Guild Wars 2 Wiki talk:General formatting/Archive 1

Discussion

This looks fine to me. pling 13:08, 6 June 2010 (UTC)

Same here. Erasculio 14:38, 6 June 2010 (UTC)

Is that all we have in a general formatting guideline? Also this looks more like a draft, so how can you two say that it's already fine? :o poke | talk 17:28, 6 June 2010 (UTC)

Less is more/better. The stuff on the page is probably the only general formatting applied across most articles. (Anyway, it's not like GWW's general formatting guideline is much bigger.) pling 19:36, 6 June 2010 (UTC)

I have to admit I'm a little surprised too. :) Do you want to merge the reference formatting into this article or just tidy up the link a little? I'm going to put the wiki link only the first use of a term in somewhere here. Do we have a quote format yet? GWW says text should be italised but do we have anything we generally use here yet? {{Quotation}} is used all over but is that the only way we do quotes? -- Aspectacle  23:14, 6 June 2010 (UTC)

I started to make use of {{Quotation}} on this wiki more. In fact, I would like to display every longer, description-like quotation from the game with that template. So, for example skill descriptions, location descriptions, item descriptions etc.. For things like dialogues and such, it would just clutter up the page, so either we use the old simple style there, or we think of something new for such things. poke | talk 11:04, 7 June 2010 (UTC)

I disagree with the overuse of the quotation template. We saw situations on GWW where pages on very important people and places ended up as just quotations and lists, with very little actual substance. I also think for blocks of text, the quotation template can be ugly and difficult to read, and push actual substance down the page, as seen here. Instead I think we should make more of an effort to integrate the quoted text into the page to make it more readable, and so we can continue to update it in case it becomes outdated, taking care not to lose any information along the way, of course. --Santax (talk · contribs) 11:34, 7 June 2010 (UTC)

I think this is well written and to the point. I would suggest merging the reference information in with it. I really don't have much of an opinion on {{quotation}}. --hnzdvn 14:25, 7 June 2010 (UTC)

"and push actual substance down" - If we have actual content, that is more important than the quotes, or hold more information, then simply don't make the quote the first thing on the page. If we want to quote something, we should use the quotation template, but if we are able to write good texts ourselves, then just use that; not both, and especially not the less comprehensive (=quotation!) at the beginning. I don't have a problem with multiple quotations, but when we come to that, we might should think about actually being content editors and writing our own texts. We then could simply use references, or list important quotations (manuals, longer in-game descriptions, etc) at the bottom (or even a subpage). poke | talk 18:10, 7 June 2010 (UTC)

(Reset indent) I've added more around quotation based on poke's ideas and Santax's concerns. I feel the words in quotation use list are a bit stilted so if anyone can phrase them better please go ahead... -- Aspectacle  23:49, 7 June 2010 (UTC)

I have a feeling this'll take a couple of months (or years) to implement. It takes time to be able to get every single item into a complete draft, you know. And here I was hoping to avoid that niggle on GW2W.

I still have no problem with getting this guideline "accepted". Things that need to be added later on can be added later on, but in its current state the proposal is fine. Remember, we don't have to have a complete guideline from the beginning. pling 15:12, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

I agree with Brains. I think it's the same thing with some stub articles; they are not really stubs (articles with less information than what we know), they are just a bit empty since we know so little about the game yet. This guideline already describes everything we currently do on this wiki regarding general formatting; in the future, when we know the accepted practices for other aspects of the wiki, we may add more things, but for now it is rather complete. I don't see the need for this to be a draft. Erasculio 15:21, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

Independent from the actual content of this guideline, I object accepting a guideline (or policy) that has "Reference formatting..." as part of the text. While maybe being complete (in content) to our current state of the wiki/game/documentation, we should still try to maintain some kind of quality in guidelines (and policies). poke | talk 15:37, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

There you go. pling 15:41, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

"Capitalisation" or " Capitalization"; i.e. AE or BE

We had this on GWW before; while our stance was to not change an article solely for this matter, we somehow preferred AE spelling. Do we want to continue this? poke | talk 06:58, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

I'm saying 'Capitalisation', purely because most countries are taught BE rather then AE... And I am British :P. Bias opinion ftw. --aut /(t) 08:27, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

ANet is an American company, and GW is an American game, but I don't think we should particularly favo(u)r one over the other. Failing that, a preference for American English with the same stance as before (not editing an article simply to "correct" the spelling) would be fine. --Santax (talk · contribs) 11:26, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

