Talk:Gwenwyn

Delete?

Can't find this Pirate Weapon vendor, so guessing she was replaced by First Mate Shane. If this is confirmed can we get a bot change or removal of the linked Pirate Weapons. Shane's page lists a different set of weapon names with the exception of the aquatics. If I get to Shane I will check. Robdalf 01:26, 12 September 2012 (UTC)

If Shane did replace her, I think there is a historical content tag we could use rather than deleting the page --65.25.183.90 21:25, 6 November 2012 (UTC)

I totally agree. We don't just delete things that were once in the game but have been removed. Even if they were removed before launch. This should be tagged as either Beta content, or Historical content, not deleted. -- Wyn talk 08:58, 24 November 2012 (UTC)

Removed game content is not deleted from the wiki. We're not going to remove the beta article simply because there is no longer a beta. -- MS 09:03, 24 November 2012 (UTC)

Why not remove from the wiki? Sure, some stuff is worth preserving like beta because it was important. But this NPC? Is she important in lore? is there a real-life story behind the name? If not, it's just cluttering up the search box and the historical category. Just because something was in the game doesn't mean it's important to preserve. 75.36.180.174 09:40, 24 November 2012 (UTC)

Right, right, cluttering up the search box because there's only two other articles with the string "gwen" in the title...and what's the point of the historical category if it has random omissions because "it's not important"? A history loses its purpose if it is not complete. Vili 点 11:53, 24 November 2012 (UTC)

This NPC has no importance -- it's not a "random" omission, it's a selective one. This isn't about Gwenwyn being confused with Gwen, it's about the fact that we don't need to record everything that has ever been discussed by a developer, shown in a blog, or appeared temporarily during testing. We don't list every possible point of trivia or explain every skill/trait synergy -- we are selective based on a collaborative decision of what's important.

Including this NPC does not make the game's history "complete" -- are people really going to understand the game's history poorly if we delete this article? Keeping articles about topics that were never important to the game actually makes it harder to understand things, not easier. And perhaps the "Gwe" search box is relatively small now, but maybe it won't be later. And maybe there's another never-in-the-game NPC that is cluttering up the search for a similarly named NPC.

tl;dr: let's be as careful about retaining history as we are with the rest of the content. Let's keep relevant articles only. 75.36.180.174 22:51, 25 November 2012 (UTC)

And I'm asking what defines an article as "important" or "worthy" of being kept, since you really could delete over half the mainspace articles (not to mention crap in other namespaces like Talk or User) and the average visitor would never notice a difference; most information can be included in more general articles, rather than having things split up to several different ones. For example, why bother having articles about NPCs, merchants, renown hearts, events, etc? All of that information could be summarized in tables which are displayed on the relevant area page as needed (using showhide to look less cluttered), because very few of them are so unique that they need an article all to themselves to explain how it works. What is lost, of course, are subtle things like NPC dialogue and the ability to easily sort things via categories...but it's a perfectly valid way to display the same amount of essential information.

You mention trivia and skill synergy. I say that the former topic was already beaten to death with Guild Wars 1, and the consensus continues to be that trivia is only added to a page if it's confirmed by Anet or it's so obvious that there's no reason not to add it (Triforge Pendant comes to mind). Therefore that point is moot - there are no problems with debating "every possible point of trivia" because it doesn't happen. As to the latter topic, that's unexplored territory - no one has bothered to even try listing good skill/trait combinations yet, since documentation should come before advice, and the wiki continues to be woefully incomplete due to a lack of caring editors. But even if it were happening, it's still not comparable - dumb advice gets removed and good advice stays, just like any other factual note of uncertain truth; it's a different subject because one can definitively say that certain recommendations are good or bad, important or unimportant, obvious or obscure. That isn't the case when deciding what to keep historically.

"What makes a history complete" is a subjective measure - I don't care at all about any Lore-related information (e.g. stuff explained in the physical Guild Wars novels, obscure references from Anet blog posts, translating things in-game from New Krytan...) and would not notice if it was removed, but others would not like that at all. It has zero relevance to the actual gameplay of Guild Wars 2, but it is still important to keep around. Why? Because someone, somewhere, might find that information useful. "Documenting the game" as our mission and reason to exist means documenting it as completely as possible; we leave out aspects (such as guilds) not because they're "not important" but because we either don't have the capability to do it well or it would do more harm than good. Neither of those are the case with this article nor other obscure historical ones.

My point is basically that there is no harm in keeping this article, nor is there a benefit to deleting it, and therefore I don't see the point in its deletion. It would be an action undertaken just to prove a point and/or make an example for future decision-making, and that strikes me as silly because the objective importance level of this article is approximately zero. I say objective in the sense that nothing (should) links here, and so it's very hard to find this article anyway. Something like Colorful Dye Seed coming up for deletion would be a better occasion to decide how historical articles should be handled; not only is that article easy to find, but many people know of the concept from playing/hearing about the betas. Vili 点 09:21, 26 November 2012 (UTC)

Why are you writing a tl;dr after I added the historical tag?--Relyk 09:34, 26 November 2012 (UTC)