled). Information that has already been disclosed to the public domain can no longer be held to any NDA (see hexadecimal 09-F9-11-02-9D-74-E3-5B-D8-41-56-C5-63-56-88-C0). People want to see what kinds of talents and info are available in the alpha and if the information is out there, the wiki is only doing what it was designed to do by unifying it for easier reference. While images certainly have no place being posted (beyond those made available on Blizzard's sites), other information that is widely available is perfectly valid material for articles as long as they are not cross-referenced to established information and they are clearly marked as speculative and/or likely to change. K10wn (talk) 07:17, 20 June 2008 (UTC)

Server:Khaz'goroth

I was correcting an error in the page, saying the server time was Australian East Coast Time, which is actually incorrect, as it is officially called Australian Eastern Standard Time. I then tried to save the page and something about linking to other sites came up o.O, so can someone please correct it. Also, can anyone confirm if the server runs in Australian Eastern Standard Time or Australian Eastern Daylight Savings Time (AEDT) when it applies?

-- Rustendancy (talk) 06:50, 18 May 2008 (UTC)

The bad link has been removed, you may continue editing.--g0urra[T҂C] 20:04, 18 May 2008 (UTC)

Stop Auto-Adding [[Category: Warrior Talents]]?

Hi, on the page Inv axe 06 [Axe Specialization] it keeps adding [[Category: Warrior Talents]] at the start of the text, how can I fix that? -- HolySheepy (talk) 07:41, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

Fixed. Kirkburn  talk  contr 08:06, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

Zero sized reply

I got an error message: Zero Sized Reply ... Squid did not receive any data for this request.

Sent email to technical@wikia.com, but was wondering just what it was talking about. As well as why... :) --Eirik Ratcatcher (talk) 18:05, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

Sounds like a one-off server error. Do please report any more you come across. Kirkburn  talk  contr 14:26, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

Easily add gems and enchants to tooltips

I've been working on a customization script which will allow you to easily manipulate item tooltips with gems and enchants. Gem functionality is mostly complete, enchants still need a bit more testing and tweaking, particularly in determining appropriate enchantment slot. Also in plans for the future is the ability to save the adjustments to cookies and possibly allowing for linking to pages with the adjustments already in place.

But if you want to test out the current version, add the following to Special:Mypage/monaco.js, Special:Mypage/wowwiki.js, or other depending on your skin:

function customizeTooltip() {
loadJS("User:Pcj/customizeTooltip.js", 0);
}
addOnloadHook(customizeTooltip);

Once that's done, you can add gems by clicking on the socket text (e.g., "Red Socket", "Meta Socket") in tooltips, and add enchants by clicking the green dotted line or the + by it (if one doesn't show up, it's because that code still needs a bit of work). You can later change either of them by clicking the appropriate gem/enchant effect text.

Notable things to look for when testing is if the socket bonus for gems appropriately turns green or gray depending on whether the right gems are selected, as well as any other problems, mainly with browsers other than Fx2 and IE7.

Let me know if you find any problems. --PcjWowpedia wiki manager (TDrop me a line!C207,729 contributions and counting) 18:29, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

Scopes etc that can be attached to guns and bows also shows up on wands.--g0urra[T҂C] 00:32, 22 May 2008 (UTC)
Fixed. --PcjWowpedia wiki manager (TDrop me a line!C207,729 contributions and counting) 01:04, 22 May 2008 (UTC)
Wow, how long did it take to make all the lookup tables for this? Very impressive. Do the .js files have to be hand updated with new gems and enchants or is there some script that builds them? By the way, it seems to work fine with Mac Safari 3.1.1. --Gengar orange 22x22 Fandyllic (talk · contr) 9:01 PM PST 21 May 2008
The data is stored in separate files (User:Pcj/gems.js and User:Pcj/enchants.js) from the logic for easier updating, shouldn't be too hard. The files and logic were created in the last two days. --PcjWowpedia wiki manager (TDrop me a line!C207,729 contributions and counting) 05:25, 22 May 2008 (UTC)
TBC enchants (ilvl 35+) can be put on items with ilvl less than 35, but no enchants can be put on Inv weapon shortblade 01 [Skinning Knife] or Inv pick 02 [Mining Pick] even though they are enchantable.--g0urra[T҂C] 17:33, 22 May 2008 (UTC)
Since ilvl is not a required field for item tooltips, I cannot programmatically determine positively whether the enchant is valid and so that falls outside the scope of the code's responsibility as far as logic goes. But I'll attempt to figure something out for the mining pick and skinning knife. --PcjWowpedia wiki manager (TDrop me a line!C207,729 contributions and counting) 18:04, 22 May 2008 (UTC)

Ogri'la/Sky Guard/SSO talk

Is anyone currently working on adding what each of the factions (Skyguard, Ogri'la, and SSO I believe) say once you hit revered/exalted with them? If not I think I would like to do it but should I put it on its own page or the main page? -- Iwishiknew (talk) 09:23, 22 May 2008 (UTC)

Don't think anyone is working on that. I would put the quotes in the articles for each faction. --Gengar orange 22x22 Fandyllic (talk · contr) 4:59 PM PST 23 May 2008
It is a lot...--SWM2448 00:02, 24 May 2008 (UTC)

School what?

I see several pages linking to School when the subject is about magic schools, but when I try to find more information on that page I just get linked back to school. In order to find the information I'm looking for I have to go to Damage types, which itself is very impractical seeing as I'm looking for magic schools in the first place. Who decided to rewrite School to how it is now, and can that person, or anyone else for the matter, please rewrite so that it's not so unclear?--g0urra[T҂C] 22:00, 22 May 2008 (UTC)

I moved the WoW stuff to the top with a see also to Damage types. Baggins says the other stuff is a mix between RPG and other sources. I pointed out this is a bad thing to mix RPG info with other sources, since it may confuse actual RPG game mechanics info with other stuff. Hopefully he or someone else will re-write to unmix that stuff. --Gengar orange 22x22 Fandyllic (talk · contr) 2:16 PM PST 23 May 2008
Actually as I've tried to explain the page was primarily designed to be a lore page. We are not here to tell people how to play the RPG, or copy its rules. Brann (the authors who write him) and other authors use many of these terms withint he lore, and even create large amounts of lore for many of the types of magic. The published lore is generally incompatible with WoW game mechanics schools.Baggins (talk) 21:19, 23 May 2008 (UTC)
Seems the original problem was more a diambig issue not a content issue. But seeing as it's moved onto content...
They're both articles based on two different games (WoW and the RPG), so ofc the gameplay aspects won't mix. Their lore can and must overlap though, magic schools are no exception to retcons and needing to keep all the lore together.
A decision needs to be made as to what is going where tbh. Atm it's WoW gameplay info with light lore and then RPG gameplay info (this really isn't desired afaik, and needs a reformatting pureply for lore) with light lore. Both rather lacking in lore and it's difficult to see how the two work together into the lore we have today, it just doesn't cut it. Split WoW gameplay and lore if you want (i suspect preferable), i've no preference to priority on the disambig, so i'd prefer to see magic schools become a pure disambig page.
Schools also needs a disambig for talent trees it seems. -- Zeal (T/C)  00:49, 26 May 2008 (UTC)

template: Lootsure

It's been a while, and nothing was done, so I've been Bold again. There's a new template: {{Lootsure}}. This is explicitly a cut-down version of {{Loot}}, that indulges in zero ifexist, switch, or conditional parameter cases. This is in response to Category:Pages with too many ifexist calls, which was brought to my attention primarily by the collated jewelcrafting recipe page (and a couple of other similar pages).

As written, it is far less robust/forgiving than {{loot}}. It doesn't display the rarity in hover text (title attribute). It probably is case sensitive. Use it with care. And don't make it more complex, if you value your serifs at their current locations. If you want more complex, make a different template. -- Eirik Ratcatcher (talk) 00:05, 23 May 2008 (UTC)

Would it be possible to make something similar for {{questlong}}? The only thing we need to get rid of is the ifexist, I would really like to retain Pcj's quest popup tooltip, but I don't really know how those work at all so I can't deal with it myself. I ask for this because the quest lists for several zones are too long and have too many ifexist calls. --Jiyambi t || c 01:49, 23 May 2008 (UTC)
As long as it has the appropriate CSS class, it'll still work. --PcjWowpedia wiki manager (TDrop me a line!C207,729 contributions and counting) 03:24, 23 May 2008 (UTC)
Considering the majority of items you would use with {{loot}} already exist, it'd probably be best to make a {{lootunsure}} rather than a {{lootsure}}, and remove ifexist calls from the normal variation of the template. :) -- foxlit (talk) 10:56, 23 May 2008 (UTC)
The orange mammal has a point. --Sky (t · c · w) 18:18, 24 May 2008 (UTC)
Glad someone finally decided to do this, not my preference in options, but a better one than current. ;) I also second the sly one's suggestion :p -- Zeal (T/C)  00:52, 26 May 2008 (UTC)

I chose the 'lootsure' option because it was the option that guaranteed the least breakage. ... and because I couldn't alter the {{loot}} template even if I wanted to. If someone wants to make a 'lootunsure', and do a swap (lootsure -> loot -> lootunsure), I've no objections. It's a more complicated action, though, if you want to leave the current {{loot}} links as 'loot' instead of 'lootunsure'.

If {{questlong}} hasn't already been addressed, I'll look into it. ... but same argument: questlongunsure requires automated search/replace services I've not yet managed to handle. Still, once the template exists, renaming it as part of the bot replacement project shouldn't be disruptive. --Eirik Ratcatcher (talk) 22:52, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

Um... {{Questlong}} is protected; {{Quest}} is not. This seems odd... --Eirik Ratcatcher (talk) 23:24, 28 May 2008 (UTC)
{{Questsure}} and {{Questunsure}} as alternatives of {{Quest}} now exist. I only altered The Barrens quests, to try out the questsure template. Convert away! --Eirik Ratcatcher (talk) 23:48, 28 May 2008 (UTC)
I protected {{quest}}. --Gengar orange 22x22 Fandyllic (talk · contr) 4:49 PM PST 28 May 2008

{{#ifexist}} on all these has been replaced with a JavaScript implementation which does the same thing. --PcjWowpedia wiki manager (TDrop me a line!C207,729 contributions and counting) 03:00, 9 June 2008 (UTC)

Regarding "roleplay" fictional content

Hello! I was wondering what is allowed regarding fictional, non-official content. For example, my main Wiki page (a player character page) is at "http://www.wowwiki.com/User:Ashbringer". I'm pretty sure I did that relatively correctly. Could I go on to create more pages in the User:Ashbringer directory? If so, how do I go about classifying them? (For example, the main page is a PC page obviously, but what if I wanted to make a subpage about fictional events on Aerie Peak [my server realm]?) Could I do User:Ashbringer/Aeriepeak/? Could I do User:Ashbringer/Legolas/ if I wanted to make a wiki page about my fictional friend character, Legolas? If so, what should I classify those subpages as? Thanks for any help!

-- Ashbringer (talk) 07:29, 25 May 2008 (UTC)

As long as you keep your fanmade content as a subpage of your user page and use the {{fanfic}} template you should be good to go.Baggins (talk) 07:35, 25 May 2008 (UTC)
You could create subpage links from your Ashbringer user page (link to with [[User:Ashbringer]]) with [[User:Ashbringer/subpage_name]], then just click the link to start the page. --Gengar orange 22x22 Fandyllic (talk · contr) 5:34 PM PST 26 May 2008

New Category Idea (Category:Discussions)

I have noticed that the discussion pages don't have a category of its own! It would be nice to have a category that groups "all" the discussion pages in WoWWiki, probably it is a huge task to be done by hand!
From what I understood from categories, when you add into a page a category it becomes indexed in that category page, so by having discussion pages categorized it would be possible to search and participate in several discussions!
This would make it possible for more people to contribute with their opinion. There is something similar, "Category:Pages with analysis subpages", this category groups some talk(discussion) pages, but it is oriented towards analysis. This category would be for all pages of the same kind! Discuss please. :) :User:WoWWiki-Kaiku/sign 16:45, 26 May 2008 (UTC)

You can not categorize individual sections, only entire pages. If you know that, then what kind of groups do you mean?--SWM2448 16:58, 26 May 2008 (UTC)
I didn't mention any sections, but an entire page(s)! Like the discussion page we are writing is under "Categories: Community | WoWWiki". So this page is grouped under Community and WoWWiki, that's what i meant with groups! :User:WoWWiki-Kaiku/sign 19:58, 26 May 2008 (UTC)
What groups should there be that we do not have already?--SWM2448 20:06, 26 May 2008 (UTC)
Having a Category:Discussions might be just a good way to call attention to talk pages that have some interesting thread or unanswered questions on them. --Gengar orange 22x22 Fandyllic (talk · contr) 5:29 PM PST 26 May 2008

There's little reason. The number of talk pages on the wiki is sufficiently small that all you need to do is view Special:Prefixindex/Talk: or another such prefixed index (use the drop down menu). Further, that would be about as helpful as any categorization would be for discussion could be, without becoming too specific with the category names. Also, discussion can wander; setting up categorization for the talk page would need to be dictated by the main page's categorization, in which case you are creating redundant categories, and extra work in maintaining the categories.