Okay, then we should at least try to make "official" texts (i.e. policies, guidelines) follow AE rules. poke | talk 12:35, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

Er, why? If articles, the most important pages on the wiki, follow "don't edit specifically to change", why should policies not follow that as well? As for "official texts" being "official", that's nonsense. We need to avoid the sense that policy or guideline is "official". pling 15:03, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

If we want to go with the previous idea, to prefer AE in general, but don't want to justify an edit just to fix the spelling from BE to AE, then we (=those who know about this) should at least try to use AE as often as possible. If we say use AE in texts (independent from that fixing-justification), and we have the exact guideline who says this with BE, it looks very bad. poke | talk 15:34, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

As long as it says "use AE, but you don't need to change something that uses BE just to make it use AE", that's fine. It'd be contradictory to change policies. But anyway, we don't have any policies, we don't have wide problems with AE/BE, we haven't even really decided which way to go, and this is getting off-topic, so forget that :P. pling 15:39, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

As much as i hate using american spellings, (Spelling test results Ftl.) i also think its fine to use the AE. though, some people just dont see the Colo u r!--Neil • 15:53, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

Are you guys that bored to talk about a spelling of one word!?!?--♥Icyyy♥ 15:58, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

I'm also for the use of AE. Anet is an American company... yada, yada, yada, you've heard it before.

@Icyyy things like this are necessary to keep consistency throughout articles, not simply because we are bored. --hnzdvn 16:14, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

Include a preference for AE in a section on this page? Under heading of "spelling" or "english"? -- Aspectacle  23:05, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

House of Style

I'm a bit surprised that this hasn't been brought up before, but I feel the need to bring the House of Style into this guideline. It's there for a reason, it'll be seen in the game and as such I feel we should follow it as well. Yes, no? --Sirrush 16:45, 2 July 2010 (UTC)

I completely agree with you. We should be following this new House of Style. After all, we have to be showing what the game will show in almost every way. So: Yes, --Thalador Doomspeaker 16:56, 2 July 2010 (UTC)

I still prefer using normal sentence capitalisation for titles and section-headers. I don't think following ArenaNet for the sake of following ArenaNet is a better option than that. Yes, we have to document the game, but the former is a better way to format that documentation. pling 17:34, 2 July 2010 (UTC)

MediaWiki automatically capitalizes the first letter of page names. This would make following the "House of Style" difficult in many areas. I agree with Pling for Sentence capitalization. It also makes linking easier since you can link to lower case... for example, you can link to [[norn]] within text and it will automatically take you to the [[Norn]] page. -- Wyn talk 17:43, 2 July 2010 (UTC)

Actually we are already following the House of Style completely.. except for titles. And for titles, we have to keep the software we are relying on in mind, and in that relation, it makes more sense, to not explicitely capitalize titles. And for section titles it just looks bad imo, especially if our article titles aren't capitalized. poke | talk 18:06, 2 July 2010 (UTC)

Quotations

Generally, I have no issue for them. But in this wiki, they have more or less all been used by quoting something that is said by the article's subject. This is, imo, quite annoying and adds nothing to the article. It takes up space and nothing else. At least Era believes it adds style. I greatly disagree, and even if so, the wiki is meant to document not entertain. That isn't to say the wiki articles should be ugly as long as their informative, but to take "style" (which I greatly disagree with - this is a point where I agree with Santax in regards to the use of quotations) over usefulness to the article is just plain simply pointless.
That said, I think that quotations should only be used where it gives information - and said information would be irresputable official sourced facts (so as to avoid seeing a repetition of things like the Flame Legion article, which is not uncommon (especially around particular members of the wiki community - both GWW and GW2W).
So what I'm saying is, I think we shouldn't use quotations likehow they are used here. -- Konig/talk 04:26, 30 July 2010 (UTC)

About capitalization

What should we do when the in-game text doesn't respect the capitalization suggested in this guide? For example, the brown bear page was created long ago following the English capitalization rules but the pet is called Brown Bear in-game. So what do we do? Chriskang 12:33, 24 August 2010 (UTC)

I think if it's the actual name of an animal or being, etc. It should be capital... But if it's just general, then I'd say as it is... I'm not sure, just what I feel... Can't think straight atm, got a cold :-S Ariyen 18:58, 24 August 2010 (UTC)

