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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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October 2009

Skins & home page design

With the move to Wikia there are several Monaco skin colors along with the Monobook skin. I've done some editing to the MediaWiki:Monaco-toolbox and MediaWiki:Monaco-sidebar (may need to clear history and refresh to see them). With these changes, the Monaco skin has pretty much all the same links, menus, and tools that were previously found on asheron.info's sidebar and drop down menu. This will hopefully help make the site easier for those not signed in, as Monaco is the default. On the topic of skins - is it possible to change the default to Monobook, so the site would look more familiar to those not logged in? And if it is possible, do we want even want to make this change, or should we embrace and expand on the Monaco skin? A related topic - the home page. I think that we should consider a serious overhaul of the layout. The major changes I would like to see would be to move AC News & Wiki News to somewhere on the homepage, where they would get much more attention. I'd also consider merging the two into 'news'. I also think we could make some major revisions to the whole topic section, especially since the monaco sidebar menu can cover much of it. At the very least, the welcome and Getting Started sections should probably be edited or rewritten. And I think we could try changing the style of the boxes - from their current rounded edges to something more resembling our recent template changes. --An Adventurer 17:37, September 25, 2009 (UTC)

Nice work with the menus on the sidebars.--Tlosk  talk  contr 22:47, September 30, 2009 (UTC)

See: User:An Adventurer/Sandbox for a more clear example of my idea for updating the home page. --An Adventurer 18:02, September 25, 2009 (UTC)

I have added some more detail to my sandbox linked above. It's not by any means a final design though. I have designed this with the thought that by default, visitors will be in the new monaco skin and will thus be using the sidebar, which I added a lot to. And hopefully we can get the drop-down menu added back to the monobook skin, and that drop down menu can mirror the links and levels of the monaco sidebar menu. I'd like to hear some people's thoughts on the proposed design. I greatly reduced the number of main topics displayed. Are there any topics I removed that you think absolutely need to be there? Are there any topics that were never listed but you thought should be there? I left out links to current/previous/all patches from topics for now, mostly because I couldn't think of good icons to use. I think that there should definitely be a link to the current patch on the main page, but I am not sure we need the previous and all patches links there with them already contained on the sidebar menu. I included Game Mechanics as a topic. My thought is that this page could be greatly expanded on, and that the current General Information page would be merged into it. I left out the Leveling Guide link as a main topic, but I figured that it would be linked to on New Player Guide, Returning Player Guide, Game Mechanics, and Level Costs, all of which are linked to on the main page, so it didn't need it's own link. I also cut out the whole welcome/getting started sections. I placed a short welcome blurb at the top with links to other pages, as seen on many wikis such as wikipedia. I figured that we could go into more detail on the Asheron's Call Community Wiki:Introduction page and if necessary, create a Getting Started page. And we could add more general information about the wiki at Asheron's Call Community Wiki:About. --An Adventurer 21:50, September 27, 2009 (UTC)

Lot of great stuff there, I can't reply in detail yet but I wanted to make a quick post to comment on a few things. The dynamicpagelists are extremely resource intensive and so we won't be able to use them (it's possible to use them in a limited fashion, but it's not really worth it). It isn't possible to set monobook as the default, though I did specify the color scheme default so at least people won't have the dark scheme when they first come to the site. Also I'd suggest making a long term mockup that we can work on and improve over a few weeks and leave the main page as is until most people have made the transition and signed in at least once. We can put a link on the main page though to the mockup to invite broader feedback and suggestions. The issue with the drop downs in monobook is an extension that's installed that messes up the formatting, I have a request in to remove it so anytime now I should be able to turn that back on (although it's still a little borked in IE, I need to figure out how to fix that also).--Tlosk  talk  contr 00:59, September 30, 2009 (UTC)

I've put together a page at Asheron's Call Community Wiki --An Adventurer 19:10, October 7, 2009 (UTC)

I have gone ahead an modified the main page. I have left the topics the same until there is some discussion on them. The whole welcome/getting started section was removed. It was mostly out of date, and hadn't really been modified since the wiki was created. The relevant info was moved to Asheron's Call Community Wiki:Introduction. There is now a news section on the main page. I will work more to streamline our whole news section. The old links in the monobook skin sidebar should be removed, but I don't know how to edit that part. --An Adventurer 16:44, October 13, 2009 (UTC)

