Forum

Related topics: Recent Changes, Template:Post

The Forum is a central location for discussions that would be of general interest to other contributors. This also includes putting a link here to very specific discussions that are carried out on the talk pages of articles. The general idea is having one place to check for recent contributor discussions. The wiki is growing and there are now many contributors helping cover more topics than ever. The forum should help avoid missing reading and participating in discussions about standards and practices as the wiki continues to evolve.

If there is a particular contributor that you want to reply to a concern, post a link to the Forum or the article's Talk page on his or her user page (so he or she will get a New Messages highlight when they log in/post again). Two or three-way discussions can be hard to follow when they span more than a single page. Also, if you add this page as a Watched Page it will show as bold in the Recent Changes list. If your post will only be of interest to a single person, feel free to post on just that user's talk page. Discussions will be organized by month, though they may continue past the month they were started and will be archived on the talk page for this article after two months.

{{Post | Indent = : | To = | Text = }}

March 2009

Home Page Redesign

I think that ACC Wiki Home could use a redesign. I think it would be nice to have it laid out more like other wikis, like the wikipedia main page. What I am referring to are the sections wikipedia has labeled "Today's featured article", "Did you know...", "In the news" and such. Having our AC news and Wiki news tucked away as links on the side bar makes them less noticeable, and I admit I don't even update them much, but I probably would if they displayed on the front page. One other thought I had. With the wiki software we have, are drop down menus possible? Like the ones on WoWWiki or the LotRO Lorebook? --An Adventurer 14:50, 16 March 2009 (CDT)

I'm worried they would compete with navigational aspects. Ideally you can reach any content in the wiki in 3-4 clicks from the main page and the size of our wiki makes it possible (unlike Wikipedia where there's so much content that it's assumed people will just use the search box to get where they want to go) so more of the main page can be devoted to interest grabbing material. It's possible to do drop down menus yes, they can be integrated into skins I know, and I assume something could also be done with the default monobook, I'll try to get something working. --Tlosk 17:28, 16 March 2009 (CDT)

Weapon & Armor Collection categories/templates

I would like to propose we create 2 new categories & templates called "Weapon Collection" and "Armor Collection" to classify "groups" of related weapons & armor. This would be used to A.) group similar weapons/armor together, like we have already done in many places, and B.) to group together various sets/upgrades that, while they may various quests, are related to one another. Examples of possible Weapon Collections: Atlan Weapons Isparian Weapons => Shadowfire Weapons, Weeping Weapons Living Weapons => Palenqual's Living Weapons, Renegade Living Weapons Runed Weapons => Princely Runed Weapons, Royal Runed Weapons Red Rune Silveran Weapons Singularity Weapons => Singularity Weapons, Bound Singularity Weapons, Ultimate Singularity Weapons Spectral Weapons etc... Examples of possible Armor Collections: Shadow Armor => Regular Shadow Armor, Prismatic Shadow Armor, Sharded Shadow Armor, etc... Noble Armor => Contains Empowered Noble Armor (or whatever it will be called). Relic Armor => Contains Noble Relic, Ancient Relic, Relic Alduressa Hieromancer's Armor => Thaurugmatic Plate, Exarch Plate, Auroric Exarch Armor Just throwing it out there. Since we already have several "groups" of weapons that are currently classified incorrectly as "Weapon", it might be a good way to properly classify this stuff. What do you guys think? --Atarax 00:58, 12 March 2009 (CDT)

Since there aren't a ton of them I might suggest having a "Collection" category and add it to the list pages (and keep the weapon, armor etc). But I'd be fine either way. Your call. --Tlosk 06:01, 12 March 2009 (CDT)

To: Tlosk Well, I thought more about it last night, and I think afterall, it would be good to keep each group of weapons/armor separate, like Princely Runed Weapons vs Royal Runed Weapons. Then in the template, just have "related articles", which link to the others. I still think having a more specific category called "Weapon Collection" would be more appropriate than listing it under Weapon & Collection, since its not a weapon, its just a group of weapons. What do you think? --Atarax 10:38, 12 March 2009 (CDT)