All NPC names - general or not - in game will be capitalized. Like gw1:Rift Warden, which is called merely "rift warden" by Nola in the WiK. In my opinion, we can do a few things: The most simplistic way would be to document these names as capitalized, ignoring the House of Style - I do not support this. Another way would be to have articles capitalized, and have the text lowercase (for linking, either to [[Black Bear|black bear]] or make redirects). A third way would be to have the articles lowercased or capitalized based on what the article is about - if it is about a specifically named topic (let's say Rytlock Brimstone), it'll be capitalized, if it is about a generic monster (let's say Harpy Hunter/harpy hunter), then we can lowercase it should we ever see it talked about in text as "harpy hunter" (or like entities). I personally say the last, but am not objecting the second for the sake of simplicity and consistency. -- Konig/talk 22:17, 24 August 2010 (UTC)

Move

While I like General formatting it is not proper Etiquette. I feel Formatting/General is better for creating more subpages (If needed) It'd keep the pages together and better sorted. Ariyen 16:18, 12 September 2010 (UTC)

The page name has nothing to do with etiquette. GW2W:Formatting and GW2W:PP are linked at the very top of the page, so people can get to them easily, meaning there's no need to make them subpages. I think this name is better than Formatting/General. pling 17:37, 12 September 2010 (UTC)

It's easier to keep up with formatting pages that way and I believe we were discussing something similar over in another section. Even about keeping pages together? Not having their own complete different page names. I would like to click on Guild Wars 2 Wiki: Formatting and see the "what links here" and go to the others that way. I like for some reason in having a few ways to navigate to pages, not just by navs and on article pages themselves. To me, it's handy. Ariyen 17:44, 12 September 2010 (UTC)

Well, Special:WhatLinksHere/Guild Wars 2 Wiki:Formatting already does list the other pages, if that's what you like. pling 18:16, 12 September 2010 (UTC)

How about we just delete formatting since these others are in Gw2w PP? Why have a page just for listing, when the same is on gw2w pp? Ariyen 18:15, 13 September 2010 (UTC)

Just a stupid question, why do you go off topic in your own section? This is about the move, or rather about if formatting articles should be kept as subpages or as proper separated articles. I do like the latter version, and personally I never understood why we decided to have "XY policy" but "Formatting/XY" on GWW.. poke | talk 19:07, 13 September 2010 (UTC)

Not completely off topic. Just pertaining to conversation. Please pay better attention. Also, if you don't understand something on gww, bring it up there. Not going to solve anything here, (While I do agree with you and find half of that confusing. Nothing is consistent (the armor articles, the policy vs formatting, etc.), but I hope things are or become better organized here. :-S Ariyen 19:15, 13 September 2010 (UTC)

Poke doesn't need help "understanding" GWW's system, he just think it doesn't make sense but it's solidified enough to not be worth it. As to your deletion suggestion, I think you skipped several points of thought. The only way deleting GW2W:FORMAT would be viable is if we didn't go with your suggestion of renaming the articles to "Formatting/General" --JonTheMon 19:26, 13 September 2010 (UTC)

I'm not trying to make him understand. I'm just saying for that - it's better there. It doesn't make sense, but it does no good here anyway. Secondly, I did not skip points. I'd take back the moves, if the formatting was deleted as it is also on Pp and would not make sense to have both. Only did the original suggestion as of this possible thought of having more formatting pages, but I am reconsidering as well... Cause we could have the same links on PP. The only thing to consider though is... Would we want one page to be scrolling and big (Possibility of adding more in future and that thought has been considered)? or to have that page link the imaging and formating in one word to formatting and let it link these others? Seriously, it's more-so what you all could consider as well. I am only giving out a few different sets of suggestions to consider. We have many ways that can be gone with all of this. Let's not forgot the ways we have and what would honestly be the best is what we should consider. So, nothing is invalid. :-) And there's no right or wrong and I hope this is cleared and understood now. Ariyen 19:38, 13 September 2010 (UTC)

Capitalisation again

I think we've got enough information to make a decision about monster and item capitalisation on the wiki.
In short: ArenaNet are using English capitialisation rules for monster and item names.
Longer version: ArenaNet are using title case for headers and labels for general monster and item names, but using sentence case when they are referred to within a sentence. I've seen a few examples; Greater Earth Elemental is referred to in title case for its label and the quest header but as a greater earth elemental within the quest text. Another is Blob of Toxin is in title case for the mouse over and the collector text it is a blob of toxin.
Because ArenaNet are using English capitalisation I think we can decide which capitalisation scheme suits us best. There are a few options.