Fandyllic, there exists {{comment}} for such a purpose; obviously, it's usefulness is rather low, as you didn't even know it was there. ;D. --Sky (t · c · w) 01:16, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

Special:Prefixindex/Talk: makes my idea useless, no point is developing a idea when there is something already to do the same job! Thou for some pages it is good to have something to point them out, like Fandyllic said! The tag {{comment}} is not widely used, too complex? Doesn't seem so! A idea would be to "show" it more to users so that they can place it when they want other users to participate in the discussion page. The general idea, besides creating a new category or something else, is to make discussion pages more visible to the community. The WoWWiki to me isn't just about editing pages and codding them, it's also about participating with ideas, opinions so that the Wiki keeps growing. :User:WoWWiki-Kaiku/sign 09:09, 27 May 2008 (UTC)
Heh, {{comment}} seems to serve the purpose I intended well. I better start using it. --Gengar orange 22x22 Fandyllic (talk · contr) 4:43 PM PST 28 May 2008

Wookieepedia silliness

Totally off topic, but I pop by the Wookiepedia every once in a while to try to figure out how they can have so many articles. Then I found this and it made me realize WoWWiki isn't so bad for adding items and such as articles.

For those Warcraft books and lore junkies we could add every minute detail from books, comics and short stories to pad our article count and catch Wookiepedia! We're only about 400 articles behind them. --Gengar orange 22x22 Fandyllic (talk · contr) 4:47 PM PST 28 May 2008

Haha, oh wow.--g0urra[T҂C] 23:58, 28 May 2008 (UTC)
I do not think so, but should we?--SWM2448 00:12, 29 May 2008 (UTC)
We have an expansion coming, which will add thousands of items. Patience! =D --Sky (t · c · w) 00:17, 29 May 2008 (UTC)

Update: Rolandius has taken the hint! See all of the pages he is making?--SWM2448 22:05, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

So Fandyllic are tagging those kind of articles for deletion, just because those things aren't specifically mentioned in WoW lore? Heck why don't I just create an article named "Jaw" explaining what a jaw is and how they differs from races in WoW (see Orcs and Forsaken).--g0urra[T҂C] 01:03, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

Gourra, you could do that, but you'd have to find specific (citable) instances of jaws being different in the races. ;) --Sky (t · c · w) 03:14, 3 June 2008 (UTC)
I tagged stuff {{delete}} in the spirit of WW:DNP#Off-topic_content. Some of the things added were merely mentioned in Warcraft sources and have no obvious or stated significance to Warcraft. This is exactly the problem with Cheekbone in Wookieepedia (3 e's). --Gengar orange 22x22 Fandyllic (talk · contr) 11:17 PM PST 2 Jun 2008
LOL You could talk about how the Forsaken's jaws like to fall off eventually. Also, some undead like to throw thier head in the air and catch it.  Rolandius Wc3Knight (talk - contr) 12:44, 18 June 2008 (UTC)

Your sarcasm came in less clear than you might have intended, Fandyllic. And remember people, number of articles isn't important. Quality of articles is. I don't want this site to get the same reputation as the Homestar Runner wiki.--Austin P (talk) 20:54, 25 June 2008 (UTC)

Curses, foiled again.

Rather than search it out myself, where would I find a template and/or category for buffs and debuffs? I'm thinking specifically of the Curse of Stalvan, something one can get repeatedly during The Legend of Stalvan quest chain. Think it's be nice for it to have a page, or at least a tooltip... q.v. Thottbot --Eirik Ratcatcher (talk) 23:02, 29 May 2008 (UTC)

I just created a page for it at Spell:3105. :) Not sure if WoWWiki can do spell tooltips, but at least the page is there now. --Tiwuno (talk) 23:31, 29 May 2008 (UTC)
Maybe you're thinking of Template:Effecttip.--g0urra[T҂C] 00:20, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

to Boom...or not to Boom

Moved to warcraft pump.

Emerald Forest

Today I used WoW Map Viewer to search for some hidden places. And here, I entered the Emerald Dream. However, there's not much here. Most of the place is untextured and black, but in one place we got some fabulous image: there are a bunch of black-and-white mountains and between them - plain area with some fairy trees. Here, Map Viewer shows us it is actually an area inside the Emerald Dream, called Emerald Forest. The question is: while this may be treated as exploited stuff, and: could I create a page Emerald Forest and post here an image taken in the Map Viewer? --Naga MaleShargas the Naga (blearrgglaerrgall) 17:17, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

No. It was removed before. You can however (but don't unless you REALLY want to) upload a pic to an external site, like Photobucket, and link it on a talk page.--SWM2448 18:40, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

How should I link in an article?

Hi everbody! Okey, this is only a newb question, I know, but i really wonder about it. I did not find the answer in the Help section. But it said that questions shoulb be asked in the Village Pump. So... My editing so far has been adding links to some articles. But if one word is written more than once in an article,[example "Horde") should I make All "Horde's" in that article links? Or should I only make the first "Horde" a link, and leave the rest to be normal text? Hope you understand, and answer to a newb.


-- Hewbie (talk) 13:04, 31 May 2008 (UTC)

I might be wrong, but as far as I know, only the first appearance should be linked (unless a link would be particularly helpful). --bfx (talk) 16:14, 31 May 2008 (UTC)
Yeah, I'd say just link the first one. Otherwise you'd light up most of the article. =D But like bfx said, if it's helpful, do it! If someone doesn't like it, they'll undo it and explain why. Beauty of it being a wiki.  ;) --User:Innocentlysassy/Sig 06:16, 1 June 2008 (UTC)
I may have to undo some articles then :) Hewbie (talk) 10:01, 1 June 2008 (UTC)
Eh, imo just something to keep in mind for the future. I'd rather see you working on stuff in Category:Things to do than worry about going back and unlinking links. ;) --Sky (t · c · w) 03:12, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

Recipe disambiguation

In researching jewelcrafting designs, I've noticed there are a number of designs which can be obtained from multiple sources: either from two different factions (chiefly the designs that can be purchased from both The Scale of the Sands and Shattered Sun Offensive), or from a faction AND from mob loot.

The messy bit is that the designs seem to have different properties, depending on which vendor / faction / mob you obtain them from.

For example, Inv scroll 04 [Design: Balanced Shadowsong Amethyst] is an epic item when bought through The Scale of the Sands, but only a common item when bought through Shattered Sun Offensive. Inv scroll 04 [Design: Flashing Crimson Spinel] is also a common item when bought through Shattered Sun Offensive, but an epic when dropped from mobs in Hyjal Summit.

These differing versions obviously have differing faction reputation requirements as well. Sometimes different levels of reputation (e.g. Honored with Scale of the Sands or Revered with Shattered Sun Offensive). Even though they're essentially the same design.

How do we handle items like these? Would each different version of a recipe get its own page? If so, what naming conventions would be used to disambiguate?

Thanks!

-- W.woods (talk) 03:16, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

Best alliance server?

Moved to Warcraft pump.

Search Capitalization...do we have to?

I've noticed that the new WowWiki search only searches exact capitalization, i.e. a search for "mote of shadow" will bring up a "no pages with that title found" then directly below it bring up the page for "Mote of Shadow." I'll admit I'm not familiar with the backend of a wiki, but shouldn't it NOT be case-sensitive? More than anything its annoying to have to click twice to get to the content I know is there; I'm more inclined to just use the Google search 'cause this always happens to me.

Anything that can be done? Or is this just me? Open to suggestions.

-- Xtoq (talk) 07:06, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

Depends on which search you're using. If you're using the general wikia search bar that is located on every page, wait a few seconds and you'll get a dropdown of choice answers. If you're using Special:Search, then yes, this is intended function. Per policy, a lower case mote of shadow redirecting to mote of Shadow is not allowed. If you were to use the google search, this is still what would occur. --Sky (t · c · w) 07:27, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

Items that share names

Since everything in the wiki is name based, how are we supposed to handle items that share the same name? For example, there are two items named Inv misc armorkit 12 [Mark of Conquest] - an

and a

So how should I edit that page? Or should they both have pages with parenthetical names? The answer affects use of the {{item}} template, e.g. on Alliance Field Scout

-- LowRise (talk) 22:16, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

With Horde vs Alliance, go with "Name (Alliance/Horde)", or "Name (Faction)". Either works. Ew Allakhazam. --Sky (t · c · w) 22:17, 2 June 2008 (UTC)
To expand on sky's solution, you would want to do something like...
{{loot|<common>|<Mark of Conquest (Alliance)>|<Mark of Conquest>}}
For this particular item, I elect for an atypical solution. Sure, there's two items in the database. But they look the same to the player. Thus, one page (Mark of Conquest), with external links to both items. We're not a database, we don't have to abide by a database's limitations.
Now, if the two items had the same name but were different, that'd be an entirely different matter.--Eirik Ratcatcher (talk) 01:04, 3 June 2008 (UTC)
They have different icons too. ;> Make it "Mark of Conquest (Horde)" and "Mark of Conquest (Alliance)".--g0urra[T҂C] 01:06, 3 June 2008 (UTC)
I asked pretty much the same question a couple of articles ago, but with respect to recipes. Thanks for the info. One final nitpicky question... if one of the items is purchased from a faction and the other is dropped from a mob, what's the best term to use to disambiguate the dropped item page? (Drop)? (Dropped)? (Loot)? --W.woods (talk) 03:38, 3 June 2008 (UTC)
You can say either Looted from, or Drops from... depends on your preference. 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.) 03:41, 3 June 2008 (UTC)
Thanks. I meant more in the article url, though. For example, Inv scroll 04 [Design: Great Lionseye] can be purchased from SSO or gotten as loot from mobs in Blade's Edge. The url for the former would end in _(Shattered_Sun_Offensive), but what would you end the latter in? :) --W.woods (talk) 04:21, 3 June 2008 (UTC)
Actually, in many cases you could also disambiguate by quality (ie, "Design: Great Lionseye (common)") if you wanted to, which is much shorter. --Sky (t · c · w) 03:55, 3 June 2008 (UTC)
That would actually be a lot easier, shorter is better. Do what sky said =). 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.) 03:57, 3 June 2008 (UTC)
I considered that, but it could lead to future ambiguities. If two recipes are both common quality, but have different faction rep requirements, for example. It's unlikely that differing copies would appear within the one faction, however.
Great Lionseye design comes also from Hyjal Summit, not Blade's Edge. --PcjWowpedia wiki manager (TDrop me a line!C207,729 contributions and counting) 04:31, 3 June 2008 (UTC)
You're right, it does. Mistake in my post. My spreadsheet has the right source :) --W.woods (talk) 06:37, 3 June 2008 (UTC)
I stand by my original decision: the two items are close enough to be described by a single page. I ask the question: when a user is looking up "Mark of Conquest", how is he best served?
I argue that being tossed to a disambig page is a disservice to the user unless the things being disambiguated differ so substantially that they cannot reasonably be covered on a single page. The differences in this case are insignificant - the functionality of the item is identical for both horde and alliance. As was demonstrated, the two items could be easily accommodated on a single page. And even that is not insurmountable.
I hold my argument as well in the face of recipes and other items that have minor differences such as binding, but otherwise perform the same function and have the same name: Inv scroll 06 [Recipe: Major Mana Potion]. (bot editing carping deleted to preserve space)
I have made the same argument about quests in the past, and have been overruled.
There is apparently no problem with some ambiguity, but for some reason, people shy away from other ambiguity, despite it being a better service to the user. --Eirik Ratcatcher (talk) 19:49, 3 June 2008 (UTC)
You do realize that having two {{tooltip}} on one page will only generate one hover and one icon when you use {{loot}} and {{item}}? You might think that the same could work for item pages with the same name (for example Pebble of Kajaro and Legionnaire's Sword), but it doesn't. If there are different versions of the item then there should be different pages for them as to not break tooltips.--g0urra[T҂C] 20:18, 3 June 2008 (UTC)
The recipes are more different than just quality. The rep required is different, the cost of buying, the cost of selling. While the mark of conquest could have remained one page due to only an icon change. The recipes have 4 differences, though perhaps making two new pages with the original page linking to them is a bit much. Maybe the main page should have stayed as the Scale of sands versions with a "Were you looking for" on top linking to the new version.... unless of course bliz plans to make the recipe have another version in the future... 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.) 20:41, 3 June 2008 (UTC)
I see your point, Gourra, about the Pebble and the Sword. In those cases, you have items with ostensibly the same name, but different stats. (I have objections to both pages unrelated to this issue; send me a note, if you want to talk about that.) This is not the case for the Mark. Only the image changes as far as the hover tooltip images is concerned. I admit, though, that I browse with scripts disabled by default, so hover-tips are something that I typically don't see, and don't care about.
And you, too, are correct, Coobra, that there are differences more than just quality involved with the Mark, though as I mention above, only the image differs. I think, though, that the Pebble/Sword example only confuses the issue. How about I bludgeon the Pebble pages about a bit, and you see if that provides you some help. It may even be theraputic for me... --Eirik Ratcatcher (talk) 00:46, 4 June 2008 (UTC)
Ok scratch the sword and the pebble then lol. But I agree with Coobra.--g0urra[T҂C] 00:51, 4 June 2008 (UTC)
Think Coobra's comments were largely on the sword and pebble. Still, keep an eye on the Pebble pages, tell me what ya think when I'm done. (Ran out of time, will look at them tamarra.) --Eirik Ratcatcher (talk) 01:03, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