I agree that a general collection would be better than specific weapon and armor. First, Tlosk is right - there are not many sets out there. Second, there are some possible collections that could contain both weapons and armor, and even jewelry. For example, the various renegade tumerok and lugian weapons, armor, clothes, and jewelry could be listed on a "Renegade Equipment" page. All the olthoi armor and weapons could be on another page. --An Adventurer 14:14, 13 March 2009 (CDT)

Honestly, I do not think we need to have many collection pages. For the most part, collections or sets come from the same quest, and all the items belonging to that set would be listed on the quest page anyway. I'm not saying we don't need collection pages at all, just that they should only be used when the entire set cannot be found on a single quest guide already. --An Adventurer 14:14, 13 March 2009 (CDT)

To: An Adventurer I see your point. Lets take Weeping Weapons for an example, where would you propose that these be listed, if not on their own page? --Atarax 15:28, 13 March 2009 (CDT)

To: Atarax Weeping Weapons would be listed on the Heart of Innocence (Quest) item listing. Elemental Weeping Weapons would be listed where they already are, on the Elemental Weeping Weapons guide item listing. The heart of Innocence would have Isparian Weapons (Quest) and Elemental Weeping Weapons listed as related quests. Isparian Weapons would have the following quests listed as related: Shadowfire Stone (Quest), Heart of Innocence (Quest), Major Atlan Stones, Major Prismatic Stone (Quest). --An Adventurer 16:01, 13 March 2009 (CDT)

To: An Adventurer Fair enough, I like that Idea. I'll start purging those "collection pages" and redirecting them to the quest that yields them. --Atarax 18:26, 13 March 2009 (CDT)

Spell Table

I've created an archive of files generated from the spell table of the client_portal.dat file. It contains information for the last six patches. Each patch has two files. The first has most of the data about each spell, including its name, description, icon, components, school, duration, caster effect, target effect, and target mask. A few of the fields don't seem to have much meaning, such as range/level, dura2, and the one labeled "2*lev". The other file shows the groups of spells that stack, with each spell sorted by difficulty within the group (the number on the left). This is useful for finding bugs with spell stacking. ac-spells-2009-03.zip You can compare the files to see what has changed in each patch. For this patch, I've summarized some of the changes on Talk:Who Watches the Virindi?. --Widgeon 02:31, 12 March 2009 (CDT)

Awesome, thanks, that will be a huge help. --Tlosk 06:03, 12 March 2009 (CDT)

Feb 2009

AC:DM CD lore documents classification

The AC:DM cd included several lore articles in the form of word documents. I want to add them to the lore section, but I'd like some input on how to classify them. There are two categories I am considering using: Internet Lore Article & Printed Material. They don't really belong in either category though. And there are only 12 of them, so I don't think they deserve a new category. I was thinking printed materials because, while not printed, they were included as extras with the AC:DM product, similar to the manuals that I tagged as printed materials. I was thinking internet lore article because, while perhaps never appearing on the web, they fit in with the style of the internet lore articles, and if someone was looking for them without remembering their source was the CD, they might check the internet lore articles. So what do you think? Tag them as printed, internet, both, neither? --An Adventurer 13:51, 24 February 2009 (CST)

Since they came on the CD, it classify them as printed. Hey, you have to print a CD ;) --Atarax 13:55, 24 February 2009 (CST)

