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Revision as of 16:21, 10 July 2009 by 127.0.0.1 (talk)

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July 2009

creature/NPC pages and lore

I've been wondering if we should handle pages for lore and in-game information differently. Currently the rule is that if for example an NPC/Monster is also a notable lore character, the lore character description would go on the same page as the in-game stats. I think this might be better if the main page is a disambiguation.

For Example, the Lady Aerfalle would look like this:

See:

There would be similar pages for other notable characters like Asheron, Borelean, Elysa, Nummy, Rytheran, etc.

I also think it could be useful to split creature class pages up into stats and lore. While some creatures may not have a lot of lore, others like Shadow, Virindi, Tumerok, Lugian, Burun, and Undead have tons of information, and certainly deserve their own "Heritage" page, like those I've been working on for Isparians and Empyeans (see: Sho and Falatacot)

As for how to split up creature class pages, I would suggest leaving the current ones in place as the stat page since they are linked to the most, and the first place someone would search for when looking for stats. On those pages we would place a link to the lore page. It could be something simple like Drudge Lore or Drudge Bestiary Entry.

Thoughts?

--An Adventurer 16:21, 10 July 2009 (UTC)

June 2009

Template Subcategories

The number of templates has increased to the point where making subcategories in the near future will be helpful. Discussion here.

Containers/Chests

I would like to look into the Container Template, but to me it is still unclear how to make the subcategories. At the moment, both the Packs (i.e. those containers that toons can hold in their inventory), and the lootable chests (for quest items, and/or randomly spawning loot chests) are categorized under "Container". However, a (lootable) chest would, imho, require a different template than a Pack. Also, there is a (sub) category "Chest", and a (Sub)category "Pack". Personally, I'd prefer to have lootable (quest) Chests rather as a subcategory under "Object", since many do have fixed locations. For now, I'm gonna put a few proposals in the Discussion of Containers to see what you think of it --Sanddh 16:46, 21 June 2009 (CET)

Subcategorization isn't exclusive, it can be a sub of both. Though on the List of Categories it probably only needs to be listed under the most logical one. --Tlosk 19:00, 23 June 2009 (UTC)

Quest Item Category

To: An Adventurer
it sure would be nice to just have a 'Quest Item' category instead of just dumping them all into 'Item' - what do you think? --RyanR 22:22, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

I think it could be useful, if for nothing else than to have a category to put all those items in besides item. One issue though would be what exactly would qualify as a quest item. I would suggest that for an item to be tagged as category:Quest Item, it would need to only be used in a quest. Any item that has the ability to serve any other purpose, even if it is only really used in one quest, would not be tagged as category:Quest Item.

For example - the olthoi soldier pincer would get tagged as category:Quest Item. It only has one use, and that is in the pincer quest. A wood golem heart, although used in multiple quests, has the basic use as a trophy, and would not be tagged as category:Quest Item. A piece of wieldable equipment (example:Lou Ka's Yaoji), even if only used in one quest, would not be tagged as category:Quest Item. A text used as part of a quest would not be tagged as category:Quest Item.

--An Adventurer 02:06, 16 June 2009 (UTC)

If you look at what's actually in the Item category (and not in a subcategory), almost all of the items could be described as quest items of one sort or another. Another way of looking at it is to say that the Item category already is the category for quest items (currently lots of items are double classified as a subcategory and as an item, but this will be cleaned up as we slowly convert existing entries to use current page templates).--Tlosk 16:12, 16 June 2009 (UTC)

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)

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.)

Needs Revision: (Not currently being worked on.)

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)

I'd like to bring spell templates back into discussion. Currently we have some copy/paste tables that I put together, but no wiki templates. And the tables were pretty much just my work without much input from others.

The current copy/paste table template is here: Standard Spell Template with examples here: Armor (Spell) and here: Blood Drinker (Spell)

One important thing is recently someone (I am blanking on who it was) harvested all the spell data from the .dat files which gives us categories and spell difficulty and other information we may not have had. I think some of this could be added to the templates. I think difficulty would be a great addition. So I think there is still room for improvement on both the Standard Spell Template and the Cantrip Template before we possibly turn them in to wiki templates. --An Adventurer 11:11, 12 May 2009 (CDT)

Yeah that list is really cool, especially with all the creature only spells. But the stacking info is invaluable, that stuff was a major pain to track down and test in game for all the combinations. I've got a few ideas I'm working on and will post them as soon as I'm done.

May 2009

Server Pages & server specific info

This is sort of related to the discussion of general vs personal pages below, but I thought it should have its own discussion.

when I first put up some guidelines for restricting personal pages, I did so because someone had created a page for their allegiance. My reasoning for this was because 1) I thought allegiance pages were mostly irrelevant as general info, 2) I didn't want allegiances from different servers with the same name competing for a common name (like Defenders of Light or some other generic high fantasy sounding guild) and 3) I didn't want actual in-game factions, existing or in the future, to have to compete for the same name as a guild.

Now more recently, there was a discussion on personal vs general pages, started because of Connor the Craftmaster's posting of his adventures as their own page. That discussion so far has concluded that personal pages for entertainment, such as connor's adventures or my fan-fiction, should be placed on the author's user page, under the format User:User Name/Article (example: User:An Adventurer/Character Back-stories).