Tbh? Item disambiguations should be done like Atiesh, Greatstaff of the Guardian is done, as well as the class specific items. It allows for concentration of information, while the class-specific articles maintain the correct tooltips while simultaneously directing users to the main article of Atiesh. In the specific case of the Pebble, the tooltip for the Purple should be listed first... As a suggestion, Eirik, this would be a great chance to make a quest series article on destroying Hakkar. Of course, applicable to the other class items. ;) --Sky (t · c · w) 02:05, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

How would that work for set pages then? for example Inv gauntlets 11 [Stalker's Chain Gauntlets], both have the same stat bonuses and etc, the only difference is the reputation requirement, and listing them both on the page Stalker's Chain Battlegear would be too confusing for the user IMO. - Sixorish 02:26, 4 June 2008 (UTC)
I agree with Eirik's point that we must think about ease of use for the user. Disambig pages are not pretty and they can be confusing. If there is any way to reasonably combine them, I think we should. However, as Sky pointed out, there are times when disambiguation is necessary. Atiesh, Greatstaff of the Guardian is a great example and is well done imo. There is a main article with details about the item's source and an explanation that there are several versions, but there is also a seperate page for each version with a brief statement referring to the main article so that tooltips will still work. Violet Signet is another good example. I think that Pebble should be changed similarly, as should Legionnaire's Sword.
Mark of Conquest is different imo. The tooltips are almost exactly the same. The only differences are color of the icon (unimportant-the user wont' care) and cost. I think the page should be changed to something like Eirik's creation and the cost part of the tooltip should simply say "Vendor or ". Inv gauntlets 11 [Stalker's Chain Gauntlets] is a similar situation to Mark of Conquest. Would it be too cluttered if the tooltip said "Requires Honor Hold or Thrallmar - Honored"?
Quests are almost always best served by disambiguation imo. They have different start and end points if nothing else, and it's easiest for a user to follow the horde chain directly than to go to a combined page and have to sort out which location is horde and which alliance.
I'm unsure about the design mentioned above. The dropped item won't have any rep requirement on the tooltip. But maybe it could be done similarly to Mark of Conquest or Inv scroll 06 [Recipe: Major Mana Potion].
It's hard to point out a hard and fast rule here. But I think we should keep ease of use for the user as the highest priority. If the differences are drastic enough that a combined page would be too confusing, make multiple pages. If the tooltips can be combined without being too cluttered and confusing, make one page. That's my 2c. -- Mordsith - (talk|contr) 15:49, 4 June 2008 (UTC)
Pebble: I modified this page along the lines of Violet Signet. I think this is much more useful of a disambig page than before.
Inv gauntlets 11 [Stalker's Chain Gauntlets]: I bent a tooltip to my will, to make the Stalker's Chain Battlegear much less lame (it is still a stub, though). It works... this time. But won't every time. As mentioned in comments on the page, I would recommend linking to the specific item wherever possible instead of the disambig page.
I think an alliance/horde 'combined' links section would work on the gauntlets disambig page, but wanted folks to mull over the tooltip thing first. Comments?--Eirik Ratcatcher (talk) 17:59, 4 June 2008 (UTC)
Perhaps it is just caching, but hovering over the gauntlets name in the set info box on Stalker's Chain Battlegear brings up the alliance tooltip, not the disambig one. Dunno why. --Eirik Ratcatcher (talk) 18:13, 4 June 2008 (UTC)
The only reason I felt compelled to disambiguate JC recipes was because of the tooltip info. If multiple tooltips could be added to the one page and maybe differentiated using a # or other kind of reference ( {{loot|epic|Design: Enormous Family Jewel # Cenarion Expedition}} ??) then I'd prefer to combine the pages too. --w.woods (talk) 02:40, 10 June 2008 (UTC)
I just wanted to point out that due to the hover tooltips refactoring, it is now possible to put multiple tooltips on one page, just enclose the one you want to show up on a hover tooltip inside onlyinclude. --PcjWowpedia wiki manager (TDrop me a line!C207,729 contributions and counting) 02:49, 10 June 2008 (UTC)
Can the new code be used to show different hover tooltips depending on some sort of reference key? If I had a recipe page that covered two versions of basically the same recipe, but with different rep requirements and qualities, is there any way to get the correct version to show up in the tooltip when hovering over a link? --w.woods (talk) 02:57, 10 June 2008 (UTC)
It can't be at the moment, but once the new version of Template:Tooltip goes live, it will be fully supported. --PcjWowpedia wiki manager (TDrop me a line!C207,729 contributions and counting) 03:39, 10 June 2008 (UTC)
Cool, thanks. Looks like I made the right decision for the short term (even if it meant editing / creating about 150 pages :P ). The recipe pages can be merged and re-ambiguated after that goes in :) --w.woods (talk) 04:44, 10 June 2008 (UTC)
This feature is now supported for all item tooltips inside onlyinclude. Say you have two tooltips on one page. Both are inside onlyinclude. Link to the first tooltip, thus:
{{loot|uncommon|User:Pcj/Sandbox#1|Item}} [Item]
Link to the second tooltip thus:
{{loot|uncommon|User:Pcj/Sandbox#2|Item}} [Item]
Both loot links link to the same page, each simply links to a different tooltip than the other. As you can see, add # and then which tooltip it is in sequence on the page to the page name in loot. You do not have to set headers or A NAME to 1 and 2, it's just a designation for the JavaScript to digest. --PcjWowpedia wiki manager (TDrop me a line!C207,729 contributions and counting) 01:05, 11 June 2008 (UTC)
I should point out that {{Lootbox}} and {{Item}} still won't work well with having multiple tooltips on one page, though. --PcjWowpedia wiki manager (TDrop me a line!C207,729 contributions and counting) 01:21, 11 June 2008 (UTC)

problem reports list colors

Looked up the Problem Reports list page thinking I'd lend a hand. Seems that 'pending', in the dark-alternate background with the old wowwiki skin, is very hard to read. Anything that can be done about that shy of changing which skin I'm using? --Eirik Ratcatcher (talk) 00:56, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

Ew. I didn't expect part of the page to be white. Um... I honestly have no issue with the darkness of "pending", but others can decide on the color. --Sky (t · c · w) 03:08, 3 June 2008 (UTC)
With alternating rows black and white, one gets hit either way. There's GOTTA be a better scheme available without forcing me to change skins. --Eirik Ratcatcher (talk) 19:54, 3 June 2008 (UTC)
It's just in the css; I just don't have time to hunt it down myself. --Sky (t · c · w) 22:28, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

Elink template for wowprogress.com

I'm wondering, would it be a good idea to add new elink template for wowprogress.com? This site contains history for boss kills, item loot by realms/guilds, guild progressions and rankings.

Examples:

There is also history for guilds with member join/left, bosses killed. And history for characters with item loot, talent build, guilds change and every stat change history.

The data comes from Armory (~28000 guilds scanned regularly) and manual submissions.

If needed, I can export some data in wiki format, as already done for the WoW forums in BML format: http://wowprogress.com/thread_wizard


-- NailK (talk) 12:40, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

Testing templates in sandboxes?

Is there a way to test templates using sandboxes? (actual templates, so we can use it on different pages using "{{<templatename>}}")? Every other time I've made a template I needed to create a page named "Template:<name>" for it to work.
-- User:Sixorish/Signature 15:26, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

Well, if you transclude a page, there needs to be a page to transclude. The code can be tested in sandboxes.--SWM2448 19:45, 3 June 2008 (UTC)
A slightly expanded version of that explanation is to have a link like {{:User:Foo/somesandboxpage}}. Note that while you can use the preview button to display changes to a normal page, you need to save the template page in order to see changes. Me, I use something like {{:User:Eirik Ratcatcher/Sandbox1}}, then create a sandbox2 page that I 'preview' refresh to see whether my sandbox1 changes worked. --Eirik Ratcatcher (talk) 19:58, 3 June 2008 (UTC)
Worked, thanks
{{subst:User:Sixorish/Signature}} 20:34, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

murloc code

hi guys i'm new here so i was wandering how i could get a WOW murloc code may u guys tell me?-- Badboy08 (talk) 19:39, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

You would have to have gone BlizzCon 2005 to get the [Blue Murloc Egg], or the BlizzCon 2007 to get the [Murloc Costume]. Check eBay, there may be keys still available. But otherwise, there's no way to get them. --k_d3 19:44, 3 June 2008 (UTC)
If you do search on ebay, beware of fraud. A used key looks the same as an unused one until you try to use it... --Eirik Ratcatcher (talk) 19:59, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

Future Instances

I was thinking of making an Instance ideas page based off Instance#Speculative_future_instances and User:Coolperson/Speculative future instances (who wrote the section). Now the content would need guidelines like being already in lore or unused in WoW (where did 'Medivh's corrupted apprentice' come from??), but it seems like a good idea. I would just be bold and do it, but without community support the page would die.--SWM2448 19:17, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

You should do it anyway. Instance#Speculative_future_instances should be in a separate article anyway. --Gengar orange 22x22 Fandyllic (talk · contr) 5:34 PM PST 10 Jun 2008

Honor Hold/Thrallmar set items

Having been pointed at Inv gauntlets 11 [Stalker's Chain Gauntlets], I have found yet another soft spot in our coverage. The HH/T quartermasters offer ... it looks like 2 items per class, only to characters of that class. Of these items, only one shows up in the quartermaster list, and given the circumstances, I feel it is misplaced.

Given the number of items, all apparently requiring the same level of reputation, and all available only to the relevant class, I feel that there should be a separate section of the table for these items. Better, given the number of separate items, an entirely separate table. But I wanted at least a couple of opinions before I went ahead and did that. Don't want folks spending all their time cleaning up after me... -- Eirik Ratcatcher (talk) 23:51, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, they will all need a disambig. Sad, but true. If you did that it would be very appreciated.--g0urra[T҂C] 23:58, 5 June 2008 (UTC)
I thought Eirik was talking about... the Quartermaster Urgronn page? Not the individual item disambigs.
For what it's worth, I find Inv gauntlets 11 [Stalker's Chain Gauntlets]-style disambiguation pages to do more harm than good - that problem is better solved by mentioning both Thrallmar/Honor Hold in the item tooltip, and making appropriate changes to the source / description wording on the item page. -- foxlit (talk) 00:20, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

Yep, all the separate pages will need work, disambig or otherwise. Foxlit, you agreeing with my initial opinion - that they should be unified pages in some fashion, rather than disambig pages?

But in this instance, I was talking about the quartermaster items transclusion pages for both sides, as foxlit mentions. See User:Eirik Ratcatcher/Sandbox3 for my first draft of what I'd include. Leave off the Qm name and it serves both sides. -- Eirik Ratcatcher (talk) 00:25, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

Ah, I see. Quartermaster Urgronn has the items, Logistics Officer Ulrike largely doesn't. While the items COULD be simply added to Ulrike's list, it lacks the information about class. (I don't feel mousing over it is a substitute.) --Eirik Ratcatcher (talk) 00:31, 6 June 2008 (UTC)
Foxlit, there's a technical issue with that request (I have nothing personal against it), and that is that |faction (reputation?) links to the faction's page... --Sky (t · c · w) 01:30, 6 June 2008 (UTC)
Sounds like a good disambig page to me... I'd even go for having a 'faction equivalence' disambig page. --Eirik Ratcatcher (talk) 17:02, 6 June 2008 (UTC)
Since all(?) of those items are reputation rewards, maybe they should be listed under a page titled "Reputation rewards"? seems fitting but considering the amount of items purchasable at X rep status it would be a long list, maybe "Reputation class specific items"? Sixorish 04:32, 6 June 2008 (UTC)
On merging pages: I think Inv gauntlets 28 [Opportunist's Leather Gloves] and Inv gauntlets 28 [Opportunist's Leather Gloves] should be a single page at Opportunist's Leather Gloves; appropriate changes in item page text should reflect the dual nature of the reputation requirements. The tooltip template can be altered to accomodate the faction requirements better, so that isn't so much of an issue as simply deciding that we want to implement things this way.
On quatermaster item listings: separating reputation PvP sets makes sense, something like the table here should do the trick. -- foxlit (talk) 17:03, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

Item hover tooltips refactoring

The JavaScript for the item hover tooltips (described in Help:Tooltips) has been overhauled to now honor <includeonly>, <noinclude>, and <onlyinclude> as you might expect. This also means that tooltips are easier on the client computer to process, will load less data from the server, and should therefore load faster. There may be a few bugs introduced by the change, but I believe I've found most of them already. Please let me know if you encounter any. --PcjWowpedia wiki manager (TDrop me a line!C207,729 contributions and counting) 00:03, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

I thank you from the bottom of my dialup heart. However, most times, I'll still eschew javascript. --Eirik Ratcatcher (talk) 00:32, 6 June 2008 (UTC)
Is 'Conjured Item' appearing under the name of the item on every tooltip considered a bug? 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.) 23:39, 10 June 2008 (UTC)
It actually is, but will be fixed once the {{Tooltip}} changes make it through the jobqueue. --PcjWowpedia wiki manager (TDrop me a line!C207,729 contributions and counting) 23:42, 10 June 2008 (UTC)
Alrighty, thankyou for the quick response. 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.) 23:46, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

Kalganism recommended for deletion

I'm recommending the Tom Chilton/"Kalganism" Controversy|Kalganism article for deletion. It doesn't seem to be often visited (no one has voted other than me), so I thought I'd bring it to peoples' attention here. Please visit the Talk:Tom_Chilton/%22Kalganism%22_Controversy#Deletion_vote|talk page and vote! -- Tyrsenus t c 14:19, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

Can't add Guild Website link to Server:Azgalor_us

I was trying to add my website link htt p://www.darklegionguild.org to the Azgalor Horde Guild list along with our name, but the spam filter kept blocking it, can someone fix this. Thanks -- Tigorn (talk) 17:04, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

Fixed (and added your guild). CogHammer Ose talk/3721 17:10, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

"Wikia's New Style"...