Mediawiki 1.14 Released

The 1.14 version was released on Sunday, I'm currently testing the upgrade on a test machine and in the next week I'll be upgrading the wiki. This will be a significant move as we are currently running version 1.10 (May 2007). Some preparation can be done ahead of time, however during the final backup and upgrade the wiki will be placed into a read only mode to avoid database conflicts, I'll give at least a 2 day warning before this happens. Help pages will be changed to reflect the changes once the upgrade is complete. Some special pages will appear different and quite a few new options will be available. --Tlosk 10:13, 23 February 2009 (CST) Here are the 1.11, 1.12, 1.13, and 1.14 changes that will likely be meaningful to our specific wiki: Images: The Image namespace has been subsumed by the File namespace, while [[Image:Name.jpg]] will still work, the standard is now [[File:Name.jpg]] to display an inline image. [[Media:Name.jpg]] will still create a text link directly to the image and [[:File:Name.jpg]] will link to the image description page. A new tag allows a single image to link to many pages instead of just a single page as was previously the case with a redirect on the image's description page. Add the parameter link=page name where the image is used. The image will act as a hypertext link to the specified page. The page name must not be enclosed in square brackets, and it is always interpreted as an internal link. For example, [[File:Pyreal Mote Icon.png|link=Atlan Weapons]] would link to Atlan Weapons when the image is clicked. In most cases we will continue using redirects to avoid having to duplicate the link each time the image is used. Setting a caption for an image will display the caption explicitly if the image uses a frame and will display a popup caption if the mouse hovers over the image even if there is no frame. Now this popup can differ from the caption by adding the parameter alt=alt text. For example, [[File:Image.jpg|frame|alt=Asheron|Asheron in his tower on the island off the coast of Eastham.]] would display the full caption, but display "Asheron" if hovered. The <gallery> tag accepts image names without an Image: prefix (just give name and caption). New file cache for the parser that improves page rendering time on pages with several uses of the same image. Image moving is now enabled for sysops by default. Image redirects are now cached (nonlogged in users will view the normal page cache instead of forcing a page rendering). A warning is shown when hash identical files exist. Better proportional view of upright images related to landscape images on a page without nailing the width of upright images to a fixed value. New 'border' and 'frameless' keywords added to the [[Image:]] syntax. Removed hardcoded minimum image name length of three characters. Allow HTML attributes on <gallery>. New Syntax: {{PAGESINCATEGORY:Category Name}} - For example {{PAGESINCATEGORY:Creature}} would display as 1,824. Able to make arbitrary rows of sortable tables sticky (stick to top of table, not sort): |- class="unsortable" Added magic word __STATICREDIRECT__ to suppress the redirect fixer. Added magic word __HIDDENCAT__, when placed on a category page causes the category to be hidden on article pages. New PAGESIZE parser function that returns the size of a page. Search: "Did you mean" search feature made more noticeable. Drop-down AJAX search suggestions added. More relevant search snippets are highlighted. Drop-down selection of major search engines (Google, Yahoo, Windows Live, etc). Special Pages: The new page Special:Log/newusers records new users to the wiki. The new page Special:LinkSearch displays a search for external links. History pages now have a date selector that allows you to display history from a particular month. Mediawiki:pagetitle-view-mainpage message page allows the HTML <title> of the main page to be customized. Special:User contributions now has year and month date selectors. Special:Statistics has many new features. Special:ListUsers displays edit counts. MediaWiki:Uploadfooter now available for just Special:Upload. Category pages now give an accurate total of items in the category instead of only a range to display. Special:FileDuplicateSearch Special:UserRights redesigned. Inclusions, links, and redirects can be separately toggled on or off for Special:WhatLinksHere. Special:SpecialPages now organized into sections. Image links are shown on Special:Whatlinkshere. Search by first letters or digits in Special:Categories added. Special:Recentchangeslinked now has all options that are in Special:Recentchanges. The search box, toolbox and languages box in the Monobook sidebar can now be moved around arbitrarily using special sections in MediaWiki:Sidebar: SEARCH, TOOLBOX and LANGUAGES. Added a predefined list of delete reasons to the deletion form. Add a predefined list of delete reasons to the file deletion form. Special:Upload now lists permitted/prohibited file extensions. Use shared.css for all skins and oldshared.css in place of common.css for pre-Monobook skins. As always, modifications should go in-wiki to MediaWiki:Common.css and MediaWiki:Monobook.css. Special:Uncategorizedtemplates Miscellaneous: Configurable per-namespace and per-page notices for the edit form. Search matches are now bold only, not red as well. When a page doesn't exist, the tab will say "create", not "edit". Users moving a page can now move all subpages automatically as well. The User class now contains a public function called isActiveEditor. Figures out if a user is active based on at least $wgActiveUserEditCount number of edits in the last $wgActiveUserDays days. Duplicate section anchors with differing case are now disambiguated. White space differences not shown in diffs. Add feed links for the site to all pages. Allow bots to specify whether an edit should be marked as a bot edit, via the parameter 'bot'. Allow HTML attributes on <math>. Improved file history presentation. Show edit count in user preferences.

