Forum

Related topics: Recent Changes, {{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.

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April 2009

Site Copyright Migration

When the Mediawiki software was first developed several years ago it adopted the GNU Free Documentation License and this is the license currently used by ACC Wiki. There are a number of problems with the GFDL that place limitations not intended on how wiki content can be used. The Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike license provides greater flexibility, clearer language, and fewer restrictions. A special amendment was recently added to the GFDL that enables CC-By-SA migrations between November 1, 2008 and August 1, 2009. The change was made specifically to enable Wikipedia and other projects in a similar position to make licensing changes. Barring any objections, I propose we migrate from the GFDL to CC-By-SA on April 30th, 2009. More details can be found here and here. --Tlosk 18:02, 16 April 2009 (CDT)

To: Tlosk I'm all for fewer restrictions on the information here. --An Adventurer 11:38, 17 April 2009 (CDT)

To: Tlosk Migrating to CC-By-SA sounds good to me. --Widgeon 01:05, 21 April 2009 (CDT)

Badges

Anyone think profile badges would be a good addition? I realize its just a little extra fluff thing, but it might get more people interested in their asheron.info profile and hopefully contributing. Wikipedia has these things, they are called userboxes: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Userboxes I was thinking we would have one for each server, so you could display what worlds you play on. There could be one for PKs, PKLs, and NPKs. One for monarchs. The ones that got me thinking about this were badges for number of contributions. For example, 50 contribs and you have one with a pyreal mote image. 100 is a pyreal sliver, 200 is a nugget, etc. This is what I was thinking would possibly motivate people to contribute some more. Any thoughts? Would this be nice or is it a waste of time? --An Adventurer 11:03, 15 April 2009 (CDT)

I don't have any objections. --Tlosk 15:11, 20 April 2009 (CDT)

NPC Table Template

I have a suggestion for a new wiki template to be used in the page templates for towns, geographic areas, POIs, dungeons, and anywhere else NPCs may be found: An NPC table template, similar to the dungeon table template. Something like this: NPC Name Location Purpose Served -- -- -- Geographic Area Example: NPC Name Location Purpose Served Adrien Swiftblade Paradox-touched Valley Tent Quest: Paradox-touched Olthoi Egg (Quest) Ethan Wintermaine Paradox-touched Valley Tent Quest: Aerbax's Prodigal Olthoi Hisham al-Evv Paradox-touched Valley Tent Vendor: Small Olthoi Venom Sac Shop Town Example: NPC Name Location Purpose Served Archmage Cindrue 42.6N, 33.9E - second floor Vendor: Magical supplies Ecutha the Tailor 42.6N, 33.5E - first floor Vendor: Clothing Fispur Ansel the Grocer 42.2N, 22.6E Vendor: Food and cooking supplies This looks much better than what is currently in the town template, and it would allow us to list all NPCs in one section, instead of subsections for vendors, crafters, quest npcs, misc npcs, and outskirt npcs for all those categories. By using Location instead of Coordinates the the general Purpose Served we can use the same template for NPCs in locations other than towns as well. The Template could even be used on the outdated NPCs pages. edit: perhaps a better table still would be this: NPC Name Location Type Details En al-Pisci Yaraq Quest Apple Grinder of Doom (Quest) Merchant 12.3S, 12.3E - Desert Camp Vendor Basic Supplies Town Crier Yaraq Misc Rumors with Purpose Served divided into type and details, and with the columns sortable. --An Adventurer 13:41, 14 April 2009 (CDT)

I've finished the template using your last example as the basis, {{NPC Table}}. Add more example types if you think of some more. We had shopkeepers and vendors called one thing some places and the other in others so when I was normalizing the template names I changed uses of Vendor to Shopkeeper to align with the category. You can integrate the template into the Town Template if there's nothing else to add to it. --Tlosk 13:24, 15 April 2009 (CDT)

Quest Pages

I have noticed that when copying and pasting links to quests that end with (Quest) on the official turbine forums the link breaks. For example linking to Composite Bow (Quest) results in http://asheron.info/~asheron/index.php/Composite_Bow_(Quest which is missing the ending ")". It can be fixed by editing the link after you post, but not everyone knows that or does that. I have two suggestions: For every quest that ends in (Quest), make the broken link page redirect to it. So Composite Bow (Quest would redirect to Composite Bow (Quest). Change the naming scheme to no longer include parenthesis. The parenthesis are really there for disambiguation, so that entries that share the same official name can be distinguished. However, since quests do not actually have official names that are ever revealed in game, the disambiguation is not really needed. So Composite Bow (Quest) would become Composite Bow Quest. 1 will be much easier to do, but I am leaning towards 2. Unfortunately, if we go with 2 we not only have to rename the page but also fix every link to it. --An Adventurer 11:00, 9 April 2009 (CDT)