Just wondering if other people are aware of the impending changes to the Monaco skin which include the insertion of ads right where the infobox goes on most articles. More here: http://www.wikia.com/wiki/Wikia%27s_New_Style

-- Silvermink (talk) 07:59, 8 June 2008 (UTC)

My god. Kirkburn, I sincerely hope you didn't know about this. --Sky (t · c · w) 08:44, 8 June 2008 (UTC)
W T F !!!??? Kill it! Thank god i still don't use it... horrible idea. -- Zeal (T/C)  15:44, 8 June 2008 (UTC)
I'm particularly perturbed by the fact that they're going to force every Wikia-hosted wiki to use the new, ads-in-the-content-area Monaco as the default skin for anonymous users. --Silvermink (talk) 17:55, 8 June 2008 (UTC)
It's a shame that they offset moving the content area up by actually making it smaller with ads filling out most of the page. (I'm just glad ABP seems to block the ads). I also don't like how they incorrectly compare Monaco to Monobook, saying "New Monaco has a wider content area than Monobook, with one sidebar instead of two" when Monobook has one sidebar which is narrower than Monaco's bloated concept of a menu. Everything else seems to be making it more like Monobook while trying to keep their failure of a widget system in. The list of advantages to using Monaco is also humorous:
  • The Monaco skin is easier to customize to fit a particular community's look and feel. There are more opportunities to add color and images to the skin.
    • Uh, not really, same number of pictures and colors.
  • The page is now optimized, so the content loads faster.
    • You made it suck less than the previous version of Monaco, how is that an advantage over Monobook, which has always been excellent in performance? And extra ads always slow down page loads.
  • Monaco is easier for new wiki users to understand. The majority of internet users still don't realize that there's an "edit" button on Wikipedia. That's because on Monobook, all the important links and buttons are written in 8.5-point type. Monaco is designed to make the important stuff stand out, like the edit button and the search box.
    • Most internet users realize Wikipedia is the encyclopedia anyone can edit. If they can't make out the 8.5-type, they can always increase their own font size in their browser. Finding the search box in Monobook is really not as hard as you would make it out to be either.
  • When wikis have switched from Monobook to Monaco, they've seen huge jumps in the number of readers, contributors and user logins. As an example, Teletraan-I: The Transformers Wiki switched to Monaco in April. Comparing January (in Monobook) to May (in Monaco), the wiki's traffic jumped up 46%. Anonymous logins went up 223%, and use of the search box went up an amazing 541%. People clicked on items in the navigation flyout menus 38,000 times in May, and the number of active editors went up 51%, from 78 in January to 118 in May.
    • You compared January to May. That's 4 months of growth. There are probably other factors involved which are not accounted for, as well. Experience shows people come to sites for content, not navigation.
gg wikia. --PcjWowpedia wiki manager (TDrop me a line!C207,729 contributions and counting) 18:50, 8 June 2008 (UTC)

While I have been giving reassurances on IRC, I'm going to make a help page regarding the changes - what exactly changes for us, and why. One thing though - we're listening to the feedback, and we're making changes based on it. Keep an eye on the link above. A couple of responses to pcj's concerns though - the comparison is Monobook /on Wikia/ compared to Monaco - it is a fair comparison. Monaco is indeed more easily customizable, and we have multiple pages to help people with it - it is specifically designed for changing the themes. These ads load last on Monaco, so they cannot slow down page loads. The edit link on Wikipedia is tiny - and if you don't know something is there, why would you increase your font size? Finally wikis do not always grow in popularity - it's four months apart, not fourth months of growth - January was likely chosen because it was the last full month on Monobook. Kirkburn  talk  contr 01:46, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

Um, Monobook on Wikia still has a larger content section and narrower sidebar, I don't know how you can say it's a fair comparison.
Yes, Monaco is more easily customizable as far as adding text to the sidebar on a user-basis (and it's really not that hard to customize on Monobook). Everything else listed on http://help.wikia.com/wiki/Help:Customizing_Monaco still uses user CSS and JS, just like monobook.
I'm not really going to look too much into ad performance, I don't care about ads, I know Wikia needs money, but they should really figure out a good way to display them without cutting off content.
Finally, January couldn't've been the last full month on Monobook, they specifically say that wiki switched to Monaco in April. So, unless the wiki went offline for four months to prepare for the switch (heh), there was some growth and obviously other factors played a part besides the switch. --PcjWowpedia wiki manager (TDrop me a line!C207,729 contributions and counting) 02:07, 10 June 2008 (UTC)
Monobook on Wikia has an ad/spotlight sidebar on the right-hand side. Ads in the content area is certainly not ideal however we do not have much choice - the previous feedback we have received is that people do not want a large sidebar like Quartz (so cant put the box ad there) and do not want the content to be pushed as far down as in Monaco (plus putting a box ad above the content would be ridiculous. Banner ads unfortunately do not pay enough these days, and ads have to be above the fold (i.e. near the top) for ad buyers to buy. (Side note, the ads were going for are ones relevant to WoW, and pay per impression). Though the box ad at the side pushes down infoboxes, the whole text moves up - so in effect they get pushed down by about 150px instead of 250px, whilst the text on the left starts almost as high as on Monobook. Articles will also alternate between the box ad and banners additionally reducing the impact. Short articles will not get ads, nor will any non-content pages (this is better than currently). Kirkburn  talk  contr 15:23, 10 June 2008 (UTC)
Will we be going back to the old WoWWiki icon stamp stamp icon in the upper left? --Gengar orange 22x22 Fandyllic (talk · contr) 4:54 PM PST 10 Jun 2008
By the looks of it, yes.--g0urra[T҂C] 00:01, 11 June 2008 (UTC)
Quicky port of the Class page to "communitytest": Class
Yuck. --Gengar orange 22x22 Fandyllic (talk · contr) 7:39 PM PST 10 Jun 2008
Seconded. Yuck. --Azaram (talk) 02:56, 11 June 2008 (UTC)
I'm just glad I block ads. Feel sorry for the people who don't, though. --PcjWowpedia wiki manager (TDrop me a line!C207,729 contributions and counting) 03:05, 11 June 2008 (UTC)
I saw some interesting discussion recently about how tech savvy users are shooting themselves in the foot by preventing certain types of companies that they like from making money because (in their "savvy") they block advertising (or quickly skip over it, in the case of television, thus making those companies less able to provide the services those users desire. Ironic, no? Anyway, I don't like ads in the content area, but they've got to go somewhere and, to me, blocking ads entirely would fly in the face of my claims that I support WoWWiki. -- Tuhljin (talk) 17:48, 11 June 2008 (UTC)
I don't block ads, but I still don't like them in the content area. Wikia and others have still not come up with a good example of a site that does the same thing. --Gengar orange 22x22 Fandyllic (talk · contr) 12:49 PM PST 11 Jun 2008
Don't know about that Tuhljin, at least as far as Wowwiki and wikia go. Google Ads (which seem to be Wikia's main fare) are "pay per click", meaning that the folks who'd be blocking them wouldn't likely be generating any revenue for the host site anyway. Wikia ads can be anything, I suppose, since I can't seem to find anything written down about how they work. <tangential comments suppressed> --Eirik Ratcatcher (talk) 22:11, 11 June 2008 (UTC)
I didn't say I liked them in the content area, either. I was just noting that advertising makes the world go 'round these days. And just because you aren't "likely" to click on any ads (I hardly ever do) doesn't mean you never would if the odd mood struck you and an unusually interesting one caught your eye, which would never happen if you block them. But block them if you want; I'm not stopping you. I'm just saying it's good for WoWWiki to show them and even click some once in a while. -- Tuhljin (talk) 23:31, 11 June 2008 (UTC)
Our intended ads are pay per impression. Kirkburn  talk  contr 00:37, 12 June 2008 (UTC)
You guys should know ad-blocking software is ran after the page load. That means for the server the ad has been shown to the user.
I wish wikia's advertisers knew that. Advertisers don't like when ads are shown all over the place. People are more tempted, if not to block them, at least to ignore them. Even if they don't, there are less chances for an user to click on the enterprise's ad than another. Having a single leaderboard is generally a lot more appealing than having 5 boxes all over a 3-screen long page.
This design is absolutely horrible, I feel bad for the community. Kirkburn, Im sorry but this is total bullshit and there is no excuse for it. If Wikia is starting to lack money to run the servers there is something TOTALLY wrong, particularly seeing the amount of ads on every single Wikia wiki.
I personally prefer monobook - I understand people may want more web2.0 stuff etc. But they also want fast pageloads, and appealing pages. As I said a while ago, throwing in some "Rate this" and "Vote that" stuff all over the place is NOT appealing. It's to 2008's web what embedded MIDIs and animated gifs on a repeat-fixed dark background-image with black text content was to the web of 8 years ago.
This totally sucks. Anyone feels like starting a new wiki? User:Adys/Sig 14:33, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

Unindent. For logged in users there is still just one ad only users not logged in get more. Banner ads do not pay well, and Wikia needs revenue to continue to survive. This is not due to mismanagement, it is a reality of the web. Most websites have more than one ad, and of more than one shape - why do you expect Wikia to be different? We have the same hosting, bandwidth and staffing costs. Kirkburn  talk  contr 14:51, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

To expand on this, we do not want to annoy the users by any stretch of the imagination. However, banner ads unfortunately just don't cut it with advertisers these days - they want ads near the content, near the top, and of different sizes. We don't want this transition to be a pain for users, but we do know that users want a skin that's close to monobook, and looks like a wiki. This unfortunately rules out better placement of the box-style ad. Though it pushes down the infobox, the whole content moves up, which offsets part of the move. Short pages do not get ads, so many item pages should be okay (and better than before).
We are listening (and this change was discussed internally for a long time - in future we intend to bring in the users much earlier), but we have to interpret it in light of sustaining the business; despite all this, there are many suggestions we can and will take action on. Kirkburn  talk  contr 15:56, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

Hi all. We have a proposal about ads that we would like your feedback on. Perhaps you could call in to the Central Wikia and have a read. Thanks -- sannse (talk) 20:03, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

New jewelcrafting designs page

I've just completed an overhaul of jewelcrafting designs, adding a massive number that were missing, and rejigging the tables along the lines of leatherworking patterns. It's not live, as I don't want to make big changes without discussion. The test version is at User:W.woods/Sandbox1. The page it is intended to replace is Jewelcrafting recipes. Feedback would be greatly appreciated! :)

If the community approves it, I'll:

  • add it as "Jewelcrafting designs", and redirect the current Jewelcrafting recipes to it
  • swap the various tables into Apprentice jewelcrafting designs etc.
  • redirect Jewelcrafting/RecipeTable/Apprentice etc. to point to the above. I think there are currently too many levels for these tables.