I've successfully upgraded a test server and will be doing a full backup early Saturday morning on the 14th. The wiki will be read-only during this period. This will give us several days to get the bulk of the content up for the new patch before then. After verifying the backup I hope to complete the upgrade of the site Sunday or Monday following. If you find any unexpected behavior or errors, contact me via email. Also the template revisions and swiss tool update will be done by then so once the upgrade is live I'll start aggressively updating existing articles with the new template formats using the new tools that will be available to us. --Tlosk 17:12, 9 March 2009 (CDT)

Further testing revealed a few issues that I'm tracking down now, so it may be a few more days.

Template Revision Progress

General Issues: Updating all templates for next release of Wiki Swiss Tool. Moving from format heavy page templates to variable based page templates (will aid data entry speed and provide flexibility in updating formatting in the future). Live images fixed to not overlap in small browser windows and not appear at all if no image specified. Move template links listed below up the chain as progress is made. Revised and Reviewed: (final inclusion candidates) Individual Creature Template - Talk - Tlosk, An Adventurer, Atarax Key Template - Talk - Tlosk, An Adventurer, Atarax Patch Announcements Template - Talk - Tlosk, An Adventurer, Atarax Melee Weapon Stat Template - Talk - Tlosk, An Adventurer, Atarax Creature Entry Template - Talk - Tlosk, An Adventurer, Atarax Keyring Template - Talk - Tlosk, Atarax, An Adventurer Jewelry Template - Talk - Tlosk, Atarax, An Adventurer Scroll Template - Talk - Tlosk, Atarax, An Adventurer Missile Weapon Stat Template - Talk - Tlosk, An Adventurer, Atarax Point of Interest Template - Talk - Tlosk, An Adventurer, Atarax Magic Caster Stat Template - Talk - Tlosk, An Adventurer, Atarax Landblock Template - Talk - Tlosk, Atarax, An Adventurer, Atarax Armor Stat Template - Talk - Tlosk, Atarax, An Adventurer (includes shield, clothing, robe, etc) Standard Text Template - Talk - Tlosk, Atarax, An Adventurer Individual Dungeon Template - Talk - Tlosk, An Adventurer, Atarax Translated Text Template - Talk - Tlosk, An Adventurer, Atarax Housing Settlement Template - Talk - Tlosk, An Adventurer, Atarax Quest Guide Template - Talk - Tlosk, An Adventurer, Atarax Trophy Template - Talk - Tlosk, Atarax, An Adventurer Housing Item Template - Talk - Tlosk, Atarax, An Adventurer (includes Portal Devices) Healing Kit Template - Talk - Tlosk, Atarax, An Adventurer Potion Template - Talk - Tlosk, Atarax, An Adventurer Under Review: (Updated and needs improvement feedback, sign the end of each template once you have reviewed it and have no further suggestions.) Gem Template - Talk - Tlosk, An Adventurer, Atarax Portal Gem Template - Talk - Tlosk, An Adventurer, Atarax Vendor NPC Template - Talk - Tlosk, An Adventurer, Atarax Crafter NPC Template - Talk - Tlosk, An Adventurer, ?? Under Revision: (Currently being updated.) Portal Template - Talk Quest NPC Template - Talk Food Template - Talk Cooking Template - Talk Crafting Template - Talk Object Template - Talk Item Stat Template - Talk Needs Revision: (Not currently being worked on.) Town Page Template - Talk Geographic Area Template - Talk Needs Creation: (Does not exist in any form yet.) Live Event Template - Talk

Instead of making a unique template for rares, I added an optional line to the {{Intro}} template. Adding Rare Number = makes a link displaying the rare number on the far right. For example, Mirrored Justice. I was able to construct the Armor template so that it can handle all the different types of armor, so the clothing, robe, masks & guises, and shields have all been folded into a single template. --Tlosk 11:26, 19 February 2009 (CST)

