Talk:List of fansites/ANet's input

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ANet input

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ArenaNet's input

In the first IRC meeting, Stéphane shared a request by ArenaNet to change the requirements for being listed on this page again. Stressing that this is a request, an idea, as to how this page can be improved with other standards. I'll leave opening this topic properly to Stéphane himself, so that we may learn what those ideas entail exactly. I also recommend not starting this discussion without him, and carrying on with the "protocol" of this page as it stands. - Infinite - talk 21:34, 13 June 2012 (UTC)

What Stephane is suggesting is that we be more inclusive rather than more restrictive, thus increasing the visibility of lesser-known fansites, giving them a chance to get more attention and flourish. I strongly support that goal. I agree with Infinite that there's no reason to change this page yet, until Stephane has a chance to propose his idea more formally (I think he has some specific thoughts on how to keep the list up-to-date and make it easier to see high-value sites). – Tennessee Ernie Ford (TEF) 01:22, 14 June 2012 (UTC)

I would propose different sections or tables for sites separated by criteria - the biggest/most useful ones should still be most prominently featured. If they want more listed, we can add a table lower down with any fansite that has a GW2 forum or whatever. (Also, possibly on another topic, the unofficial wikis should probably be moved down to that list as well considering the launch of official ones). -Auron 01:27, 14 June 2012 (UTC)

Jon brought up that idea during the second IRC chat. —Dr Ishmael 01:43, 14 June 2012 (UTC)

That is almost exactly what I was going to propose...although Auron's actual suggestion is much better than what I was considering. 75.37.16.239 02:43, 14 June 2012 (UTC)

SLP's starting point

So since I was the one to submit this, I should probably share some of our ideas with you and see where they can meet what the community would like to have. Let me just preface this by saying that we think that this page would be a win-win for the GW2 community and the GW2 Wiki, bringing awareness of the wiki and allowing the community to (ultimately, because at first it may take a while to get ir right) kind of self-organize. The wiki is a fantastic tool for the community and this Fansite list would be inline with this. Please keep in mind that what I say below is the starting point of a discussion, everything is subject to debate.

Our community philosophy (as explained in the blogpost) is to create a scalable, inclusive ecosystem. I quote: "The main goal is to be inclusive, not exclusive, to encourage collaboration between communities, and to generate an atmosphere that is helpful, friendly, and above all, respectful." These 2 values of scalability and inclusiveness should be at the heart of our design, while keeping the principles of the wiki in mind.

We think that a lot of sites should be included, whether they're big or small, popular or not. Obviously the list has become too big in the past so I think that categories (and a table of content) should greatly help in making it readable. Some of the categories could include: fansites that have forums vs blogs, tools, PvP, lore, podcasts, foreign language sites (although we may link to GW2W.FR, GW2W.DE and GW2W.ES depending on what these communities think). It may be tricky sometimes as some sites may end up in different categories but it's only fair to these sites who cater to several needs. I don't think that guild sites should be included, but I don't know all of them so there may be some special cases. I also don't think that "ranking" in this page should be used, that is to try to show the sites according to popularity (whatever that means), I'd personally go with alphabetical order to level the playing field.

The next important aspect is: how should this page be updated? I don't think that everyone should be able to modify it, as this would lead to: 1) many revert wars and work for the wiki patrols; 2) too many updates. In my opinion there should be team who regularly meets to consider sites submitted on the talk page (or any other way that works) and I (or other members of the Community Team) could help this team by providing guidance and advice. We could for example meet once or twice a month and discuss the requests. We firmly believe for example that certain sites should not be on such a list, when they basically do not abide by our Terms of Use.