This gave me the idea that we could do the same thing for server pages. For example: the page Leafcull would be a general description page of the server. The page Leafcull/Allegiances would be a listing of allegiances on LC. the page Leafcull/Allegiances/The Trues would be a guild specific page for my current allegiance, The Trues.

I think this would be a good solution for resolving possible name conflicts. I have no opinion on whether or not the info would be useful though. What does everyone else think? Would allegiance pages be good information to have up?

--An Adventurer 18:54, 24 May 2009 (UTC)

I think it's a good idea. I think the wiki is served by recording not just objects but to record history of the players and allegiances also. --Tlosk 18:57, 24 May 2009 (UTC)

General versus Personal Pages

Discussion here: Asheron's Call Community Wiki talk:Policy

Mediawiki 1.14 Update completed

A list of changes and new help pages is in progress here: Mediawiki 1.14 Changes. Please post there if you find any bugs or glitches (for anything serious please post on my talk page. --Tlosk 14:28, 13 May 2009 (UTC)

Filtered Whatlinkshere Results

For a while now I've been trying to figure out a way to get more specific Whatlinkshere results, ideally we could filter results by category however I've been unable to discover any way of doing that currently. I have however come up with a partial solution for at least some types of items that would be easy to implement and could be changed if needed without lots of cleanup edits.

I realized that it's possible to make invisible links on pages (a link that isn't actually displayed, but will cause the page to show up in the whatlinkshere list) and that you can also have a whatlinkshere link to a nonexistent page, which allows us to specify a page for a specific type of links we want to filter for (just Shopkeepers, just Creatures, just Locations, etc).

These special links can automatically be included in component templates. For example, to get a list of just shopkeepers that sell a particular item, we can place this: [[{{PAGENAME}}/Sold By|<nowiki></nowiki>]] inside the {{Inventory Item}} template since it is only used on Shopkeeper pages. This would automatically create a link to each item for that shopkeeper of the format Item/Sold By which would then be used in the {{Sold By}} template which would be modified from a straight whatlinkshere link to [[:Special:Whatlinkshere/{{PAGENAME}}/Sold By]]. So instead of including all links (like recipes and patch pages etc, it would only list shopkeepers.

I was trying to think what else we could use this for and so far I've come up with:

  • Items included in recipes.
  • Creature locations (I will need to make a component template for creature lists that will be closer to item lists). (I'm leaning towards being able to specify the type of location as well, so we could get separate lists for dungeons and landscape locations).
  • Trophies (may not be possible without changing the template in a significant way).

Are there any other ones that would be good to include? Also input on whether to include this for just item types that generate big lists and skip smaller ones that could be ready through quickly, or to do this for them all.--Tlosk 11:17, 10 May 2009 (CDT)

That's a very clever solution. I was going to suggest looking at the Semantic MediaWiki extension, but it appears that it doesn't support to-many relationships (like the shopkeeper selling multiple items). --Widgeon 17:29, 11 May 2009 (CDT)

I'm not sure I understand exactly how this will work, but if you say we can just modify the templates and it will work, then it sounds good to me. I agree with the things you listed. I would divide creatures into 3 types instead of 2: Dungeons, POIs, and general landscape - the listings found in Geographic Area and Town pages. --An Adventurer 18:10, 11 May 2009 (CDT)

Yeah it's kind of convoluted, but thankfully the implementation is transparent and a poster doesn't have to do anything different. However once implemented it will break existing vendor/recipe links so I'm going to wait until we finish updating existing entries with the new templates to turn the key so to speak (in the meantime we'll just get the full list of links like normal).

But so you can see it in action, here's a hardcoded example:

Old style (all links) for Stout: This item is sold by one or more shopkeepers.

New style (just shopkeepers) for Stout: This item is sold by one or more shopkeepers.

This first one finds all pages that link to "Stout," but the second one just the pages that link to "Stout/Sold By" and that's only the pages using the new shopkeeper template.

--Tlosk 20:11, 11 May 2009 (CDT)

10th Anniversary Event Preview

I think we should create a page dedicated to information about the 10th anniversary event. It would be similar to the 100th update preview page we had.

I would want it to be more than just re-posting articles and statements from devs. For example, we have a thread about the teaser video they posted with more than 140 replies and a great deal of information posted by Sev. It'd be useful to have a few simple statements about this new two-handed weapon skill to sum up the 20+ dev posts about it.

Frelorn also hinted that there might be a special test server for this patch. More information about this, all in one place, would be helpful as it is released. In the event there is another test server I would probably want to treat it like we did for shadowfell.

Thoughts?

--An Adventurer 13:55, 6 May 2009 (CDT)

Definitely, I'm sure we'll get a ton more info as the event gets closer, and we should add a link on the main page again like we had for the 9th preview.--Tlosk 11:17, 10 May 2009 (CDT)

I'll start a page here: Asheron's Call 10th Anniversary Event Preview --An Adventurer 12:11, 12 May 2009 (CDT)


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