1. Title case everywhere, every use.
2. Title case for titles (including page title), sentence case for sentences.
3. Sentence case page title, Title case where title case used in game, sentence case in sentences.
4. Sentence case everywhere, every use.

I don't think 1 is useful because it looks pretty dumb. 2 requires a sentence case redirect to title case. 3 requires a title case redirect to sentence case. 4 is more interesting than 1 but we won't be following the in-game case when we're documenting.
I marginally favour 3, but think 2 would be ok. Thoughts from other documenters? -- aspectacle  02:32, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

3, I think it makes the most sense, and it would be easier to redirect from the few quest titles than redirect from every time something is mentioned within a sentence. We are going to have to move the Ghastly Weapon article, among other things, though. Erasculio 11:38, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

To reflect the game exactly, 3 seems the most correct. Ghastly Weapon would be moved to Ghastly weapon, whereas Ghastly Scepter would remain Ghastly Scepter. That's right, isn't it? We should document the game directly so page titles are always exceptions if the game makes them so. Or my personal favourite: Copy what you see, exactly as you see it. :) - Infinite - talk 11:55, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

Regarding redirects - it's not always a necessity to create a redirect to ease searching. Searching for "ghastly weapon" will lead you to "Ghastly Weapon", and searching for "Heritage Armor" will take you to "heritage armor". However, "Wheel of Fortune" would need a redirect because it contains lowercase and uppercase words in the title.

I don't like 3 - we shouldn't follow the game where it doesn't make sense. (We document the game, but we aren't an extension of the game itself, so we don't need to follow it arbitrarily.) I'm opposed to 1 because, as you said, it looks silly. 4 would introduce consistency between titles and sentences, while 2 wouldn't. For that reason, I'd prefer 4 from those options. However, I'm not sure about "every use"; I think we should define ourselves which nouns are proper and thus need capitalising. For example, races would be lowercase but skill names and items uppercase. pling 15:40, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

It's hard to point out exceptions at this stage, to be honest. I think Eras', mine and Pling's argument more or less add up to option 3.5. Basically option 4 with important exceptions where such exceptions are required/make sense. - - Infinite - talk 16:41, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

@Pling: We had to have ANet confirm race capitalization (or rather, the lack thereof) for us, remember? =P

I agree that we shouldn't arbitrarily follow, but could I see an example where we would choose to capitalize something they haven't, or the opposite? I haven't noticed any so far. --ஸ Kyoshi 22:25, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

I've just remembered how little I actually care for discussing the fastidious twists of English grammar. :P I think there are a few ways you could go on what's a proper noun - monsters/pets for instance, you could have black bears or consider them as Black Bears, a proper name of the specific species of bear - I guess we need to simply pick a way and try to be consistent about it. Skills are good as proper nouns. Items I've got mixed opinions on - I'm never very comfortable talking about Mushrooms or Onions or Loaves of Bread in the middle of the sentence so I'd like a mixed approach (head to the market to buy a Ghastly Scepter and some onions). -- aspectacle  03:27, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

I think we can safely refer to them loaves of bread, but ArenaNet uses "Loaf of Bread" as the name/title just for name/title consistency amongst items. So on Wiki it should be Ghastly Scepter and some loaves of bread, as you said. - Infinite - talk 11:14, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

An example of inconsistency - "black moa" was just moved to "Black Moa", yet the description says it's "a dark-feathered moa" (note the different capitalisation). Isn't this Black Moa just a moa that's black? Therefore, shouldn't it be a black moa? pling 15:10, 24 January 2011 (UTC)

It is, except the article name is Black Moa as that's how it's referred to "in-game" currently (in-game being the HoM reward description and the fact all other Moas are name <capitalized colour> Moa). But it would be silly to put "Black Moa" all over the article. Hence the article is "Black Moa", whereas in sentence structure it is referred to as "black moa". At least, that's how it makes most sense to me. - Infinite - talk 15:13, 24 January 2011 (UTC)

I think it's just as silly to put "Black Moa" in the title as in the article... Note that the first usage of the title in the text is link-bolded, so there's one usage of "Black Moa" in the title, one "Black Moa" in the article body, and "black moas" everywhere else. In other words, there's no consistency. If we're not following ArenaNet arbitrarily (e.g. naming an article in the same way as they do on the website yet referring to it elsewhere in the way that makes sense), then the question is should titles be in title case or sentence case? pling 15:21, 24 January 2011 (UTC)

Why would the first link (in bold) have to follow title case? In my optics it should be sentence case. Only the actual title should be title case. - Infinite - talk 15:46, 24 January 2011 (UTC)