Thanks! -- w.woods (talk) 02:52, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

Go for it. Also, you could redo the {{jewelcrafting}} to point to Jewelcrafting designs instead of recipes. "Recipes" was in the name just for consistency and being too lazy to figure out the specific names that go with each profession type.
You could also use {{elink}} for your Crafters' Tome external link:
--Gengar orange 22x22 Fandyllic (talk · contr) 3:18 PM PST 10 Jun 2008
Nice! Thanks :) --w.woods (talk) 05:03, 11 June 2008 (UTC)
g0urra approves. Keep up the good work!--g0urra[T҂C] 22:21, 10 June 2008 (UTC)
Thanks for your input and help. It's in :) I've also changed the jewelcrafting template to point to the designs page instead of the recipes one, and the old recipes page now redirects anyway. --w.woods (talk) 08:02, 11 June 2008 (UTC)
Not to be a damper, but I think your replacement missed a bet, Woods... Moving the content (but not the page) loses the history of the page. Do we want to preserve the history of (eg) Jewelcrafting/RecipeTable/Apprentice? If not, I'm happy with your (content) move. But if we do want to keep it, then we'd need the the one page moved over the other one, which requires extraordinary permissions (which I do not have). --Eirik Ratcatcher (talk) 17:22, 12 June 2008 (UTC)
Good point, Eirik. That was a tricky one. "Master_jewelcrafting_designs" etc. already existed, so as far as I know I couldn't easily move the pages across. Either way, some history is lost. The RecipeTable/ ones probably have a more useful history, though, if someone can move the history across? --w.woods (talk) 06:59, 16 June 2008 (UTC)
Moving history without moving a page is wiki DB voodoo beyond my capabilities or knowledge. In this case, I don't think any really valuable history is lost if the page is mostly completely redone. Also, history is mostly important where there is something speculative or controversial. Not the case here, I think. --Gengar orange 22x22 Fandyllic (talk · contr) 3:24 PM PST 16 Jun 2008
The current Jewelcrafting_designs uses scripts and Java. I don't trust Java or scripts on a wiki. It's a deal breaker for me and if this is adopted across the whole of wowwiki I think I'll have to stop coming here.--Brunpal (talk) 22:57, 9 July 2008 (UTC)
Too late. Just turn off JavaScript if you don't want it. --PcjWowpedia wiki manager (TDrop me a line!C207,729 contributions and counting) 22:59, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

Formatting

This is a great Wiki and I've liked the improvements I have seen over time. However, the search box in the upper left hand corner of the homepage that fills in the light-grey "Search WoWWiki..." text is the bane of my experience here. The text ideally disappears when you click on it. So the argument goes... The text ideally disappears. This is not an ideal world. Therefore the text does not disappear. Please take it out. Every time I try and use this well placed element, I get "Cannot find Search WoHoggerWWiki..." In my world anyone that can't figure out what a search box is without that text has no business using it. R/S for consideration, Smirks --'cause I can (talk) 16:49, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

I have also noticed the problem, and will see about bringing it up again. Kirkburn  talk  contr 17:41, 10 June 2008 (UTC)
I've seen reports that some days it is there, some days not. For myself (using Old Skin/wowwiki, javascript disabled), I do not see the "Search WoWWiki...". Means I have to log in, though. As an interrim measure, Smirks, Ctl-A to select the current text, before you enter your search terms. ... if that helps. --Eirik Ratcatcher (talk) 22:17, 11 June 2008 (UTC)

Search engine update!

WoWWiki has got a new internal search engine :) Find out more on WoWWiki talk:Searching. If you've got any feedback or notice any bugs, please do let us know on there. Kirkburn  talk  contr 00:41, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

I need help making a point based guild progression template

I am currently using a 25 man raiding progression table for the Vashj server page.

I would really like to be able to include 10 mans on the table and put a point column at the end so we can score kills.

-- Blitzme99 (talk) 14:59, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

I did a quick copy/paste job. Checkout and try to use the following:
{{VashjProgression10 Patch24 Legend}}, {{VashjProgression10 Patch24 Header}}, {{VashjProgression10 Patch24}},{{VashjProgression10 Patch24 Alliance}}, {{VashjProgression10 Patch24 Horde}}
I couldn't think of how the "Tier #" stuf worked for 10-mans (don't think it applies), so I just put zone names.
You can probably figure out the rest, hopefully.
At some point, it maybe a good idea to make these templates more generic (remove "Vashj" from the names), but for now they can use the same naming. --Gengar orange 22x22 Fandyllic (talk · contr) 4:10 PM PST 16 Jun 2008
Are you looking for something like this? CogHammer Ose talk/3721 13:59, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

Blocked Server Page

The following page Server:Steamwheedle Cartel Europe has been blocked by the Spam Filter because of an external link that apparently no longer works. It is impossible to edit the page, even if to remove the offending link. The link is:

http:// s15 . invisionfree . com / Eternal_Crusaders

Thank you for your help.

--Richeron (talk) 19:06, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

Fixed. g0urra[T҂C] 19:10, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

Nice java tooltips gone?

What happened to all of the nice java tooltips that used to be on this site? Now when i mouse over an item link, all i get is "xxx is a rare quality item". It used to pop up and show the item.

I upgraded to IE7 to make sure it wasn't something like that. I even did the settings reset inside IE. I also added Wowwiki to my trusted sites, and set the security for trusted sites to low. -- Veylen 20:27, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

Seems to be an IE compatibility issue. Will check it out. --PcjWowpedia wiki manager (TDrop me a line!C207,729 contributions and counting) 20:48, 16 June 2008 (UTC)
Should be solved now. --PcjWowpedia wiki manager (TDrop me a line!C207,729 contributions and counting) 01:03, 17 June 2008 (UTC)
Still doesnt seem to work for me... am i doing something wrong? i am using http://www.wowwiki.com/Shattered_Halls_loot to test. I am still a bit new to the World of Wiki (another WoW hehe) --Veylen
I think i figured it out. After you fixed it, I tried to CTRL-F5 the page (force IE to dump its cache for that page) and now it works. Thanks for your help. -- Veylen

Kind of articles we shouldn't have...

In part 2 of my on-going series to answer the question "How did Wookieepedia get so big?" I give two examples of the kind of article we should NOT make in WoWWiki:

  1. Thomas at Wookieepedia
  2. William Thomas Riker at Wookieepedia (you Star Trek fans may be wondering why this is in a Star Wars wiki...)

These are 2 examples of weak articles that really should get deleted from the Star Wars wiki, but apparently they have pretty low standards.

Please don't add articles to WoWWiki which have no obvious connection to Warcraft and can be identified as obvious filler. Also, if you have a connection to Warcraft make it better than some magazine speculated there might be a connection to.... --Gengar orange 22x22 Fandyllic (talk · contr) 2:18 PM PST 16 Jun 2008

The first is a disambiguation page, which do not count toward Special:Statistics numbers. The second I would agree is a little weak, but it's tagged as such. I agree with your message but not with the content. --Sky (t · c · w) 21:27, 16 June 2008 (UTC)
Hmmm, I didn't know disambigs were not counted. I thought the {{disambig}} template was treated like any other. You must admit that disambigs for common names can be stretched quite far... see John also. --Gengar orange 22x22 Fandyllic (talk · contr) 4:24 PM PST 17 Jun 2008
As far as I understand the statistics page, guild pages on WoWWiki are considered "legitimate content pages", hence they count just like any other page. Personally, I consider them filler pages, too (unless they have a special relevance, for example due to first kills). --bfx (talk) 12:44, 18 June 2008 (UTC)
"There are 798,244 registered users, of which 21 (or 0.00%) have Administrators rights." Wow that is a lot of users, and there is only 0.00% admins out of that total.  Rolandius Wc3Knight (talk - contr) 12:49, 18 June 2008 (UTC)
I do agree. I know we all want to beat them in terms of article count, but we have WotLK coming to do that :P Disambiguations do indeed get treated differently - I don't recall the trigger, it's either the template or the category. Special:Statistics gives as accurate a run-down as I could make. If you think any of it is incorrect, please do tell. Kirkburn  talk  contr 13:17, 18 June 2008 (UTC)
GG, that startrek crossover thing isn't even remotely canon... Do people understand the copyright issues involved there...Baggins (talk) 13:26, 18 June 2008 (UTC)
The Warcraft II Official Strategy Guide has quotes from Thulsa Doom and others of Conan the Barbarian. I promise I would never create articles for those characters...Baggins (talk) 23:36, 23 June 2008 (UTC)

Monaco 3.1 live

Monaco 3.1 has gone live - if you see any bugs, please report them here.

Known:

  • Top area messed up - due to some old CSS, refresh.
  • 300x250 ads being loaded on the left above the content - this is being worked on.
  • Custom namespace (guild, server, portal) talk pages have ads - also being worked on.

Thanks! Kirkburn  talk  contr 09:23, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

Imho the new default theme looks horrible, it's way too crowded. Good thing you can set the old theme when you log in :) Zurgat (talk) 12:57, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

We've been on Monaco as a default for several months. Kirkburn  talk  contr 14:06, 17 June 2008 (UTC)
Indeed, and i've made sure to login whenever possible because of that :) Zurgat (talk) 11:56, 18 June 2008 (UTC)

I just saw an Ad By Google (NCIX CustomGaming) preceded by HTML text: <a href="http://media.fastclick.net/w/click.here?sid=27202&m=1&c=1" target="_top"><img src="http://media.fastclick.net/w/get.media?sid=27202&m=1&tp=5&d=s&c=1" width=728 height=90 border=1></a>. User:JIM the Inventor/Sig1 19:49, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

When Ads By Google come right-aligned, they can overlap text in following subsections, making that text unreadable. This may be a problem that is inherent to the alignment. First made obvious at: Ability druid forceofnature [Force of Nature]. I view these pages maximized at 1440x900 in FireFox. User:JIM the Inventor/Sig1 04:38, 18 June 2008 (UTC)

Blog Awareness

If you got a blog, add it to the growing list of fan sites. Crosslinking is always apreciated Zurgat (talk) 12:59, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

Won't be contributing during July 2008...

...as per Forum:Boycott Wikia's New Style.

I'm sure WoWWiki will be fine without me, but I believe I have to take some action. I've been following along with the whole issue and watching people try to work with Wikia. Wikia is not totally unresponsive, but not responsive enough for me to call off my planned boycott.

Just a forewarning, if you notice I'm not contributing in July. --Gengar orange 22x22 Fandyllic (talk · contr) 3:06 PM PST 17 Jun 2008

I'm in, i just pray there isn't that much stuff i find needing to be done on WW in july, this is a busy time :P -- Zeal (T/C)  01:41, 18 June 2008 (UTC)

I dunno, Fandy-man. I read through your link, and I'm unclear on a major point. Who are you really punishing through lack of contributions to WoWWiki? Them, or us? User:JIM the Inventor/Sig1 04:51, 18 June 2008 (UTC)

Well, if you think I'm punishing you, then you vastly overestimate my contributions... or you're a stalker. I hope it's the former. I think I can honestly say I've given enough time and effort toward WoWWiki to stop contributing for awhile... perhaps even forever. Anyone can get pushed around... it takes some effort to push back. Given the lack of respect I seem to get on WoWWiki, one might wonder why I don't take a long break for that reason.
Most likely when I come back I will spend most of my time putting invisible tables in articles to get rid of those horrible corner ads. Maybe I'll start now... I have a couple weeks. --Gengar orange 22x22 Fandyllic (talk · contr) 11:51 PM PST 17 Jun 2008
Please don't. I don't know why I have to keep repeating this, but we are not a cheap website to run - banner ads do not pay enough. Nor will skyscrapers. We are limited by what advertisers will buy, and that is box ads. The old quartz skin had box ads and a sidebar on the right - but that was pretty unpopular, and took up a huge amount of screen space. Having banner and box ads in these positions reduces the impact on the space available for articles. Also note that for logged in users, there is still only one ad per page, and no ads at all on most of the administration-type pages.
If there are pages that look terrible with the box ad, we can fix them to always show banner ads, but that is a last resort (item pages could certainly count for this). All that forcing banner ads on pages that don't need it does is create more problems for Wikia, and by extension, WoWWiki.
Fandy, you've been a fantastic asset to the wiki for longer than myself, and I don't blame you for wanting to take breaks - but a boycott helps no-one. Wikia wants a happy community, but sacrifices have to be made (on both sides) for the long-term goal of continued support and hosting. Kirkburn  talk  contr 08:48, 18 June 2008 (UTC)
Do you really expect the community to respect a company that goes great lengths to break what has been promised in the past? User:Adys/Sig 16:46, 18 June 2008 (UTC)
Goes to great lengths? Would you prefer Wikia folded and just shut down WoWWiki? That would be the easy way out. I don't see what promise has been broken, anyway. In any case, this change was Wikia-wide, and does not target WoWWiki in any way. Kirkburn  talk  contr 16:56, 18 June 2008 (UTC)
Need I remind you how many times we had an unnecessary skin revamp since the day it was promised nothing would change? You know people prefer monobook. User:Adys/Sig 17:02, 18 June 2008 (UTC)
http://www.wikia.com/wiki/Wikia%27s_New_Style : Have you seen the sheer SIZE of those adverts? They are ridiculous to the extreme. I suggest finding a better way, because you WILL drive away people if you flood half of each page with adverts. Zurgat (talk) 11:59, 18 June 2008 (UTC)
The box ads are 300x250, which are not that uncommon these days. Kirkburn  talk  contr 12:16, 18 June 2008 (UTC)
Popups are not uncommon either, that doesn't make them any less annoying. User:Adys/Sig 16:46, 18 June 2008 (UTC)
That's odd... I signed it with a little (for me) rant, and it's gone and vanished from the history. Conspiracy theories ftw.
I don't particularly agree with what Fandy's trying to do with this, if anything. For me it's simpyl a protest to show i don't want to contribute in anyway to wikia if this is the sort of thing they do. -- Zeal (T/C)  16:09, 18 June 2008 (UTC)
It's an unfortunate last resort. Wikia has experimented with several different ad types, but unfortunately none have paid enough. Certainly there still lots of tweaks and improvements to be made (we're still working on improving how it all works) - but not having better ads (from the advertisers' point of view) just isn't an option. Kirkburn  talk  contr 16:56, 18 June 2008 (UTC)