Awesome work on everything, it looks great. I've been visiting some of the other wikis for ideas and am testing some things out but was trying to finish a map generator first and get some lingering issues from the move resolved. I was also thinking we could make a central hub for navigation where we basically link to almost everything so we can both expand on what is currently on the mainpage and also have a onestop place for people trying to find something (and also expose the nooks and crannies that can be difficult to find if you don't already know they exist). Also I will have a new wiki style forum set up in the next day or two and I'll backfill it with the existing content from here (I may possibly be able to restore our original forum content as well if I can get it running locally). --Tlosk  talk  contr 15:47, October 14, 2009 (UTC)

To: Tlosk I have a suggestion for the central hub. The article Asheron's Call. Until I created the page for the home page updates, it didn't exist on the wiki. Right now it is just a stub, but I was thinking that it would be a great place to have links to lots of various content. Currently, Asheron's Call is linked to on the home page in the welcome statement, and it is on the monaco-sidebar with the alias Game Info (one of the first tier topics) so it will be easy to access. And it is probably the broadest topic article, since it can cover all things of AC1 and AC2. --An Adventurer 18:19, October 14, 2009 (UTC)

September 2009

Negative modifers

Immortalbob pointed out that there are some weapons that have negative modifiers and they display as "+-10%" etc. I found a way to search for negative mods and found a few more bows and xbows that had a negative damage modifer and a bronze weapon with a negative melee mod. I decided to just add another parameter that would display its value and not format it at all. See Cragstone's Axe (Bronze Version) and Sublime Elari Wood Bow for examples. This won't be part of the standard page template as it would be confusing, rather I just wanted to let you know that it's available if needed. So if you have a weapon that has a negative mod, delete the regular parameter/buffed parameter and replace it with the special one. The two parameters are "Defense" (instead of "Bonus to Defense") and "Modifer" (instead of "Damage Modifer"). And since there is no formatting applied, set it equal to however you want it to appear (including %, font color, bold, etc). --Tlosk  talk  contr 00:47, September 30, 2009 (UTC)

Wikia Test Server Live

The Wikia test server is now available at http://asheron.wikia.com/wiki/ACC_Wiki_Home. Almost all extensions have been installed, however there are one or two that are still being worked on. This is a test installation meant to allow us examine what our wiki would be like on Wikia and to give us time to resolve any issues before a move takes place. You will not be able to login using your ACC Wiki account, however if you have a Wikia account or create one, you can login using that (if you create an account with the same name, use the same email address you use here to avoid any issues when merging). You can change the skin used to our current skin by going to your preferences after logging in and under the Skins section select Monobook and uncheck "Let the admins override my skin choice". Please spend some time testing things out this weekend and record your feedback here: Talk:Wikia Migration. Later today I will have general information about new ways of doing things and differences at Wikia Migration. --Tlosk  talk  contr 13:09, 18 September 2009 (UTC)

Returning Players

With the upcoming 10th anniversary patch we will be seeing a lot of returning players. So I'd like to initiate a review of the pages most likely to be of use to these players and beef them up to be as complete as possible. I've listed below as many as I can think of (add any others you can think of to the list, and over the next few weeks if you have some free time take a look at a few to see what you can add. --Tlosk  talk  contr 00:07, 6 September 2009 (UTC) New Player Guide Returning Player Guide Plugins Story Arcs XP Quests (Also you can go to Special:MultiCategorySearch and search for Quest and Stub to find quests that need filling out. Leveling Guide Housing Kit Armor Weapons Mana Forge

I started a topic already for the leveling guide, you can see it at Forum#Leveling Guides, which links to Talk:Leveling Guide. Story arcs I can probably handle. The only issue there is that for each patch I have to look over all the quests, the TC rumors, and read the internet lore to make a good summary. And this takes some time. I've saved a bit of time by archiving A Brief History for Travelers, but this is not a permanent solution. I want to beef up some of the main lore areas like the cultural pages. I've started this with Yalain, Falatacot, and Sho. I also want to redesign the List of Texts page with a cleaner look and if possible, its own wiki table template like the ones for vendors and such. I've started work on this on User:An Adventurer/Sandbox 4.