That introduces unnecessary complexity in having to pipe-link all links in text (as article names are in caps while sentences in text aren't), or create redirects for linking ease. Instead, we could have titles in the same case as sentences (just as GWW does), which makes things a lot simpler, and won't require explanations/fixes/workarounds to/for inexperienced users. pling 20:59, 24 January 2011 (UTC)

And RC patrol does not catch and replace this, why? If complexity adds to visual quality, I choose complexity. If the idea was absolute nonsense and sheer madness, I would not bring it up in the first place. - Infinite - talk 21:22, 24 January 2011 (UTC)

We shouldn't have to rely on "RC patrol" for something like capitalisation. If the best assumption is that editors attempting capitalisation will get it wrong and patrols are needed to correct them, it should be obvious that something is nonsensical. pling 21:36, 24 January 2011 (UTC)

I don't think the article title should suffer because not all contributors know about title case and sentence case. People who find a page lacking altogether will ignore capitalization and ignore whatever we discuss here, unless appointed. I don't think the argument "the contributors don't know how to do it right, so we should create a system where this is more likey" is very viable if we're documenting things that differ between wiki and game in the first place. I think what can be found in-game should be copied directly, but whereever we have the freedom, we should use normal sentence case. People expect this when using a wiki for a game, at least for what they can compare. (ArenaNet does this too, as far as we have seen. Title Case for item names, etc, sentence case for descriptions and such. If it works there, it would be consistent here as well.) - Infinite - talk 21:45, 24 January 2011 (UTC)

“I think we've got enough information to make a decision about monster and item capitalisation on the wiki.” – I disagree. While we have quite an amount of information as of now, the game isn't out yet, so we have no reference to how it is done in-game (the demo doesn't count btw.). As such, the best option to go for now is definitely option 4. If it turns out that the game is actually doing a great/good/acceptable job with capitalization, then we can still move particular pages to reflect option 3. But for now, 4 is the way to go. poke | talk 19:43, 24 January 2011 (UTC)

I don't want to be a spoilsport, but every article of in-game content is probably taken from demo footage, a few hundred articles would have to be moved. I say create consitency on how we documented the demo up till now (if it didn't count, we should've not started documenting it in the first place, so that's a tad late, there). Article names are directly reflecting footage content, and whatever we haven't seen is following 4. So I say keep demo-oriented articles as they are (maybe even create a demo template, hell) and keep everything non-demo oriented in the style of 4. - Infinite - talk 19:54, 24 January 2011 (UTC)

And to hell with consistency and simplicity? pling 20:53, 24 January 2011 (UTC)

No, not to hell with it. We can make it all consistent when there's conclusive information, a.k.a. release day and onward. Ergo the Demo tag proposal. - Infinite - talk 20:56, 24 January 2011 (UTC)

I started the topic and I pretty much agree with poke on this now. :) If ArenaNet are using title case we can't know what they consider to be a proper noun until we see it in a sentence. There are some things we might never see in a sentence even if we have the full game - weapon names, armor names, creature species names. On the other hand - I think there are some items from the demo we could safely move to sentence case titles - Loaf of Bread, Mushroom, Dragon Scale, Blob of Toxin, et al. We know these are common nouns and we know they are only capitalised because ArenaNet are using title case.

Perhaps the simplest solution would be to ask. Craft specific, direct questions about each of the cases we're not sure about and send it to ArenaNet. There is a chance they'd answer us and it isn't like it is something they're going to be trying to keep secret. I know there are bots which can probably fix page titles but it'd be nice to get it right in the first place? -- aspectacle  22:39, 24 January 2011 (UTC)

I just want to ask why the article title can't be "Loaf of Bread" with the rest of the article in sentence case.... "Loaf of Bread - A loaf of bread is an.." is very frankly the only way I can think of that both reflects the content and the discussion here. Except that the first link would have to be manually inserted as [[Loaf of Bread|loaf of bread]]. Hell, I'll even open a project for it if others don't want to bother with that capitalization part. - Infinite - talk 11:39, 25 January 2011 (UTC)

EDIT:And there is no way we can tell Wiki to treat search command "loaf of bread" automatically as "Loaf of Bread"? :\ - Infinite - talk 11:40, 25 January 2011 (UTC)