Install Firefox, add Adblock Plus, problem solved with Ads Pabelanger (talk) 15:36, 19 June 2008 (UTC)

Please don't beat up on Kirkburn. He's mostly just the messenger. My protest is not specifically just about the advertising intrusion, but more about the short notice and lack of initial options given to editors. As time went on, more honest info was dug out of the Wikia folks, but I don't want them to think I as a user, contributor, and admin am just going to roll over and tow the Wikia line. Unlike Kirkburn, I don't work for Wikia, so am not obligated by everyday relationships, pay or even employment agreements to try to put the best face on this recent change.
I just want to make sure that Wikia knows they have to make an earlier more diplomatic effort for big changes like this. At WoWWiki the change wasn't as big as for some other wikis, but the way it was handled was poor.
I also want to rebut the cliché statement: "A boycott helps no one." If that weren't true, no one would have ever done it. Economic history shows that boycotts are some of the most effective methods of influencing companies as well as their advertisers. See Boycott for some in depth info on what I'm talking about. --Gengar orange 22x22 Fandyllic (talk · contr) 5:02 PM PST 19 Jun 2008
This was rather, what i feared from the start when the wikia merge was announced, more adverts. I'm sure we'll manage, but that doesn't take away that it's damn annoying or that we won't scream about the intrusion. Surely other alternatives can be researched, other advert companies investigated, etc? Zurgat (talk) 08:35, 20 June 2008 (UTC)
Thanks for that message, Fandy - it is entirely reasonable. One thing we have certainly learnt from this is to introduce this stuff to the users much earlier - unfortunately it was exacerbated by a couple of delays on our end.
Now that things have settled down a bit, are there any pages that seem to be particularly affected by the change? I am open to the idea of forcing banner ads on item pages since they are not a major source of traffic and rely more on the top-right area. Kirkburn  talk  contr 10:51, 20 June 2008 (UTC)

I am concerned... Wikia is trying this new format to increase ad revenues. It has tried several things in the past and still found this necessary, without promise that it will work. We moved to Wikia for hosting primarily because of the cost of operating the wiki, with the bandwidth it has grown to need. What options have been explored, if Wikia a) goes under, or b) becomes widely undesired? --Eirik Ratcatcher (talk) 20:02, 20 June 2008 (UTC)

Syntax highlighter!

Extension:SyntaxHighlight GeSHi has been enabled on WoWWiki, and it supports lua. Currently it only affect the site CSS and JS pages (lua and XML needs to be flagged). However, there appear to be a couple of issues:

  • The colours are predefined - since it is based on a white scheme, <pre> tags would probably be best changed to have white backgrounds.
  • There seems to be some odd bug that causes spaces to get stripped on the Monaco-custom theme (but no others), on Firefox. See User:Kirkburn/Dev2 for example - if you see a single line of XML, that's the bug.

The latter I will try and work out with the techies (any suggestions would be useful); does anyone have thoughts or opinions on the former? Kirkburn  talk  contr 11:25, 18 June 2008 (UTC)

Either use highlighting colors that don't look like crap or turn it off. --PcjWowpedia wiki manager (TDrop me a line!C207,729 contributions and counting) 13:36, 18 June 2008 (UTC)
Changing code block background to white is a bad choice, considering most common skins use a dark background here. The frequent use of code blocks on say API pages would look more bad frequently inverting black/white for short blocks of example code. Furthermore, the value of the said highlighting is limited - most of the code samples are short and trivial; highlighting lua keywords in them would hardly add anything valuable.
Since highlighting is backed by GeSHi, it should be possible to customize colors - it's not like it's generating <span style="color: foo">. -- foxlit (talk) 13:46, 18 June 2008 (UTC)
As has been pointed out to me, MediaWiki:GeSHi.css can be used to customize the colours, which may be better than making it has a white bg. If the consensus is that (with colour fixes) it's not useful enough for addon authors, then I can turn off. However, I think we should still try. Kirkburn  talk  contr 13:44, 18 June 2008 (UTC)
I've tweaked it so it no longer has black on grey text. There's still more to do, but this is a start. In other news, I'm working on getting us a proper forum. Kirkburn  talk  contr 17:01, 18 June 2008 (UTC)
Still has black on gray text for me. --PcjWowpedia wiki manager (TDrop me a line!C207,729 contributions and counting) 17:10, 18 June 2008 (UTC)
I only tweaked the CSS and JS pages so far, need to look at XML and Lua separately. Kirkburn  talk  contr 17:16, 18 June 2008 (UTC)

"clans" and "tribes"

I've noticed that most of the clan and possibly tribe pages have the terms clan and tribe capitalized. This doesn't make sense. I've gone through many sources, and in most cases only the clan or tribe name is capitalized but not the term "clan" or "tribe" itself. For example the clans mentioned in Tides of Darkness novel go by such terms as "Blackrock clan", not "Blackrock Clan".

This is also the case in the RPG for the most part as well. I can think of one source that ever capitalized "clan", and it its usage was mixed; Lands of Conflict.

Capitalized references in the book included; "Dragonmaw Clan", "Clan Dragonmaw", "Clan Ironforge", "Clan Wildhammer", "Clan Dark Iron", "Clan Bronzebeard", "Clan Stonefist", "Crushridge Clan", and "Clan Boulderfist".

However in many other examles it has the clan lower case, "Dragonmaw clan", "Dragonmaw clans", "Frostwolf clan", "Warsong clan", "Dark Iron clan", "Darkspear clan".

It seems to mostly have Clan capitalized only if it comes before the clan name, but it isn't always the case, "orc clan Dragonmaw". While it uses "Dragonmaw Clan" like five times, it still uses a lower case "Dragonmaw clan" as well.

In most if not all of the other sources the terms are always lower case. I would suggest moving all clan and tribe articles to lower case.Baggins (talk) 12:38, 18 June 2008 (UTC)

I have nothing against it. I already moved the troll tribes to lower case. g0urra[T҂C] 17:20, 18 June 2008 (UTC)
Yes they should be lower case as per your well researched reasoning and WW:NAME. --Gengar orange 22x22 Fandyllic (talk · contr) 4:37 PM PST 20 Jun 2008

Faction grammar question

On a slightly different note, when are you supposed to use "The" in front of something? Sometimes I see entries with the word "Alliance", other times I see "The Alliance". Sometimes I see entries with the word "Burning Legion", other times I see "The Burning Legion". It goes on and on. Instances, factions, organizations, and groups. I don't mean sentences where the word begins a sentence, I mean the times where the word is in the middle of a sentence or even by itself.  Rolandius Wc3Knight (talk - contr) 12:56, 18 June 2008 (UTC)

When referring to the organization in and of itself, you refer to the Burning Legion, the Alliance and the Horde. The the can sometimes be dropped if you refer to "Alliance members" for example, but only if the name of the organization is being used as a modifier. Give an example what you found if that doesn't help. --Ragestorm (talk · contr) 13:21, 18 June 2008 (UTC)
Well if you go to the Burning Legion's page it says "Burning Legion" and "The Burning Legion" above the picture of its profile. Same thing with the Alliance page.  Rolandius Wc3Knight (talk - contr) 13:54, 18 June 2008 (UTC)
Yes, what about it? I'm not quite getting it.-_Ragestorm (talk · contr) 17:06, 18 June 2008 (UTC)
Well if I was talking about the Burning Legion would I saw, hey The Burning Legion is evil or hey Burning Legion is evil?  Rolandius Wc3Knight (talk - contr) 01:12, 19 June 2008 (UTC)
In the middle of a sentence "the" should be lower case, unless you are directly quoting a source that uses a capitalized "The". Don't add unnecessary capitalization, or demote capitalizations in quotes.Baggins (talk) 01:22, 19 June 2008 (UTC)
Well I was thinking more if there was a list. Let's say some title said "Evil Factions" and underneath it you just listed the names like so and so cult or Scourge. Which would it be like?


==Evil Factions==
Scourge
Burning Legion
==Evil Factions==
The Scourge
The Burning Legion


Sort of like that etc. and so forth.  Rolandius Wc3Knight (talk - contr) 09:18, 19 June 2008 (UTC)
Type it like "The Burning Legion" then. Or [[Burning Legion|The Burning Legion]], if that's better. g0urra[T҂C] 09:29, 19 June 2008 (UTC)
For the most part you should leave off "the" or "The" unless it is absolutely needed (quoted as such) or to distinguish from some other thing that is differentiated by "The", as in "The Curator" which is the actual name of the mob as opposed to just any "curator". In alot of cases people improperly and unnecessarily add "the" to the beginning, but that doesn't make it correct.
For example, the 2nd WoW expansion is often referred to as just Burning Crusade, even though the full title is World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade. However, since there aren't alot of Burning Crusades around in Warcraft just "Burning Crusade" works just fine. The usage of "the" should be meaningful for showing a difference from a thing that doesn't have "the". If there is no difference, then don't use it.
As a tangent, southern Californians tend to talk about the numbered freeways and highways using "the" as in "the 101" whereas as in northern California we just call it "101". As you might guess, this highway goes all the way up and down California, but apparently southern Californians have a fear there might be multiple highways numbered 101, so they have to make sure the listener knows they are talking about "the 101." However in northern Claifornia we have more certainty and just say "101". Winky --Gengar orange 22x22 Fandyllic (talk · contr) 4:52 PM PST 20 Jun 2008

Spell sayings

It slightly irritates me that some spells have more than one saying at the top of their page (e.g., Spell holy blindingheal [Binding Heal]). Can I assume that only of them is "official", or can multiple of these exist per spell? If the latter is the case: could we limit the number of sayings at the top and add any additional ones to a dedicated section below, as well as adding citations for each one? --bfx (talk) 18:24, 18 June 2008 (UTC)

Ah, a topic near and dear to my heart. I inquired as to the origins of these quotations, and the answer I got was that they're not from an official source (hence the lack of citations), but rather from a dedicated few who thought the space could be spiced up a little. One major contributor was identified to be User:Foltosbika.
I thought the quotes silly at first, but they began to grow on me. Moreover, consistency in similar objects is a compulsion of mine, so I started to add in quotation ideas of my own (see: Ability bullrush [Frenzied Regeneration]).
I dare say there is nothing keeping people from limiting these quotes or embellishing on them. Just be aware, in your own contributions, that the quotes became expected, i.e. boilerplated at some point so there is styling in effect that would be "nice to keep". User:JIM the Inventor/Sig1 19:06, 18 June 2008 (UTC)

When dealing with fan created flavor text such as this, do not overwrite it with your own ideas, add to it. Overwriting leads to problems and it is considered impolite (and may be vandalism).--SWM2448 19:17, 18 June 2008 (UTC)
Actually, some of them can be cited to the TCG, though I wouldn't be able to tell you which. As for which to keep in cases of multiples, I'm more in favor of keeping the shorter of the texts usually and deleting the longer, as the longer is... long. --Sky (t · c · w) 19:57, 18 June 2008 (UTC)
Generally speaking we are trying to do away with any that can't be properly cited to an official source. If you want to give your own flavor text put it in the talk page. A quote shouldn't exist unless it can be attribued to someone, and I'm against having people signing their own "quotes" on articles.Baggins (talk) 01:24, 19 June 2008 (UTC)
I don't like those silly quotes either. Some may look ok, but some are nonsense (e.g. Spell nature earthbind [Cyclone], Inv throwingknife 06 [Deadly Throw]). I prefer to keep quotes that are official, and move those fans-made quotes to another section at the bottom of the articles or simply remove them. --WakemanCK (talk) 07:31, 19 June 2008 (UTC)
I'd handle it like WakemanCK, although I do like the idea of these quotes. I just feel that self-made ones are not appropriate, especially when an official quote already exists. --bfx (talk) 08:08, 19 June 2008 (UTC)
Ability hunter aspectofthemonkey [Aspect of the Monkey]: I'm not sure this one is vandalism or a badly written quote. -- WakemanCK (talk) 08:18, 19 June 2008 (UTC)

Unindent. Aspect of the Monkey's quote is not so much vandalism as simple bad taste. *chuckle*. Cyclone and Deadly Throw are pop.-culture refs to the Frank Baum and Stan Lee universes, respectively. I didn't come up with any of those, but I appreciate the spirit in which they were supplied; obviously, these fans like to tie in WoW with other franchises/jokes they enjoy - and if that can be thought dumb, at least Blizzard is guilty of doing it themselves (Wizard of Oz). Anyway, back on track: the TCG has been suggested as one excellent, "official" source for quotes. What other sources do people have access to? I'd consult the board game if I had it.