I'm not waiting for your comments as I'm particularly interested to hear about how this page was managed and evolved in the past. I do think that it's a difficult topic but also believe that the wiki is the right place for tackling it. Let me know what you think!--Stephane Lo Presti talk 21:44, 18 June 2012 (UTC)

Stéphane: could you offer some idea of how the CRMs would like to balance inclusiveness with usability? The old list had around 100 links. Even if we filtered for e.g. English-language sites with a forum, we'd still end up with 20+. I don't like the idea of expecting the average player to visit the article only to be told they have to visit each of those sites to decide whether any are worth bookmarking (or might be better than the one they are currently using). Isn't there a compromise between being elitist and presenting an unedited list?

It's relatively easy to filter out sites that are stale (no new content in X # of weeks or months) or violate reasonable standards (e.g. copyrights, etc). But that still means a huge list that will tend to grow over time, becoming more difficult to use.

An alternative method for managing the list might be creating a fansite space, similar to how the GWW Feedback space works. Anyone would be allowed to add their site as an article, populating an appropriate infobox template with details (Language(s), forum y/n, skill builder y/n, ...). The list of fansites would then be an SMW or DPL-produced compilation of those sites with an appropriate filtering tool (e.g. show me English language forums). Then anyone on the wiki could add comments to the talk page ("I love this site b/c ..." or "I stopped using it b/c..."), within the usual standards of the wiki's talk pages. Sites could be tagged as stale manually or removed due to violations of the ToU.

This still means some maintenance for the community and some work by the player to figure out which sites to visit, but it would enable anyone to list a site (no matter how small or how little traffic it gets) and anyone to offer feedback. (This might work parallel to team reviewing sites, with help from the CRMs.) (I suppose we could get fancy and offer a like/dislike tool, but I think that it might be better to require at least a sentence or two.) – Tennessee Ernie Ford (TEF) 23:36, 18 June 2012 (UTC)

By making the list alphabetical, it may be inevitable that consecutive listings won't have as good of quality as some of the more prominent sites. Where this may really be detrimental to this page's usage is any category regarding community websites (e.g., forums). Thus, I would suggest that in those cases, we have a column (if we're doing row/col format) that lists the number of members or some indicator showing website usage. Maybe someone's looking for a more active community, or maybe someone's looking to help start a community. Even if the table is alphabetical, we can make it a sortable table based on the columns. And maybe SMW has in-depth sorting capabilities (like # of cols with checks, rather than Xs). Heck, if we're using more advanced tools, then the number-crunching can go on behind-the-scenes and we could have subcategories such as (active/inactive/something in-between).

As for how this page should be edited, I agree with you in that not everyone should be able to add links. So far, we really haven't been listing blogs, and random people have added links to such sites in the past, only for them to be removed. With the Terms of Use providing our restrictions in the future, this just reinforces that idea. If you do have a team, I wouldn't mind helping out at all. It may be easier (and safer) for just sysops and up to be able to add links, but that sure doesn't mean the team would have to be comprised of only sysops.-- shew|make 23:42, 18 June 2012 (UTC)

(Reset indent) Hi TEF and Shewmake for your feedback. I'll reply to all comments in one go if you don't mind.

TEF: we (Community Managers) think that people should make their own choices, not be directed to them. Being inclusive means welcoming (almost) everyone to the family, not just the big or popular sites. I don't see fundamentaly a problem with having a list of more than 20 items in a category. I imagine that we may be able to find a categorization that will help make lists more useful for players (say, PvP and then structured or WvW; discussion, and then by the range of discussion topics). The idea of categories may actually the one that, if managed appropriately, may help create order out of chaos.

I agree that a site should be updated regularly to be on the list, so the list may need to be reevaluated by the team. And I also agree that at some point the list may become really big, so we may want to split it (although I think categories+Table of content achieves the same).

I'm intrigued by your proposal to create a Fansite namespace. Could we then build lists of fansites based on their information? I'm not sure either what would happened to sites whose page gets deleted and recreate them (the equivalent of revert wars). Would we need a special patrol? I don't think that introducing a like/dislike mechanism for this is a good idea, as it would encourage tensions between fansites, while we'd like to facilitate collaboration.

