Talk: Admins/Archive 4

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Spells shared by several classes

There are spells shared by several classes like the Evade spell line for scouts. I usually just made a single page for such a spell and set the class in the template to the subclass (scout in this example). I talked to Alinor about this. He thinks it would be better to have several pages for those spells even if the information is the same. So it would be nice if you could look at our discussion and tell us what would be the best way to handle this.--Airlyth 08:05, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

Disambiguation seems to be the way this is shaping up, correct? Or have I misread the recent changes files?--Kodia 14:45, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

If we would make several pages for all shared spells then we would need a disambiguation page. That is what needs to be decided. I would only make one page like the example with the spell Evade. There it says class=Scout because all scouts get this spell and there is no difference as far as I know. --Airlyth 15:11, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

As an example, I have changed Divert from being a Scout spell to be a Brigand's spell. Therefore it is now inline with the Template:Brigand Spelllines template and shows proper spell progression (for brigs). However the same page is used for/linked from swashbucklers, so any sb clicking on Divert will get a page showing Divert to be a Brigand spell and the spellline for those, not for SB. My proposal is therefore to create two pages for the shared spell, one for each class and each spell line to avoid a breakage of the spell line template. For non-upgradeable spells it could be argued to have only one page, however then you would have the disadvantage of having to display non-existent "classes" (like summoner, scout etc.)--Alinor 15:15, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

Definitely Disambiguation then. That's how we've dealt with the same problems in the past. You'd need [[Evade]] for the disambiguation page and then you'd need [[Evade (Brigand)]] and [[Evade (Swashbuckler)]] linking from it. I'll write up an addendum to the naming policy to make this more clear.--Kodia 15:28, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

Would it help if I created a separate page just for disambiguation information and the choices we've been making through the years?--Kodia 15:45, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

Would be better if SOE could choose different names for the classes like for Abate and Chain ;-) --Alinor 15:50, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

Or just be more careful about naming. Nightshade isn't the worst example, but still one. Of course, Norrath isn't a perfect world either.--Kodia 15:52, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the clarification. There will be several other spells that need disambiguation pages then as well, for example Revive for priests. Nevertheless, I still don't see why we need six different pages with the same information. --Airlyth 15:57, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

If I am not mistaken, it has to do with the way our inclusion templates are coded. In order to keep the coding we have in place and operational to do the myriad other automatically generated things we do to make our lives easier, this *one* thing requires the same information repeated. In the grander scheme of things it's not that much repetition database-wise. This should really be the only place we have to do it.--Kodia 16:01, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

Well, I just noticed one thing :-(. My assumption was, that the spell line diverges after lvl20, which is not true at least for Evade (prolly others (revive) too). So the only valid argument which is left over from my side for the disambigous thing is just the looks: You have a Evade spell for Brigs, for Dirges, for Rangers, etc. and the page shows exactly the correct (sub)class. However as long as the spell line does not split up you could indeed have one page for all spells and a Template:Scout Spelllines page. My fault, apologizes for all the trouble. Proper research from my side could have avoided this. Let me know if this changes everything and I should revert the changes made by me.--Alinor 16:11, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

Let me check with Uberfuzzy before any of the reversion happens. My understanding was that there was a valid programming reason for the disambiguation to happen, but it may well be tied with your understanding of the diversion of spell lines after level 20. The joy of wikis is that this can all be reverted or corrected fairly easily. No worries. We'll sort it out.--Kodia 16:17, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

---

the reason is, the auto included spell lines go by the page names, nothing more. they have no way to know how to link to which version of the spell you are talking about. its not so bad when the WHOLE line is all rogue', but when only the first one is 6class, and it splits into 6 different lines.... that sucks.

its gonna sound dumb, but make all the "Spellname (Class)" pages you need, even if all you do is copy and paste the content and adjust the class field. dont forget to make a disambig page at the name without the class. dont forget to adjust what ever links them. i'm gonna try to throw some weight around at the soe people to try to get these things renamed once and for all. most of them were done in the past, but alot of scout ones were never done.