Here is an example of what Upper Deck came up with for Entangling Roots: The vines grew angry, as if every weed in Azeroth sought revenge upon those who would destroy their fertile home.

User:JIM the Inventor/Sig1 19:19, 19 June 2008 (UTC)

Ok, after further thought, if a quote can be traced to a book, movie, tv show, famous person, then the quote's source should be cited. Although quotes of that kind should not deviate from what was actually said by the person involved. What we really should avoid are random thoughts by someone creating "quotes out of of nowhere" that can only be cited to the poster himself. Also an rpg, tcg, or ingame quote should take precidence to any real world quotes.Baggins (talk) 19:33, 19 June 2008 (UTC)
"What we really should avoid are [...] cited to the poster himself." *smile* I agree with you, and at the same time, I don't agree with you, Baggins. On the one hand, Wikis are rather strict about providing data that is relevant to their topic. Given that crux, some might say that there's no place for quotes at all - what could they possibly add to the documentation of the ability, right? On the other hand, a single quote adds some life to the page and in some ways encourages contributions. Basically, what it comes down to is that we're evolving a type of "caption contest", which may or may not be in the best interests of the Wiki. (To be determined.)
Here is a thought experiment. Let's say that 1) any quotation is welcomed, as long as it meets general editing policy, and official sources are something that we wish to emphasize. 2) No more than one quotation should be displayed on the page. WHAT IF: ... we could set up a template that uses the Notice technology demonstrated on the main page? Official quotes get assigned higher weight values. If that was possible, the code of each ability page would start with <choose>{{pointer to a bank of quotes}}, and the bank of quotes could be supplied by .. the talk page for the article? User:JIM the Inventor/Sig1 20:37, 19 June 2008 (UTC)
There. I set up a proof of concept at Ability druid travelform [Travel Form]. Note too that I invented a Cite prefix for Trading Card Game: Dark Portal, which is where one of the quotes came from! :-) User:JIM the Inventor/Sig1
No I stick to my grounds that things should be from a verifiable and citeable source. Random comments like
"I tossed my grrnade... it went boom"-Baggins (as I said before a quote needs a cited)
should not be on any page, personally signed stuff like that should be in talk pages only. Also keeping it to verifiable cited stuff would prevent ego trips. It would probably slow down edit wars, between people who think one quote is better than another.Baggins (talk) 21:07, 19 June 2008 (UTC)
I just wish to make it clear, right now, that I am not at all in favor of visibly citing one's self. You seem to have put words into my mouth. YES: make your own quotes. NO: credit your own quotes. User:JIM the Inventor/Sig1 21:19, 19 June 2008 (UTC)
Re: Cyclone & Deadly Throw: I have never read the original text of Cyclone's quote before, though I expected it was probably quoted from some famous text. I think this one is acceptable to keep, though I still prefer to put it somewhere else to distinguish it from the other official quotes. Better have its origin cited as well. Now Deadly Throw's quote is really bad taste even after I have checked out its origin. You can as well add Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, or even X-men and Star War's characters to 30+ ability pages easily. I would prefer removing this kind of quotes. -- WakemanCK (talk) 03:13, 20 June 2008 (UTC)
I still see problems with using the TCG stuff. For example, the Spell holy healingaura [Seal of Light] page "user" quote was "Bring forth the Light within yourself, and with each righteous swing you shall be heartened.". It was well written and most importantly fits the flavor of the spell (healing youself from attacking enemies). The "new and improved" TCG quote is "It was said that every enemy Uther felled strengthened his resolve.". This has absolutely nothing to do with the ability or its effects. It is simply filler flavor lore text on a TCG card. I would move that instead of compeltely replacing high-quality user quotes with sub-par TCG ones we examine the relative worth of each and decide which to keep based on that. Flyingtoastr (talk) 18:09, 27 June 2008 (UTC)


The wiki isn't about writing what we feel like and sounds nice. It's for documenting official information. The TCG quotes have to be there, end of. -- Zeal (T/C)  08:43, 28 June 2008 (UTC)

Can't click on links due to popup

The popup item windows are preventing me from clicking on the link to the item! I'm using Firefox 3. -- PhilHibbs (talk) 23:36, 19 June 2008 (UTC)

What item? What page? What link? --PcjWowpedia wiki manager (TDrop me a line!C207,729 contributions and counting) 23:59, 19 June 2008 (UTC)
All item links that pop up an item window on mouseover. The left edge of the popup window is exactly on my mouse pointer so when I click, it clicks the edge of the window, not the link. PhilHibbs (talk) 00:27, 28 June 2008 (UTC)
Hmm, they work fine here and you're the first person to report an issue. I'll look at it. What browser are you using, what skin are you using, and what resolution? --PcjWowpedia wiki manager (TDrop me a line!C207,729 contributions and counting) 00:46, 28 June 2008 (UTC)

Tooltip float problem with Inv misc bag 27 ["Gigantique" Bag]

Can someone tell what is wrong here? I tried a few workarounds and could not make the {{tooltip}} float correctly to right with correct font-size. Reminiscent of the single quote problem we had previously. --Gengar orange 22x22 Fandyllic (talk · contr) 8:05 PM PST 20 Jun 2008

Fixed. --PcjWowpedia wiki manager (TDrop me a line!C207,729 contributions and counting) 03:29, 21 June 2008 (UTC)

Problem with my account

This is not my main account. My main account, dantheman102100, is bugged. I was playing around with the preferences, specifically the skins. One skin i chose, i believe it was the halo skin, and now i am unable to visit wowwiki while logged in on that account. Is it possible for a moderator administrator to reset my preferences on that account or something? Danthemanh10210 (talk) 16:15, 21 June 2008 (UTC)

Try http://www.wowwiki.com/Special:Preferences?useskin=monobook and then choose and save a skin. Kirkburn  talk  contr 16:36, 21 June 2008 (UTC)
Sweet, worked, thank you very much :D Dantheman102100 (talk) 19:25, 21 June 2008 (UTC)

Raid instance icons

I know that wow-europe.com has the raid instance icons (which can be seen from their raid calendar page. Unfortuntately, they seem to be missing Sunwell Plateau. I was wondering if WoWWiki has such icons anywhere on the server? If not, would it be okay to import the raid icons that Blizzard uses for their raids for the wiki? --Slxception (talk) 07:13, 22 June 2008 (UTC)

Are you talking about these Raid target icons? Nvm, I see what you mean, I don't know myself. 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.) 08:25, 22 June 2008 (UTC)
The WoW US raid calendar doesn't have Sunwell Plateau listed either. I made an icon you can use for now. SunwellPlateau --Gengar orange 22x22 Fandyllic (talk · contr) 11:16 AM PST 23 Jun 2008
Thanks. That is a great help for my raid tracking application.
While we're on the subject, what you think about including these icons on the raid pages? Take Sunwell Plateau for example. It could appear in the infobox either to the left of the actual instance name, or under the loading screen? --Slxception (talk) 18:28, 28 June 2008 (UTC)

Help with learning fire skills

Hey i want to learn fireball rank 3 but cant find the trainer to learn it. i am Human and lv 31

-- Stevenboh (talk) 09:21, 22 June 2008 (UTC)

All Mage trainers teach the same abilities, minus the beginning area (those trainers teach up to level 6 skills). And at level 31, you should be on rank 6... so did you check your spellbook, you probably already learned it.
For questions invovling the game you should ask in the Warcraft pump, but if you want a faster response use the official WoW forums. 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.) 16:46, 22 June 2008 (UTC)

Added category

In the process of trying to raise my rep in the game. Thought it would be a good idea to suggest sub categories that link each factions quests which raise rep? -- Pabelanger (talk) 15:12, 22 June 2008 (UTC)

Hmmm good idea, but how would we organize it? I guess we could put them in [[Category:Reputation quests]] and have them be named [[Category:Faction_name quests]]. --Gengar orange 22x22 Fandyllic (talk · contr) 9:22 AM PST 24 Jun 2008

Personally I'd rather have the current quests be named [[Category:<zone> quests]], instead of [[Category:Quests:<zone>]]. After that is done, something like [[Category:<faction> reputation quests]] would be possible. g0urra[T҂C] 16:28, 24 June 2008 (UTC)

I would second this. While fixing the zone categories the [[Category:Quests:<zone>]] always felt out of place with [[Category:<zone> NPCs]], [[Category:<zone> subzones]], etc. [[Category:<zone> quests]] seems like it would fit more with our current style.
responding to myself... it seems that there was some discussion about this in the past, and there may be a bot that is ready to handle it WoWWiki_talk:Zone_category_project#Quest_categories -- Mordsith - (talk|contr) 21:28, 24 June 2008 (UTC)
Re: the faction category... I like shorter names, so I'd prefer to use [[Category:<faction> quests]] but it occurs to me that there might be confusion. For instance, are there any quests in the Thrallmar zone that do not give Thrallmar faction rep? It's probably best to go with [[Category:<faction> reputation quests]]. However, I would like to see a [[Category:Reputation quests]] which would contain all of the specific subcategories so that you can group all of the faction rep quests together. -- Mordsith - (talk|contr) 20:55, 24 June 2008 (UTC)

Scryers

Moved to Warcraft pump. --Gengar orange 22x22 Fandyllic (talk · contr) 11:08 AM PST 23 Jun 2008

Major characters

What's this site's standard for what characters qualify as major? Several characters in that category seem less than "major" to me, such as Pathaleon.--Austin P (talk) 18:15, 23 June 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, we should require at least 2-3 lore references (game appearances count also) for those in the Major characters category. Pathaleon only really appears a WoW instance boss. That isn't enough. I'll start cleaning it a bit, but you can too. I will note that requirement on the category page. --Gengar orange 22x22 Fandyllic (talk · contr) 11:54 AM PST 23 Jun 2008
Category:Lore characters != Category:Major characters. --Sky (t · c · w) 19:26, 23 June 2008 (UTC)
I have a feeling both categories could do with some work ... or indeed merging. It seems a bit arbitrary atm. Kirkburn  talk  contr 19:34, 23 June 2008 (UTC)
Ideally, we'd have a set of categories which define what source of lore characters are from as subcats of Category:Lore characters (ie, Category:Rise of the Horde characters), which therefore plainly defines the role of C:Lore c as that of parent category. The other could be used as intended, and in effect, to reflect Major characters and Template:Main characters. --Sky (t · c · w) 19:43, 23 June 2008 (UTC)

This seems to fit in quite closely with an idea I wanted to bring up: "Appearances" sections on character articles, similar to Wookieepedia's. It would list the games/books that that character has physically appeared in. Assuming it was done by a template using the shorthand we use for citations (which I think it quite feasible), it could also categorise based on that. Kirkburn  talk  contr 19:52, 23 June 2008 (UTC)

Okay, I added Pathaleon the Calculator back to Major characters based on the argument that he appears in many places in Bc icon, but I think the standards need to be clarified. Part of the problem is that with much of the lore for characters that are mentioned in WoW quests or NPC speeches there people think they don't need to put references. If we're going to treat WoW more on the same level of other Warcraft pieces, we need to reference WoW lore like any other. --Gengar orange 22x22 Fandyllic (talk · contr) 4:15 PM PST 23 Jun 2008

New admins!

WoWWiki has got two new admins: Gourra and pcj.

Both have been making sterling work on the wiki, but the lack of admin powers has restricted it somewhat. I hope you can do even more great stuff with this! We trust you - don't make us regret it! (No mass deletion sprees, please :P )

Congrats! (Also, apparently I fail for having put this off for so long :) Kirkburn  talk  contr 19:24, 23 June 2008 (UTC)

PS. Other admins: you should have received mail from me about two weeks ago. If not, make sure your prefs page email is up to date, and make me email you again. Thanks! Kirkburn  talk  contr 19:24, 23 June 2008 (UTC)
There pcj, now you get to delete all the spell pages. Cheers! --Sky (t · c · w) 19:34, 23 June 2008 (UTC)
Huzzah, more spam cleaners. Grats you two. --k_d3 19:40, 23 June 2008 (UTC)

No mass deletion sprees, please :P (who doesn't love blinking text) Kirkburn  talk  contr 20:02, 23 June 2008 (UTC)

But Sky said... --PcjWowpedia wiki manager (TDrop me a line!C207,729 contributions and counting) 20:03, 23 June 2008 (UTC)
And since when do we listen to Sky? ;) In any case, I like Gourra's comment: "pcj is like RC anti-viagra, he makes it shrink". Kirkburn  talk  contr 20:14, 23 June 2008 (UTC)

Gratz to you both!--SWM2448 20:20, 23 June 2008 (UTC)

Massive deletion sprees are fun. And I don't like blinking red text. Hurts me eyes on a grey background. --Sky (t · c · w) 20:34, 23 June 2008 (UTC)

Blue is fun. g0urra[T҂C] 20:36, 23 June 2008 (UTC)
Grats to both. Although I'm somewhat frightened by Gourra's quick rise to power... Winky --Gengar orange 22x22 Fandyllic (talk · contr) 3:28 PM PST 23 Jun 2008

What's in a name...