2nd Quest Template Revision Complete

I finished a first go at the various templates for the Quest Guide Template based on what you'd both come up with and posted the results on the Test Quest Page. The wikicode is at the bottom of the page. There's a special map links template now that links to the dungeon page and both the wiki and acmaps.com maps if extant, or another site if there's one. I abandoned my tile based mapping program development and am finishing automating as much as I can of a new workflow that produces a complete map in 10-15 minutes instead of several hours like it took before so it's going to be feasible to create our own maps for most dungeons. I'll start with unmapped dungeons then move to popular quest dungeons. The experience and title table templates are flexible in the number of items and whether to include repeat info columns. As suggested below, I added a link bar that mimics the link bar for special pages like Image file pages. Any of the items can be turned off by erasing the True values in the template. After any initial feedback is incorporated we should probably use it on a few quest pages to see if anything unexpected turns up. --Tlosk 15:02, 15 February 2009 (CST)

Can we have a small link to Level Costs at the bottom of the Quest Experience Table? This would make it easier to figure out how much xp you'll get for levels below the xp cap. --Widgeon 00:43, 21 February 2009 (CST)

Sure, I added it in. --Tlosk 05:57, 21 February 2009 (CST)

Image Galleries

For aesthetic reasons I changed the backgrounds of the gallery thumbnails from light gray to black for higher contrast. Also to adjust the thumbnail sizes both the widths and heights parameters need to be specified. See How To Use Images#Image Gallery for more info. --Tlosk 16:59, 14 February 2009 (CST)

Show/Hide ability

I'd like to request the ability to create the show/hide function. Looking on wikipedia for examples, I was able to find two templates that we may be able to copy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Hidden_begin http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Hidden_end Looks like these will provide the ability to make show/hide areas. I would like this ability for the new quest guide template, currently being worked on in An Adventurer's Sandbox. I was thinking the ability to hide/show the Quest Summary, Rewards Summary, and Related Articles would be nice - but the feature may also be useful on other pages such as patches. --An Adventurer 14:50, 12 February 2009 (CST)

After an initial attempt I couldn't get it working, I need to track down all the dependencies and I may get it working, or it may have a dependency that is version related and it will have to wait for the upgrade. It will integrate into the template itself so we can move ahead and it can be added when I get it working without having to change anything on the pages themselves. --Tlosk 16:51, 14 February 2009 (CST)

Kill Tasks Naming

Atarax and myself think we should come up with a new naming system for kill tasks. The current system is Hunter Quest (Creature Name). Some ideas: <Reward Title>, <Reward Title> Task, <Reward Title> Quest Example: Arctic Mattekar Annihilator, Arctic Mattekar Annihilator Task, Arctic Mattekar Annihilator Quest Pros: Searching for a title would direct you to the quest, each kill task has a unique title. Cons: Some titles may not be very descriptive of the task, a small number of kill tasks have multiple titles <NPC Task Giver>'s Task Example: Enzo Ilario's Task Pros: Would provide unique names for every task Cons: Not descriptive of task, a few NPCs give out multiple tasks (may not be an issue), some kill tasks may not have npcs (unsure). <Creature Name> Task, <Creature Name> Kill Task Example: Arctic Mattekar Task, Arctic Mattekar Kill Task Pros: Identifies creature right in article name. Cons: Some tasks are for multiple creatures. I don't think there is any naming system for kill tasks that will be able to cover all types of tasks, so we should just pick whichever one works best for most and is able to deal with the odd ones in an easy way. --An Adventurer 14:50, 12 February 2009 (CST)

I'd vote for <Creature Name> Kill Task and for tasks with multiple creatures pick the most common creature for the full page and create pages for the other creatures that redirect to the full page. This would only be for cases where the various creatures all count towards the same goal. Where there are separate counts, like for the Cragstone Drudges I think there should be a separate page for each creature even though they share the same NPC since the counts, timers and rewards are discrete. --Tlosk 16:45, 14 February 2009 (CST)

I added this to Naming Conventions. --Tlosk 16:45, 14 February 2009 (CST)