--Uberfuzzy 18:07, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

Just wanted to note that for this special case (Evade) all 6 spells in the line are identical for the 6 scout classes, so I am with Airlyth, why should there be 6x6 pages with identical information and the only difference the class name. Having 36 pages for this would be only for cosmetic reasons, which *could* be done to not confuse new players about being themselves a dirge and finding information about a "scout" spell. Here I have to agree with Airlyth, and that's what I meant with "better research from my side could have avoided this"; I was under the impression that the spell names would be different from lvl 20 onwards and therefore it would be better to have 6 (or 12) different starter spells. For Evade this would not be necessary imo as the line keeps the same for all scout classes. What do you think? My fault, so I see no problem to revert my premature changes.--Alinor 07:31, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

ok, in the case of archtype lines (fighter/scout/mage/priest) where the classes using the line is the same the whole time, THOSE you can leave un-disambiged as everypage will be linking to the right version of the pages.

L10 classes (such as rogue, bard, warrior, summoner. if anyone even remembers those anymore) split those, even if the same 2 classes use the whole line (there was one of the brigand ones i did this too right before this whole mess got... messy. the reason being, those classes dont exist anymore. soe WILL get around to renaming/splitting those lines if i have to drive to cali and start mugging devs (i'm just kidding)

L20 classes, if different lines have to share 1 common pagename (such as lines that multiclass as the first spell, but split from there), that would make that name ambiguous, which means.... we setup a Disambiguation page :)

i just want to let you guys know, we dont like this either. --Uberfuzzy 13:42, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

Arranging of pages in categories

Hi,

I moved some pages of monsters in the Forest Ruins. I discovered that most of the moved pages are now put under the letter A, although not all of them. Some are put under the correct letter. Maybe you could have a look at it: Category:Forest Ruins Monsters. --Airlyth 08:34, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

for some unknown reason, moving a page does not cause the internal mesh of categories to update right away. when that happens, wait a 1-2 days for the job queue to run and those should update to where they need to go. if they dont, let us know again, and i can manually push them around. --Uberfuzzy 13:22, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

It's not just moved pages that take a bit of time to update on the categories... all new pages and newly categorized pages seem to be taking some time (looked like ~30 minutes) to properly make the transition. --Lordebon 16:04, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

Yes, I've noticed the same issue when working with they Claymore Timeline. A few of the quests had to be renamed, and after doing so and editing the claymore template, the old, inaccurately named page would still show all of the other claymore quests linking to it despite the fact that the pages did not actually link to the old page any longer. Just a database thing. It fixes itself :) --Sage Locano Aredium (talk/contribs) 16:43, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

Exp Only Rewards

Since we have decided on the convention of not listing 'Experience' under the 'Rewards' section on quest articles, what is the convention for quests that only reward Experience? Leaving nothing below the 'Rewards' break looks awkward and unfinished. Removing the '== Rewards == looks better, but could leave some wondering if the rewards for the quest had simply not been added yet. I have seen some people adding a line such as ' * Only XP', but if we are going to do this, why not just put 'Experience' for all of the quests? --Sage Locano Aredium (talk/contribs) 18:56, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

So far we've just been doing "Only XP" or "Experience only" but there's been no set convention listed in the policies. As for the Experience in all quests and why don't we keep it, I don't know that I have a good answer.--Kodia 20:00, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

Armor sets, and set-piece droppers...

I have a question. How should we handle named mobs that can drop a set piece (ie, basic RoK raid set gloves)? As it stands now, I guess all the items are simply being listed? Do you think it would make sense to add categories like Category:RoK Basic Raid Set Gloves that would include all the set piece gloves from the different basic raid sets (I say basic raid sets because theres more than one raid set in RoK) and then link to that from the drops section? --Lordebon 15:23, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

what do you mean by "basic" ? --Uberfuzzy 15:29, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

The basic raid set is the one that drops in the lower Kunark Raid Zones, like The Protector's Realm and such. There is a VP set much like relic that is a completely different set. Thus there are at least 2 complete raid sets. --Lordebon 16:20, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

Strategy

I've done some more thinking.... Given that for any specific named mob, there is generally many workable strategies, perhaps its better to split the strategy discussion off to the first area on the Named's talk page instead of having it on the main page. AEs and such can still be recorded on the mob's page, but actual strategies would go under this section. A benefit of this would be to allow people to "sign" their strategies (which they cannot currently do per the user-credit policy on the article pages) and for discussion to happen around possibly strategies, if the users wish to have it or wish to comment on it (ie perhaps by saying it no longer works due to a change or something). What are your thoughts on this? --Lordebon 13:58, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

I like the idea of having a strategy discussion section on the talk page. It would be good to get more than one view of strategy. All too often once something is written it assumes a "set in stone" quality, which a wiki environment is good for avoiding. Heck, I personally have seen six successful methods for splitting the Alzid and Vyemm in Labs raids, for instance! Keep up the good work, folks, it's appreciated! --Sigrdrifa 23:43, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