(Reset indent) I haven't read this entire wall text yet, but I'd have to say that sentence wise, if it's lowercased in game, it should be so on the wiki. For instance, gw1:Nola Sheppard's battle quote "I hope you have two gold coins for the rift wardens!" is a perfect example of what we should do. The article for gw1:Rift Warden is obviously capitalized, in the sentence it's lowercased, it's linked via [[Rift Warden|rift warden]]. Most likely, the way it'll be searched is via the NPC name (thus, capitalized), but it'll look weird and documenting verbatim will mean it'll be different than the NPC naming. For now, when documenting sentence, go with the house of style (race and animal names being lowercase - for instance, gw1:Silavor was made during the brief time that the Live Team followed the house of style before they went back to utter horror). -- Konig/talk 15:17, 25 January 2011 (UTC)

That's a good example, Konig. It helps pick black moa over Black Moa for species names.

@Infinite. I always have trouble finding media wiki stuff on the interwebs, but I don't think there is a official plugin which creates a case insensitive wiki. I think you/we could write our own plug in but that seems like a lot of effort for not a lot of gain. Most wiki's don't do title case, they capitialise their proper nouns and sentence case their common nouns - this is probably the tidiest way for us to do it too. -- aspectacle  22:08, 25 January 2011 (UTC)

Unless I misphrased myself I said exactly (albeit not as concise) what Konig said. Why am I getting objected to, I wonder. Actually scratch that, it would clash with Loaf of Bread, as Konig would name is Loaf of bread as title (I think). That's where I disagree, currently, as all loaves of bread are only visible in the actual title Loaf of Bread (so we can't point out how it is used in common sentences. But as I pointed out before, I think the item names should be copied as they are used in-game. Whatever rules apply to it are voided in the actual title (as that's where ArenaNet follows a unique style, which I think we should reflect.)

tl;dr: Keep name titles in their visible capitalization, use proper capitalization whereever else. - Infinite - talk 22:22, 25 January 2011 (UTC)

Infinite, for my opinion on that, I'll refer you to my "don't follow Anet where it doesn't make sense" and "consistency between titles and sentences" comments :P.

Regarding search: months ago, we asked ArenaNet to install an extension that would vastly improve the search function but they seemingly rejected it. (Can't be 100% sure on this, as I don't think they actually said on the wiki what they decided.) pling 14:47, 26 January 2011 (UTC)

All I'm asking is to keep titles direct copies of what they are in-game. Why? Because that's what mostly everyone would expect to see when searching for it.

If someone reads "Loaf of Bread", they won't search for "Loaf of bread". If anything they search either for "loaf of bread" (the lazy approach, current proposal by a lot of people here) or "Loaf of Bread" (the correct approach, current proposal by quite a minority compared). As I mentioned before, every "loaf of bread" outside the title shouldn't be capitalized, it looks silly and doesn't make any sense. Only the title should reflect in-game content directly, even if it means manually correcting the very first link on the article. - Infinite - talk 15:03, 26 January 2011 (UTC)

"Loaf of bread" and "loaf of bread", in terms of MediaWiki titling/searching, are functionally identical. I'm not sure how making a title be different to the same words everywhere else doesn't look silly and does make sense. You're also assuming that people aren't searching based on sentences they read but only the labels they see.

I'm not really sure what the compromise here would be; we only disagree about the title, and there doesn't seem to be something in-between the two formats. Other than repeating ourselves ad nauseum, waiting for more input or more GW2 info seems to be the best option. pling 15:19, 26 January 2011 (UTC)

Because the title is a label, rather than mere words. That is all. I also think waiting for more input is wise at this stage. - Infinite - talk 15:22, 26 January 2011 (UTC)

"Konig would name is Loaf of bread as title (I think)" Only if the item itself is "loaf of bread" or "Loaf of bread" - however, I'm assuming it would be "Loaf of Bread" therefore the article would be called such while the introduction text would be "the [[Loaf of Bread|loaf of bread]] is a consumable which..." @Pling: I agree with your "don't follow Anet where it doesn't make sense" however I must greatly disagree with your "consistency between titles and sentences" - why? I point back to gw1:Nola Sheppard, I also point to how the first letter of article names are capitalized but it shouldn't be in sentences at all, nor is it used by Anet in such a way, (e.g., norn, kodan, etc.) and as such should not be capitalized by us in sentences because "it doesn't make sense". :P -- Konig/talk 17:40, 26 January 2011 (UTC)

"months ago, we asked ArenaNet to install an extension that would vastly improve the search function but they seemingly rejected it." "Seemingly" as in no response was received for the request, or did they flat-out say no? I think we ought to try again after several months.