"Introduced in" standard

I think we should make a standard for the "Introduced in" text that is displayed at the top of most pages. I think "Introduced in: [[??]]" used on creatures and possibly other page types should be phased out in favor of the "From the [[??]] quest introduced in the [[??]] event." standard used on items. Like items, if the creature is not from a quest, the first section is deleted and it just states "Introduced in the [[??]] event." Which brings up a request for Tlosk or anyone else that knows about templates: Can we make a template for this, that is able to display either the quest + patch or just the patch? For example: {{Intro|Frore|Sudden Season}} Would display as: From the Frore quest introduced in the Sudden Season event. and {{Intro|N/A|Sudden Season}} Would display as: Introduced in the Sudden Season event. Would that be possible? --An Adventurer 20:20, 1 February 2009 (CST) edit: I forgot about "updated in". Maybe the template would look more like {{Intro | Quest = | Patch = | Update = Patch1, Patch2 }} And perhaps it would be easier to create a template if it was displayed like this: From: [[Quest]]. Introduced in: [[Patch]]. Updated in: [[Patch]], [[Patch]]. --An Adventurer 20:36, 1 February 2009 (CST)

I've gone through a couple iterations while I was working on the Key Template over the weekend. Currently what I'm using is a little awkward but works for everything (noun agreement and modifiers always break on something when used) but it is grammatical. I moved updates to the Notes section so that a description of what was done in the update can also be included. The format is "From {{{Quest}}} introduced in {{{Patch}}}." I will change the format for creatures to do what you suggested. So where the quest field is blank or left out completely it will use Introduced in ... but when a quest is specified, for things like boss creatures that are strongly associated with a particular quest, it will use From .... introduced in .... --Tlosk 06:50, 2 February 2009 (CST)

To: Tlosk I like the idea that An Adventurer had, however it might be good to change the formatting a bit, since everything is introduced but not everything has a qu--An Adventurer 12:58, 2 February 2009 (CST)est. For Example: {{Intro|Sudden Season|Frore}} Would display as: From the Frore quest, introduced in the Sudden Season event. And for items with no quest: {{Intro|Sudden Season}} Would display as: Introduced in the Sudden Season event. The other alternative is to ONLY list the introduction at the top, like Introduced in: Sudden Season, and then underneath it, have a comma separated list of related quests like this example of the Empyrean Golem Stone: {{Intro|Rekindling the Light|Crafting Golems, Diemos Flagging}} Would display as Introduced in: Rekindling the Light. Related Quests: Crafting Golems, Diemos Flagging. Any of those options would work, however it would be nice if we had a template that was designed to hold multiple quests. --Atarax 11:37, 2 February 2009 (CST)

I think having each piece of info a separate line like this might actually be a better format. And since it isn't trying to form the information into a sentence, we don't have to worry about the (Quest) at the end of quest names. I think if we go with this, we should still include the "Updated In" section at the top - this is a useful tool for navigation. For example, say you are trying to find a quest, and you know it was added in the patch that Branith's staff was updated. You search branith's staff and right at the top is the patch link you are looking for. --An Adventurer 12:58, 2 February 2009 (CST)

To: An Adventurer My only concern is when quests are updated multiple times, which has happened a lot, especially recently with mana forge keys. Its always nice to see what was changed/updated in addition to when it was updated. This is why I propose that it be included in the notes setcion, or somewhere else on the page. If we add it to the top, it would have to be duplicated below if we want to describe what was updated in each patch. Maybe something like this would be useful? {{Updated|Patch Name|Added a [[Mana Forge Key]] to the rewards.}} {{Updated|Patch Name|Increased XP Reward}} Might show up as something like: Updated during Patch Name: Added a Mana Forge Key to the rewards. Updated during Patch Name: Increased XP Reward. Just an idea... Any direction we take is fine by me. --Atarax 13:19, 2 February 2009 (CST)

To: Atarax Quest pages don't use the "introduced in" standard. They have intro and update patch info in the summary, with details of updates in the general section. Items and creatures are rarely updated multiple times, and certainly not in any ways that require explanation in notes sections. For example, when an item is updated we don't need to explain what was changed, we will include post- and pre-patch stats on the page, like the Crystal Sword. As for monsters - for the most part, updates to monsters is not worth mentioning. Knowing that a creature had a new trophy added, or got updated stats, isn't really useful information since only the current version of a creature can still exist in the game. The only time I can think of when a creature update would be useful is for big changes to bosses, like the various changes that happened to aerbax. If we do ever feel like including old stats of creatures (I have both the original and AC:DM strategy guides, I have lots of info on old stats), we could simply include them in a fashion similar to old stats of items - list them on the page, below notes. --An Adventurer 13:34, 2 February 2009 (CST)