Two things to add to the list A full list of /commands, with each command being its own page. We have the blank Category:/command with 1 member. This should be populated. A complete and much more detailed description of the user interface, probably with multiple pages. I imagine a sliced image with each image section redirecting to the correct description page. --An Adventurer 22:27, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

That would be really good. Having individual images line up together to make a seamless whole image would be tricky though, it might be easier to use an image map, where you specify the clickable parts of a single image, I'll get it installed. --Tlosk  talk  contr 11:37, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

I noticed that all of the YouTube video embeds are broken, this includes older content such as Turbine's BZ video, game intro, Alphus Lassel, etc etc. I'm assuming Wikia has a different format for embedding? Anyways, I plan on trying to compose an extensive list of non-grind ways of leveling your character, which I think will be a refreshing change to players who dread coming back to grind... as AC has done a great job in allowing players to level without camping dungeons now. Perhaps this could be a seperate section called "no grind" or something. I do think the current leveling guide could be better organized though it is a good start... I might brainstorm for that as well :). Oh, and as far as the sliced image deal goes, can't you just divide the image by "hot spots" and do it that way rather than splitting the image around? --Connor the Craftmaster 24 September 2009

I'm going to be working a lot on the User Interface and other basic help items. I've put together a spliced image of the UI here: User:An Adventurer/Sandbox --An Adventurer 17:51, October 8, 2009 (UTC)

Wiki Relocation

Unfortunately continued growth and bandwidth/overhead demands are requiring we move to a new host again. Most of the larger gaming wikis have faced this same transition point in their history where the costs to operate become prohibitive and they have moved to the professional wiki hosting site Wikia.com. Wikia was founded by Jimmy Wales and Angela Beesley, Chairman Emeritus and Advisory Board chair respectively of the Wikimedia Foundation which is responsible for both Wikipedia and Mediawiki (the wiki software that we use to run this site). I will try to list as openly as I can the pros and cons of this move below and we will only reach a final decision once everyone has had an opportunity to weigh in, this wiki was made by players of Asheron's Call for the benefit of other players and our primary goal is to ensure the long term availability of the hard work and countless hours of the many contributors. We recognize that the wiki's popularity rests firmly on how useful and broad the wiki has become because of their work. valign=top Pros Cons Hosting would be provided free, meaning the longterm viability of the wiki would no longer be dependent on forces we may not be able to control. Time spent contributing to the wiki would not be in danger of being lost or unavailable. Editorial control will remain with us, we will continue to decide what the wiki will be and what it won't be. We would share the same host as the largest wikis for games like World of Warcraft, Guildwars, Diablo, Everquest II, Final Fantasy and nongame wikis like Lostpedia, Wookieepedia and others. Mediawiki software upgrades, weekly backups, outages, etc are all handled by a full time team of engineers employed by Wikia and we would no longer be dependent on one or two people that aren't always available. Wikia will not own the content, it will remain under the Creative Commons open license which means people are free to use submitted data on their own sites or build upon it as they see fit. Unlike other corporately owned fansites (as well as all private sites that I have personally contacted in the past) that severely restrict how information on their sites can be used, the wiki ethos is to make information as widely and as conveniently available as possible. Towards this end Wikia makes weekly data dumps that contain all the wiki's pages. This dump is readily downloadable. This was a goal we have always had ourselves but due to the complexity of remote administration and the size of the dumps it hasn't been practical for us to do. This also protects the data by allowing multiple copies across many people and locations, rather than in just one or two places as is now the case. Wikia engineers have created lots of widgets and templates that can be used to improve the site so players can focus on game content instead of spending that time on wiki plumbing. A lack of advertising is a common complaint by players that wish Turbine could devote more resources to game exposure. Because of our size we will benefit from visibility on Wikia which will mean Asheron's Call will gain visibility, which hopefully might get some players to return that otherwise wouldn't have. While Wikia will have ads, because of the increased costs of running the wiki ads would almost certainly be required going forward no matter what we do. However there would be no guarantee they would cover our costs and we would also require players to take time to administrate this. Wikia on the other hand would handle all aspects of this on our behalf. While the style/layout of the wiki as it currently exists can be maintained by adjusting personal preferences (using the monobook skin), it will not be the default skin. Users that do not change their skin preference or users that are not logged in will see pages that differ in appearance. Usernames are wikia wide, not just specific to our wiki, as a result there is the possibility some users won't be able to use the exact same name after the move. Ads will appear on most pages (the number of ads are reduced when logged in and on pages other than the main page). We will not have direct control over what ads appear, though there is a mechanism to report inappropriate ads. Players will not be the final arbiter of what material remains on the wiki. Wikia reserves the right to remove information for any reason. However the history of the other large gaming wikis shows that this has little to no real world impact. Wikia is a for profit entity, which means that if ad revenue is greater than the costs to host the wiki, those profits go to Wikia shareholders. Many popular services operate in the same way, like Google Search, Gmail, IGN, Warcry CoD, Hulu, Broadcast Television and Radio, etc. The ads allow the companies to offer services for free to the endusers. With the move to Wikia there is the potential for a fork (the creation of another wiki using the same base material but with each wiki then taking their own path with their own set of contributors). Technically this is possible already, however the potential increases if there are people that are unhappy with the move. We would like to allow time for any of our contributors or readers who might have concerns to be able to voice them now so they can be addressed to their satisfaction before a move is made. --Tlosk  talk  contr 23:56, 5 September 2009 (UTC)