It has to do with reserved characters (internally the wiki will transform them, but on the forums it won't make that translation automatically). One way around it is to post the link as it appears in the path bar at the top when at the actual page which uses the character codes instead of the actual characters (post translation). For example http://asheron.info/~asheron/index.php/Composite_Bow_%28Quest%29 will give the correct link when posted. I'd favor #2 as well, we could just leave most individual pages for now since they will redirect with the move, and when I'm updating the old items with scripts I can add a filter that will catch quest names and change them. --Tlosk 14:56, 9 April 2009 (CDT)

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. NPC Template Revised and Reviewed: (final inclusion candidates) Creature Template - Talk - Tlosk, An Adventurer, Atarax Key Template - Talk - Tlosk, An Adventurer, Atarax Patch Announcements Template - Talk - Tlosk, An Adventurer, Atarax Melee Weapon Template - Talk - Tlosk, An Adventurer, Atarax Creature Class 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 Template - Talk - Tlosk, An Adventurer, Atarax Point of Interest Template - Talk - Tlosk, An Adventurer, Atarax Magic Caster Template - Talk - Tlosk, An Adventurer, Atarax Landblock Template - Talk - Tlosk, Atarax, An Adventurer, Atarax Armor Template - Talk - Tlosk, Atarax, An Adventurer (includes shield, clothing, robe, etc) Standard Text Template - Talk - Tlosk, Atarax, An Adventurer 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 Gem Template - Talk - Tlosk, An Adventurer, Atarax Portal Gem Template - Talk - Tlosk, An Adventurer, Atarax Shopkeeper NPC Template - Talk - Tlosk, An Adventurer, Atarax Crafter NPC Template - Talk - Tlosk, An Adventurer, Atarax Quest NPC Template - Talk - Tlosk, An Adventurer NPC Template - Talk - Tlosk, An Adventurer Item Template - Talk - Tlosk, An Adventurer Geographic Area Template - Talk - An Adventurer, Tlosk Food Template - Talk - Sanddh, Tlosk, An Adventurer Cooking Template - Talk - Sanddh, Tlosk, An Adventurer Crafting Template - Talk - Sanddh, Tlosk, 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.) Under Revision: (Currently being updated.) Ammunition Template - Talk Portal Template - Talk Object Template - Talk Container Template - Talk Live Event Template - Talk Needs Revision: (Not currently being worked on.) Town Template - Talk Needs Creation: (Does not exist in any form yet.)

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)

March 2009

Zone Articles / Beta

Zone Articles: As we update old patches with Zone articles such as teasers and build notes, should we delete the older archive we have? For example, we have a single page archive of the 1999/12/16 build notes here, and they are also archived under the Sudden Season patch announcements. For newer patches, we only archive articles on the announcement page, so I would think the older single page archives are not needed. Beta and beta events: There has been some work put into three beta event pages: Call to Arms, Wardiel's Campaign, and Fire in the Sky. Now, I did not play beta or even early release, but from what I can tell, it looks like Call to Arms and Wardiel's Campaign are at best live events in today's terms, while Fire in the Sky was an actual patch that updated the game files. I believe the only reason all three are getting a separate event page is because other fan sites (maggies for one) list them as such. I would like to suggest that all information on the wiki relating to the beta be placed on a single page: Asheron's Call Beta. My reasoning for this is: As stated above, 2 of the major beta "events" are nothing more than large scale live events, and I do not think they deserve a full patch page. Most information we have or will have on beta will be in the form of archived Zone/Zogblaster/Microsoft Insider articles, and I think it would be most convenient to have all beta related articles on a single page. Some beta information may not fit into any of the 3 "events". For example, there was a major update with build notes on 9/21/99 (link: [1]) that would not go into either Wardiel's Campaign or Fire in the Sky. Edit: To clarify, what I am suggesting for the beta page is this: Asheron's Call Beta contains links to the various beta articles, similar to the Turbine Announcements sections of current patches. Announcements - Asheron's Call Beta will contain the archives of the articles. Dev Chats and non-event related lore would still be archived on separate pages, and would be linked to on the beta page. --An Adventurer 15:55, 19 March 2009 (CDT)