To: An Adventurer Sounds good to me. So it appears the answer is to have multiple lines. Introduced In:, Updated In:, and Related Quests:. Would we ever possibly want to add Related Topics to this? Should it be kept separate? It wouldn't happen very often I would imagine. --Atarax 13:52, 2 February 2009 (CST)

To: Atarax, Tlosk I cannot see any instance where we would need to use the related topics template on an item or creature, and only rarely on NPCs. Related topics should be kept its own template, and always be displayed as the first line. For the intro template, I agree. The 3 line method looks like the best solution. As for the template itself. Tlosk has included the intro patch + quest as lines within the creature template and key template. I think that the intro template should be a separate wiki template - one that is placed at the top of Item, Creatuer, and NPC templates. This will make it easier to update if we decide to make changes, because we won't have to change the template code for npcs, creatures, armor, shields, jewelry, melee weapons, keys, and so on. There are a lot of page types that use the "introduced in" line, it would be much better to have it its own template. --An Adventurer 14:05, 2 February 2009 (CST)

To: Atarax, An Adventurer I mocked up some options, see what you think: Sandbox Two. --Tlosk 16:54, 2 February 2009 (CST)

To: Tlosk I like 1 and 6 the best, but would change "Quests" to "Related Quests". I think 1 would work best, because most entries are not updated, and only from 1 quest, so with 6 you would have these two little bits of info spread all the way across the page. But with 1 they are closer together. --An Adventurer 17:19, 2 February 2009 (CST)

I added a 7th example to Sandbox Two that combines 1 and 6, the full width box for uniformity and left justification for the text (couldn't figure that out before) and have a more typical text (1 quest and no updates) for comparison. If there's one variable with an arbitrary number of parameters you can have the formatting in the template, but with more than one it isn't practical so the bracketing will need to be done manually the same as is done for trophies with creatures. For example: {{Intro | Patch Introduced = [[Sins of the Fathers]] | Related Quests = [[Hidden Presents]], [[Pets]] | Updated = [[Shifting Tactics]], [[Ancient Enemies]] }} --Tlosk 03:15, 3 February 2009 (CST)

To: Tlosk 7 looks very nice. It has my approval to be the basis for the intro template. --An Adventurer 09:44, 3 February 2009 (CST)

To: Tlosk Yes, I like 7 as well. I actually enjoyed the Icons in #3, but they were too hard to read for someone unfamiliar with what they represent. Lets go with 7 and move on, I assume we could always adjust them in the future if we wanted to. --Atarax 10:21, 3 February 2009 (CST)

To: An Adventurer, Tlosk I'm thinking it may be a good idea to create an extended, large, or vertical version of the intro template fragment for articles that contain a lot of quest references. For example I was looking at the Empowered Armor of Perfect Light Sets article that An Adventurer is working on, and honestly, the intro template does not work well here. There are so many "related" quests, that the top of the page is completely smashed, even on 1024x768. It would look decent for pages like this if the Related Quests portion was on its own line below the Introduced and Updated lines. Any thoughts on this? --Atarax 14:02, 4 February 2009 (CST)

To: Atarax I think that the Empowereed Armor of Perfect Light will be a rare exception. First, it is really two sets combined in one page. Since they were introduced at different patches I had to show that. And three of the quest names and one of the patch names happens to be very long. The intro template is going to be used on creatures, NPCs, and all types of items. For the majority of these entries, there will only be "introduced in" and "related quest" links. A few will have updates, and fewer will have multiple quests. I don't think we need to modify the template to work with these more rare occurrences. I'll just edit the PL armor page with shortened link names, or maybe make a Quiddity Seed Quest disambiguation page similar to the burun kings page. --An Adventurer 14:17, 4 February 2009 (CST)

To: An Adventurer Works for me. /signed --Atarax 14:42, 4 February 2009 (CST)

I hadn't mentioned this, but I also had in the back of my head to have a section either on the template's page itself or on its talk page for a box of nontemplate code, that is all the code you'd use to produce the page without using any templates, this would allow you to manually tweak things for those exception pages where you want to deviate from the template. (Also it would help serve as a reference as the template code is just about unintelligible the first time you look at it.) --Tlosk 16:27, 4 February 2009 (CST)