We've been very fortunate to have our current free hosting (Thanks Mav!), but I don't think we're going to find a better solution than Wikia. Wikia provides exactly what we need, and since they host other gaming wikis with much larger communities, we shouldn't have to worry about capacity. I understand that advertising is necessary, but blinking, flashing, animated advertisements are so distracting that I either block them, or don't visit those sites anymore. I see there is one such ad on the main page of the lotro wiki, though the other four ads aren't a problem. It's reassuring that they do make site content available for download -- so much effort has been put into the wiki already that I'd hate to see it lost. I already have an account at Wikia. If we moved there, can my ACC Wiki account/username/contributions be merged/associated with my existing Wikia account? By the way, it might be worth starting a thread on the Turbine forums, to hear what people there think. --Widgeon 09:45, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

If there are two accounts with the same name, then email addresses are compared. If they match, that name is set as one account. If there are two accounts and the email addresses don't match, then a prefix would be added to the new (merging) account. If you have accounts of the same name on ACCWiki and on Wikia, make sure your email address is the same on both accounts. To do this, go to your preferences page, make sure the "email" field is correct, and authenticate your email by clicking the link in the email sent to you. If you have accounts of different names on ACCWiki and Wikia, and you would like them merged, there will be a talk page where you can request they be merged into a single account. (If the emails don't match and someone ends up with a prefixed name, it will be possible to merge them after the fact after verifying both accounts belong to the same person, or a name change to a nonprefixed, unique name if desired if you don't own the wikia account of the same name). --Tlosk  talk  contr 20:02, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, that answers my question. I've updated my email address, and that's all I should need to do. --Widgeon 22:27, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

I'd never thought of the fact that wikia advertises their other wikis. That is a real nice benefit. However, on the point about user names- if names are universal, that means anyone from any wikia wiki can edit any other wiki? That sounds like it has the potential for harassment. Has this ever been an issue? Also, you said we remain in editorial control. Do we still keep the ability to ban/block bad users, or is that something wikia does? --An Adventurer 16:19, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

Any registered user with Wikia would be able to login to edit our wiki, as we could theirs. All of our admins will still be able to block any user from our wiki, also Wikia staff can put in place a global block for users that are vandalizing/spamming more than one wiki. Looking through the Special:BlockList for several of the larger wikis they don't have large numbers of blocks per month so it doesn't seem that vandalism/spamming is much of an issue. Also on a related side note, we didn't move our old chat forums during the last hosting relocation because of the spam problems and server overhead concerns, but we can have a true forum again if we wish after the move. --Tlosk  talk  contr 20:02, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

Leveling Guides

See Talk:Leveling Guide --An Adventurer 17:53, 3 September 2009 (UTC)

Archived Forum Posts

See Talk:Forum