That sounds excellent, and yeah I agree we should move the single articles into announcement pages and remove the originals, we just need to make sure to check for any links to them and update them (not many but a few here and there). Their rationale for being stand alone is no longer applicable. --Tlosk 08:00, 20 March 2009 (CDT)

I started the work on the beta page. You can see it here: Asheron's Call Beta & here: Announcements - Asheron's Call Beta. EDIT: Problem fixed. All <font>s needed a closing </font>. --An Adventurer 13:58, 25 March 2009 (CDT)

Reference Footnotes

To: Tlosk Hey, I have a request for a wiki template. I'd like a simple template that I can use for the footnotes I made for lore articles. I just added my initial footnotes to the Timeline of Auberean I'm working on, and it was a +3,123 edit. I am using the following code to make footnotes (You'll have to edit to see it): [1] I'd like to just have something simple like: {{Footnote|1}} or {{FN|1}} or {{Ref|1}} Do you think you could put this together? --An Adventurer 13:48, 6 March 2009 (CST)

To: An Adventurer You can now use wikipedia style footnotes by enclosing the link or reference in ref tags, then placing <references/> where you want the footnotes to appear. Clicking on any footnote number will automatically take you to that reference and highlight it. Numbering is automatic so inserting additional footnotes will automatically renumber any existing footnotes given the order they appear on the page. If a footnote is referenced more than once, add a name parameter the first time it's used (for example <ref name=loot>[[Loot]]</ref>), then each time you use it again use <ref name=loot/>. All such uses will link to the same footnote number, and the footnote itself will link back to all uses (names have to be a single word with no spaces). For example: ...Deru Trees.<ref name=Knight>2008/08 [[Ancient Powers]] - [[The Blessed Trees]]</ref> ...sun and stars.<ref>1999/11 [[Release]] - [[The Advocate Towers]]</ref> ...across the world.<ref>2008/08 [[Ancient Powers]] - [[The Blessed Trees]]</ref> ...Deru Trees.<ref name=Knight/> ---- <references/> will display as: The Falatacot diverge into two branches: the Dark Falatacot, dealing in the power of undeath and corruption in service to the Old Ones; and the Light Falatacot, working to protect what they consider to be worshipful spirits - the Deru Trees. Primordial gods struggle with evil shadow creatures. After a long contest that exhausted their powers, the gods banish the shadows into the earth by creating the sun and stars. The Deru Trees are created by the Light and they drive the Living Dark below, allowing life to spread across the world. The Falatacot diverge into two branches: the Dark Falatacot, dealing in the power of undeath and corruption in service to the Old Ones; and the Light Falatacot, working to protect what they consider to be worshipful spirits - the Deru Trees.

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)

I have a drop down navigation menu working now, it works on IE7+ and FF. If you want to tweak the menu items or add new sections, edit the MediaWiki:Sitenotice and the linked templates. For new sections a new template must be created (just a bulleted list, see the templates used list at the bottom when editing Sitenotice for examples). --Tlosk 13:01, 17 March 2009 (CDT)

Nice work. One thing I have noticed - the page title does not display correctly with the drop down menu on some pages. It is only pages with short names or a short word at the the beginning of its name, like Forum and ACC Wiki Home. The short word is being placed right of the menu, and then continues where the title is supposed to be. This is only happening on higher resolutions/wider windows. It does not occur on my laptop (1440x900), but does on my desktop (1680x1050). Both are using Firefox, laptop is running Mac OS X, desktop is running Windows XP. --An Adventurer 13:11, 17 March 2009 (CDT)

Correction. It is occuring on my laptop as well. Could this possibly be fixed by placing the menus on the left side, right above the page title? --An Adventurer 18:40, 17 March 2009 (CDT)

Just double checking that this works now for you? Having them on the left makes the menus pop up in an annoying way anytime you go to use the edit etc tabs but having it all the way to the right makes the drop down menu bleed off the page for the right most menu item so I originally used a width fix to have them go not all the way over but we had the title wrap error you noticed. I found that using the margin instead of width fixed it. But the behavior depends on css and that is cached so it may continue until the cache is cleared normally or forced (hold shift while clicking the refresh button in the browser). Also I found a way to add menus to the sidebar so after the upgrade I can set up some examples and see what you think. --Tlosk 07:57, 20 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)

Archived Forum Posts

See Talk:Forum