Generally speaking, then, are people more concerned (about the title capitalized and sentences not) because different capitalization would look silly or because it would be a nuisance bypassing redirects? If the latter then I don't see a problem if the update is applied, but if the former then I'm not sure how ANet's input will even help, especially since we established that we don't want to follow their rules when it doesn't make sense (but we have different ideas of what makes sense). --ஸ Kyoshi 18:27, 26 January 2011 (UTC)

Personally, I believe a change in favour of the game should be priority over the wiki. If linking would be a nuisance, we just have to suck that up. - Infinite - talk 18:30, 26 January 2011 (UTC)

Race/species capitalization

(Reset indent) quick question, didn't really want to start another capitalization topic. In regards to race names, are these to be treated as common nouns? For instance, should Norn be norn? This question is more for general purposes, not specific to searching techniques or article titles. Venom20 05:44, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

Yes they should be/are treated that way at this point. - Infinite - talk 12:33, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

While I agree with your comment on Poke's page about humans not being capitalized, I don't think the analogy is quite acurate. In everyday life, there is only one race of people on earth, so there isn't a need for segregation in language. That being said, grounps of people are capitalized. For instance, we can look at the Aboriginal people, the Inuits, Europeans, North Americans. Venom20 14:16, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

But if we look at other species we do not capitalize monkeys, dogs, spiders, etc. We capitalize Krytans, Ascalonians and other groups of humans on the wiki, though. - Infinite - talk 14:21, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

Hmm perhaps, we also don't capitalize cow or pig in GW2, so your comments do have some merit with me. But in regards to capitalizing Krytans, Ascalonians, etc I beleive this is akin to naming the species (humans) by their "breed". The same thing is done with animals on earth, for instance Clumber Spaniel, Rough Collie, and Wire Fox Terrier are all breeds of dogs, and are capitalized. An argument can exist where we define a sentient being. All of the known races of Tyria are sentient and thus may deserve to be capitalized. Venom20 14:32, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

"Homo sapiens" Family: "Hominidae". It's not exactly the same thing. - Infinite - talk 14:35, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

ANet said they're not capitalized. If we're going to decide that their word on that matter is irrelevant, then we have to decide on how we're going to handle capitalization for something which has never occurred in the real world and which has no real world grammatical context and on which many people, as shown by this very conversation, disagree.

Added a page break since this is getting long. --ஸ Kyoshi 17:21, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

Even if we're going to /irrelevant ArenaNet (ouch), in the real world species are not capitalized; "humans", "cats", "dogs". Groups of humans tied to territory does end up being capitalized; "Europeans", "Americans", "Asians", "French", "German". Groups of humans tied by culture does not get capitalized; "gypsies", "nomads". Groups of humans tied by religion do get capitalized; "Christians", "Muslims", "Hindu".

In terms of species, which all races are; they do not get capitalized; "norn", "human", "sylvari". In terms of heritage they do; "Ascalonian", "Krytan". Only because the other races have no clear heritage (afaik), does not mean the rules don't equally apply to them. Isn't that why the capitalizations on the races stand as is? - Infinite - talk 17:33, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

There was some dispute over the "races" count as races or species a while back, which apparently got ANet to post on it. So they're technically species, but syntactically races, and what follows is exactly what you suggest. Considering this is turning into its own discussion, I'm going to make a new section for it instead of the section break. --ஸ Kyoshi 17:41, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

This gives a brief definition of race. The "races" can not be actual races as they are nowhere near the same group of species. Hence our "races" are actually species. - Infinite - talk 17:59, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

But ANet still calls them races. So syntactically (that is, by name) they are races, but technically (by definition) species. Which is what I just said. =P --ஸ Kyoshi 19:09, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

A clear example of when we should not follow ArenaNet's house of style, at least. - Infinite - talk 20:09, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

... except that ArenaNet writes races in lower case as well.. poke | talk 20:24, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

Oh ye, they do in GW2. They didn't in GW1. :P - Infinite - talk 21:12, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

Which is exactly what I'm saying. They don't capitalize "race" names, but still call them races rather than species. Somehow we're winding up disagreeing from the same viewpoint. --ஸ Kyoshi 05:56, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

(Reset indent) As per the age old House of Style, races/species (human, norn, tengu, seer, mursaat, ettin, skale, centaur, kodan, etc.) should be lowercase, ethnicities (Ascalonian, Krytan, Sensali, Modniir, Harathi, etc.) should be capitalized.
Also as per the House of Style, technically they're "species" but Anet isn't being "technical" and thus calls them races from time to time.
End of discussion unless we go in a different route from Anet. Don't know why this was even started. -- Konig/talk 06:20, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