To date, strategies have been listed on the main article pages of named monsters. There have been and are multiple strategies listed on those main pages and as is typical in a wiki-based environment, people have largely copy-edited those strategies without changing the essence of the information. When additional strategies that work have been discovered, they have typically been added rather than having the bulk of existing information changed. Talk about these has also happened on the talk pages, as is custom. I think we should leave the current practice as is and avoid the idea of ownership.--Kodia 12:37, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

Island Information

As a general note, I'm still unhappy with the islands of Kingdom of Sky and the way they're documented. I'd like to see us come up with a better *consistent* method of maintaining information. My belief is that most people want to know how to get to and from the island (since it's such a PITA to figure out). The rest of the information could link like we do for zones (i.e., the Monsters, Names, POIs et. al. at the bottom of the zone information). The exceptions we would make would be for things like the Mysterious Cube in Bonemire, which is sort of a triggered event. Thoughts?--Kodia 12:48, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

I think having the full set of zone-like categorys may be a bit overkill, seeing as some of the islands tend to only have a few mobs, monsters, and pois. They're generally small enough that they could probably be listed on the page... or perhaps have a single category for the entire island (ie <Island Name> Articles) for all monsters, quests, etc. that fall on the island. But then that would have to be added to the pages manually or it would require an additional field in the information pages, no? --Lordebon 15:26, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

True, though perhaps I mispoke myself (not making things clear is a sure sign of caffeine deprivation). The manual information is the troubling part because of how inconsistent it is for all the air-based islands. Troll through them sometime. I wonder if there isn't a better way. Thinking out loud here, you're right on the few mobs for each island (though some are bigger than others). But what if there was a way to go about it from the monster point, not the island point? If there are so few, then theoretically, we could have those automagically included on the page so that people wouldn't have to add them manually. We'd have to account for monsters on more than one island (though realistically there aren't that many like that), but it would save some time if we could make the technology work for us. The con side of this, of course, is that it makes it harder for the casual user of the wiki to update. Where do we make the trade off?--Kodia 16:30, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

Current Events

Bristlebane Day went live today with a new quest line, so that can be dropped in on the front page current events ;) --Lordebon 16:14, 27 March 2008 (UTC)

Done. Thanks for the heads-up for those of us not able to log in yet.--Kodia 16:21, 27 March 2008 (UTC)

Also updated on Wikia's gaming hub--Kodia 16:34, 27 March 2008 (UTC)

In other news, the cloak quest was one day only, and BB Day should be going away tomorrow. --Lordebon 01:33, 3 April 2008 (UTC)

Quests have had the removed from game tag added. The NPCs still need to be done though.--Kodia 12:10, 3 April 2008 (UTC)

Exploit?

Take a peek at the Talk page for Draco Mortuus vos Liberatio. I think what is being described is an exploit, but wanted an admin to review. --Sigrdrifa 13:35, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

Hmm. I guess I'm not seeing it as an exploit. Can you maybe explain how you might see it as one?--Kodia 13:37, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

I kind of look at it as a way of shortchanging the content. I guess it's no different than having a level 80 friend come do the same. II really wasn't sure so that's why I asked for a double check!--Sigrdrifa 19:22, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

Hmm that one is very tough to call. It's definitely not the original intended method, but then again its nothing you couldn't do before or anything like that. I'd have to call it non-exploitive, but not something I would put on the main page since it is sort of skirting around it.

Old Credit Templates for Defunct Websites

All: we now have at least two credit templates that link to defunct websites. Template:PhoenixEliteWiki and Template:OGaming both point to websites that no longer exist. As we have never had to deal with this thing in the past (websites last forever, right?), we probably should discuss what should happen with these. In the case of OGaming, the content was absobred in the Alla's merger and purchase, but Alla's did *not* provide the information at any point. The Phoenix Elite Wiki is now simply defunct. I'm inclined to remove the linking capabilities in these templates so that people don't try to click on the links to go to a page original that no longer exists. Are there other options?--Kodia 21:30, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

i noticed that before, i removed some of the linking on the PE one a while back. removing the linking would be a good idea, but not change the url in the wiki source, (leaving credit and what not). --Uberfuzzy 22:49, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

I'm not disagreeing on the changes, but for the purposes of what wikia requires for GFDL, credit needs only be credit, not a link back. That having been said, let's see if we can get the template to not try to link any more. --Kodia 03:23, 13 May 2008 (UTC)