So I've been trying to figure out how we're supposed to name articles for NPCs. Lately I've been guessing wrong. My rule has been, if they have a name in WoW, I use that name and if they're a lore character, I leave off titles. Here are some examples that seem to follow some rule, but not the same rule:

  • Magister Astalor Bloodsworn (redirect in WoWWiki) in WoW, article Astalor Bloodsworn
  • Ishanah (redirect in WoWWiki) in WoW, article High Priestess Ishanah
  • Baron Geddon in WoW, but also article name rather than just Geddon

Which is right? And why?

According to WW:NCA, we should leave off the title unless that is how they are "how they are commonly known", but how do you determine commonly known? --Gengar orange 22x22 Fandyllic (talk · contr) 4:10 PM PST 23 Jun 2008

I don't see why Ishanah is a redirect since that's the only name that is "commonly known", and her title as "High Priestess" is already in her <title>. I'd leave Baron Geddon where it is, since it's indisputably the most common known version of his name. g0urra[T҂C] 23:18, 23 June 2008 (UTC)
In Hellscream's case, he's generally called Grom Hellscream or Hellscream, rarely just Grom and only once, "Grommash." If it's just a question of titles, I don't think "commonly known" really enters into it- we've probably got just as many people looking for Ishanah as High Priestess Ishanah. I'd lean towards just doing it by name, as Gourra pointed out, the title has its own field in the infobox.--Ragestorm (talk · contr) 23:31, 23 June 2008 (UTC)

Ads blocking or distorting content

Advertising is blocking or distorting the content of a number of pages on the wiki. Some of this depends on the size of the browser window, but I think I've got mine set at a reasonable-enough width that this should be looked into. For example: API strsub (ad blocks visibility of part of code block) and Coilskar Commander (ad can push the map down, but the location blip doesn't move down with it). -- Tuhljin (talk) 06:42, 24 June 2008 (UTC)

I made a new template that takes advantage of the current way ads are placed. Put the template {{Make ad use banner}} at the top of any page that would be fixed by using a banner ad at the top rather than the upper-right corner ad. All this template has in it is an empty table. Wikia knows about this and is not opposed to doing it as long as it isn't used excessively. --Gengar orange 22x22 Fandyllic (talk · contr) 9:05 AM PST 24 Jun 2008
"Used excessively" as in "used on every infobox template"? g0urra[T҂C] 16:07, 24 June 2008 (UTC)
Indeed :) Anyone got any views of how item pages are doing? Oh, also - I changed the pre tags so API strsub should be okay now. Coilskar Commander is also affected by IE's float - I hate IE. Not sure why the blip doesn't move though. Kirkburn  talk  contr 16:12, 24 June 2008 (UTC)

Demon racial capitalization

I know the policy of this wiki is not to capitalize racial names, but what's the policy toward demon names? I often see pit lord in capitals, for example. I tried checking official sources, but they seem inconsistent. For example, in RPG books they generally aren't capitalized, but they in the War of the Ancients trilogy.--Austin P (talk) 21:00, 25 June 2008 (UTC)

Its the same policy any race name, including demon race names shouldn't be capitalized. Only exception is if the article is mainly discussing a particular npc, if the term is being used as a proper capitalized title for a certain character.Baggins (talk) 21:03, 25 June 2008 (UTC)

Do the same rules apply for the titans and Qiraj? I usually see those capitalized in sources.--Austin P (talk) 16:08, 26 June 2008 (UTC)

Google Search

Is there any way i can remove it and use wiki's default search option? I really hate using the google search, it rarely finds what i want. i.e. this page search --Lou-Saydus (talk) 21:27, 25 June 2008 (UTC)

Yes, but it requires you to modify your javascript page. There's two ways actually: Pcj's way, which switches the two, which is what you want, and then Gryphon's way, which adds the inhouse search in addition to the Google search. Alternatively, you can switch your skin to use monaco (in your preferences). --Sky (t · c · w) 18:55, 26 June 2008 (UTC)

Spam filter

On Power leveling, the link "www. powerlevelingsucks" is preventing every edit attempt. The article calls it a "Website warning against for-profit powerleveling services". User:JIM the Inventor/Sig1 19:45, 27 June 2008 (UTC)

I'm not having problems editing the page... I could get into edit mode both with the top 'edit this page' tab and the edit link, and added then removed some text to the section. (I forgot to set them as minor edits, sorry. :-p )--Azaram (talk) 01:22, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

Category: World of Warcraft ...

Forgive me if this has been discussed, but I was wondering why categories are being changed to include "World of Warcraft" such as Category:World of Warcraft mail wrist items. I understand that this wiki encompasses all things Warcraft and therefore includes articles that go beyond WoW. However, I wonder if there is a cleaner way to do this. The category names are becoming ridiculously long imo Category:World of Warcraft enchanting formula items for instance. If I'm the only one bothered by the lack of brevity, I'll keep quiet and go along with it. It just seems to me that there is a better way to accomplish this without making categories into long phrases. What is the problem exactly with the way that the categories were? -- Mordsith - (talk|contr) 13:55, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

There's been many talks about it, a few of us would have preferred [Category:WoW ... instead, but ultimately the longer version was chosen. And at this point there's no going back. Well there is, but it has already taken months just to get them how they are now and it's still not done... 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.) 18:34, 30 June 2008 (UTC)
Heh. Mostly, though, it'd take someone who really, really cared (either way) several dedicated days of bot-babysitting. AWB? --Eirik Ratcatcher (talk) 21:10, 30 June 2008 (UTC)
There are cleaner, easier, and faster ways to do that; the question is in establishing consensus on a particular category naming scheme. -- foxlit (talk) 15:43, 4 July 2008 (UTC)

Offline games?

On the left hand side of the page under the Warcraft Universe tab, one of the subcategories is Offline games. Under Offline games are actually Board Games and Trading Card Games. Don't we have a better name? Offline Game is confusing. -- WakemanCK (talk) 09:49, 3 July 2008 (UTC)

How to know when to delete the "clean-up" & "wikify" tags

I've (or at least I think so) cleaned up the Mulgore questing guide. Is it cleaned up enough? Can I delete the "clean-up" & "wikify" tags?

-- Hewbie (talk) 16:43, 3 July 2008 (UTC)

Compare to Elwynn Forest questing guide. 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.) 16:54, 3 July 2008 (UTC)

Cleanup on Server 5...

There are two sets of files ... Ravencrest server, and Area 52, in the Category:Candidates for deletion category that I feel might have been served better being given {{sd}} instead. As a whole, I think they float - no links to the top pages, and the only links to the bottom ones are also marked as candidates. And they're specialized enough/low traffic enough, that they're unlikely to gather deletion votes. Any objections to my marking them SD (or someone simply punching their tickets)? -- Eirik Ratcatcher (talk) 22:52, 3 July 2008 (UTC)

Appearances template project

It's time for a big project :)

We have a new template, {{appearances}}, which is used to list where characters have appeared - you can view the spec I wrote for it on User:Kirkburn/Appearances. Malfurion Stormrage#Appearances is currently being used as a test bed.

Ideally this section should be added to every characters that has physically appeared in a Warcraft game or book (and not just a passing mention). It also categorizes the characters based on where they appeared - necessitating a small overhaul of how Category:Characters works.

Given the size of the project, it probably deserves its own in-depth page. I'll write one if no-one gets there first. Kirkburn  talk  contr 15:24, 4 July 2008 (UTC)

Btw, I recommend not starting to add this to multiple articles (except for testing) until everything is reasonably set in stone. Kirkburn  talk  contr 15:29, 4 July 2008 (UTC)
Project page is now live on WoWWiki:Appearances project - discussion should go on WoWWiki talk:Appearances project. Thanks! Kirkburn  talk  contr 15:39, 4 July 2008 (UTC)

Is it possible to download the wowwiki database for offline viewing?

Perhaps something similar to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Database_download ?

I tried searching the site but haven't seen this answered anywhere, sorry if this has been answered before.

-- Almogo (talk) 18:58, 5 July 2008 (UTC)

No, it's not possible and I don't think it's planned. At least I never heard anything.  INV Misc PunchCards White Armagone (<imagelink>GossipGossipIcon.png%7CUser_talk:Armagone</imagelink> <imagelink>http://images.wikia.com/wowwiki/images/5/51/BinderGossipIcon.png|Special:Contributions/Armagone</imagelink>)  21:43, 5 July 2008 (UTC)
Yes, it is possible. Download: current pages only or complete history. -- foxlit (talk) 11:44, 6 July 2008 (UTC)
Thanks. BTW, I searched wikia extensively and couldn't find any mention of this. Is this an undocumented feature? Almogo (talk) 21:00, 6 July 2008 (UTC)
I stand corrected. It wasn't possible before the move to wikia though, afaik :P  INV Misc PunchCards White Armagone (<imagelink>GossipGossipIcon.png%7CUser_talk:Armagone</imagelink> <imagelink>http://images.wikia.com/wowwiki/images/5/51/BinderGossipIcon.png|Special:Contributions/Armagone</imagelink>)  19:27, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

Another cry for help...

I've added some screenshots in the Arathi Highlands Dwarven Farm. The first screenshot is working fine, put when I tried to make a gallery with two pictures and clicked the preview button, all I saw was just the "Screenshots" headtitle. The images was'nt there (though they were in the "Editing Arathi Highlands Dwarven Farm.") I've tried to look at Help:editing but nothing there could help me. The screenshots simply did'nt appear. Could someone please help me? Thank you -- Hewbie (talk) 13:39, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

No, problem now. User:Starlightblunder helped me. Thanks!Hewbie (talk) 11:05, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

Ad breaking page

While browsing various topics, I've been getting an error from IE7 that the page can not be displayed. The error is coming after most of the page has been rendered. If I click OK on the error, IE goes to a blank page. If I refresh the page and cancel loading before the ads and images have all loaded, it seems to be fine. It appears to be random whether the page loads or not on a refresh, which leads me to believe it is a particular ad causing the problem. It has done this on 2 seperate PCs (both running IE7). Has anyone else encoutered this problem?

-- Nivenfres (talk) 15:27, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

Help with sortable table

I want to create a sortable table of the data at User:Brunpal/Sandbox/1. I would like it be like BC_cloth_DPS_equipment/Feet. I'm having problems with the formating especially since there are multiple items for each quest and those quest items may require a note. Media:Quest_data.ods‎ is the source file. It is a list of every quest that the items can be found on the AH. --Brunpal (talk) 15:34, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

Questions for Activision Blizzard CEO Robert Kotick?

Tomorrow morning I am guest hosting CNBC's Squawkbox, and one of my guests will be Robert Kotick, CEO of Activision Blizzard. I will try to bring him your questions. (Not sure how much freedom they will give me to run the show...) What should I ask him, from the wowwiki community?

-- --Jimbo Wales 18:54, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

Awesome, though pity I won't be able to see it in the UK. I guess some general questions would be - would be expect to see any changes to how Blizzard works? As a result are we likely to see any changes to payment structures for the games (e.g. lower monthly subscription fee). What specific benefits does he see for Blizzard's fanbase? Thanks :) Kirkburn  talk  contr 01:25, 10 July 2008 (UTC)
More specifically, "How much does Actiblizzardion intend to interfere with Blizz's internal processes?" --k_d3 04:42, 10 July 2008 (UTC)
A whole bunch of Oceanic player would love to know when Blizz will start discussing reimbursements for 6 weeks of nightly outages from the release of the WoW 2.4.0 game client. Blizz staff are still stating that the solution is a work in progress. Whilst stability is greatly improved now, compared to those 6 weeks, we've yet to hear anything - we keep getting a 'we'll talk when we're happy it's fixed'. There's a 190+ page post in Blizz's WoW Customer Support forum, that actually breaks the forum software, discussing this. At the current rate, it'd appear WotLK will be out before any discussion of even partial re-imbursements will happen. Is a partial reimbursement at all possible, with final resolution when their tech dept. is happy? (Sorry if I'm rambling a li'l, yeah I know the agreements with Blizz say they don't guarantee stuffs, but... this is fairly extreme and Blizz EU have handed out days of free time for less before) Normal (talk) 04:58, 10 July 2008 (UTC)
Get to know question: "What Blizzard games have you played or are you playing now, as you're coming from Activision?" --Sky (t · c · w) 05:04, 10 July 2008 (UTC)


With the considerable investment that Activision is making into Blizzard, will this be used to encourage R&D to stay ahead of the market? Also, will this mean an expansion in staff and perhaps the creation of a fourth Intellectual Property at Blizzard? A little risk would seem warranted considering the operating cushion and the fact that the last (and all) IP at Blizzard was created in the 90's. - Ansu 05:14, 10 July 2008 (UTC)
Will Activision leave Blizzard alone and let them continue to produce quality content? - AlexanderYoshi (talk)
Will Activision try applying the principles of spending extra polish time on their own games? - AlexanderYoshi (talk)
What does Activision feel is the greatest benefit it recieves as a company by merging with Blizzard to form Blizzard Activision, beyond just money? -- AlexanderYoshi (talk)