Venom asked and Kyoshi and I danced around the exact same argument believing we were magically disagreeing, somehow. So yes, nothing's changed about the "races" rules. =] - Infinite - talk 13:17, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

Noted, thanks for everyone's assistance. Venom20 14:00, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

Concept Art

Regarding capitalization of concept art files, the title of any piece of art is always capitalized in English, so the questions is should we treat concept art filenames as their titles with "concept art" appended onto the name, or should we treat the filenames as descriptions? Where are there are some pieces such as "A Dark Queen" which clearly are titles, there are others such as "Centaur Weapon Set" that may have been uploaded by the artist to his/her blog with less focus on a title and more focus on the description. Who are we to judge what the artist's intent was, though? For this reason, I think it would be consistent and best if we kept the original capitalization exhibited by the artist.-- Shew 00:35, 29 March 2011 (UTC)

I agree with Shew, subjectivity rarely works. Aqua (T|C) 00:36, 29 March 2011 (UTC)

Sure. --ஸ Kyoshi 03:02, 29 March 2011 (UTC)

If we were to implement such a system, each image would need to be uploaded with a source, so that it can easily be distinguished between a descriptive name, and a name given by an artist. Unfortunately such a two-tiered system could not be left to interpretation. This of course is the problem with such a two tiered system (I mean that capitalization rules for some, but not for all). Unfortunately in the name of simplicity, titles should follow the same procedure whether they are descriptions or titles given to the art by the artist. Venom20 03:23, 29 March 2011 (UTC)

The most difficult aspect to this is the concept art that hasn't been given a title/description (or has no source of a title/description). How would that be capitalized? User's discretion will lead to a massive inconsistency. How about we follow capitalization in the file title and put a short summary on the page with how it is actually capitalized by the artist? As in, just above the tags. - Infinite - talk 11:54, 29 March 2011 (UTC)

That'd work.-- Shew 12:09, 29 March 2011 (UTC)

Transclusion

For articles where there is lots of information that also has a less concise article/location, transclusion greatly reduces the amount of bytes as well as reduce editting to multiple sources (to just 1 source, its origin). I have done so with the Conqueror article at the moment, here and here. I think it should be included in the article here. - Infinite - talk 20:02, 25 January 2011 (UTC)

We don't need to worry about bytes, they're (practically) insignificant. If it's absolutely necessary to transclude something, it should be done from a template instead of having noincludes and the like in articles. For the example above, there's only two articles using the same information, so I'm not sure transclusion is necessary at all. pling 14:53, 26 January 2011 (UTC)

It's a mere example, I mean transcluding in general, to avoid multiple edits to the same information (such as the tables on Achievements and Conqueror). It's not the perfect example, but it's still formatting that saves a good amount of edits. Admittedly, currently there are few (if any) pages where transclusion is viable. This is more pointed towards the future. - Infinite - talk 15:06, 26 January 2011 (UTC)

DPL has that great way to include sections from other pages.. but it still breaks with the references.. *sigh* poke | talk 18:23, 26 January 2011 (UTC)

Yes, transcluding references breaks things badly, afaik. :P - Infinite - talk 18:24, 26 January 2011 (UTC)

That's not what I meant.. poke | talk 08:41, 27 January 2011 (UTC)

Oh, ok. - Infinite - talk 13:50, 27 January 2011 (UTC)

Animations on skill pages

Should we have the animation playing on the skill page itself, or have a "click to see" button with a still image, or (no good example) have simply the "click to see" link? Right now the inconsistency looks messy. --ஸ Kyoshi 05:55, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

I prefer "Click to see animation" myself. Eive 06:55, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

Click is best. The moving gifs take a while to miniaturise and the moving is pretty annoying if that's not what you're there for. -- aspectacle  10:12, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

We had a few discussion on this subject already [[:Template_talk:Skill_animation|here]] and there. An animation on the skill page is probably too much but I prefer a still image linking to the animation rather than a simple "click to see animation" link. Chriskang 12:47, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

I think linking to the animation with an image is best. Text could do too, as we haven't actually decided on a skill infobox yet. :) - Infinite - talk 13:40, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

I figured we'd decided on it somewhere, but I couldn't remember. I guess we do kind of have to wait for the infobox. --ஸ Kyoshi 14:18, 16 February 2011 (UTC)