Depending on the solutions, work may be needed by the community and this is why I'm ready to offer some help.

Shewmake: Listing the amount of users is not in my opinion a good idea. It's an information that could be misleading (due to inactive accounts; I remember for example the Wikia wikis have millions of registered account, because it's accross their hundreds of existing wikis). It would furthermore require much more work that I would like the community to do to update the page.

To your further idea of sorting based on numbers or other criteria, this is a decision that has to be considered very carefully as it would make the tool much less inclusive. Defining things like "active" or "inactive" is more difficult than it looks. We, community managers, look at all the creations from fansites and find that many sites contribute in their own way, but it's not possible to "rank" them strictly. We think that this list of fansite has to reflect this philosophy so as to facilitate an inclusive and respectful GW2 community at large. That's why going for something simpler, cleaner may be a better solution for a first attempt (and also it's less work for the wiki community). --Stephane Lo Presti talk 00:03, 19 June 2012 (UTC)

Fansite space mechanics: yeah, we can absolutely build dynamic lists and queries (using either DPL or SMW), based on an infobox-like template; the lists wouldn't affected by articles being renamed, deleted, or recreated. In some ways, it's easier than what we've done here to-date (either the list of 100 sites previously or the short list we have today):

• We could delegate most upfront work to the article-creator, presumably a fan of the specific site or one of the admins.
• If we insist upon including a site contact (i.e. an admin/moderator), we can delegate most of the maintenance work also.
• We could reduce potential conflicts by only allowing the articles to be created and/or edited by registered users (as a measure of accountability). That has worked extremely well in the GWW Feedback space: there's virtually no edit warring and it's very rare that the talk pages involve destructive arguments.
• It's more flexible as our idea of what to track/filter changes because we can (a) delegate any research to the site rep creating the articles and (b) add/remove/amend the list of features. Today, we know we want to distinguish forums and databases, but perhaps tomorrow we want to know what kind of forum or what kind of DB.

The more I think about it, the more I think this is a better route than a simple list such as we use now, especially if ANet wants to include everyone's site and use the least-restrictive criteria possible. – Tennessee Ernie Ford (TEF) 02:28, 19 June 2012 (UTC)

Before I get carried away sounding off about this -> would the sites added to this new area be vetted still? By some <waves hands>process</waves hands> committed to making sure we don't get guild sites, dead forums and sites violating the ToS? Open to everyone, in my mind at least, means useful for next to no-one. -- aspectacle  04:31, 19 June 2012 (UTC)

I have to agree with this- wikis are meant for gathering useful information, not dumping garbage. 21:21, 20 June 2012 (UTC)

Even if the list seems rather small and focused, even elitist right now, it will grow larger and broader with time. The game still isn't going to be released for some while; I think it's more than likely that many news/guild-like communities will die or merge with others, and that is only natural. The more sites we're going to list, the more information we have to gather of each site, as simply giving a general description of "Community fansite" or whatevs is, like Aspectacle said, not very useful for a user seeking information about communities <- different from users looking for community (anyone looking for community can just learn to Google IMO). The more sites we're going to list (especially before release), the more work we will have to do to keep the list up-to-date in the long run.

The most important aspect for (almost) any fansite is the community and forums. Other valuable features might be certain types of databases (not everyone likes wiki-style documenting), various build and character tools (which may not necessarily hold much of community interaction within the site itself, but are used by other communities) and the podcast, videoblogs, etc. and original material. Simply setting up a news feed and a forum behind it does not make for a great fansite if it offers no other features, and it seems to me that right now there are quite many of those focusing mostly on drawing GW2 news via web feed, and there's little point in listing those. Other than that, I think it would be helpful to, especially when listing a larger number of sites in future, set up some kind of classification/categorization system to help viewers find the kind of site they like – right now the list is lacking on that. Mediggo 08:02, 19 June 2012 (UTC)

SLP's big reply #2

Let me both answer the questions raised and provide a more structured view on this discussion. There are 2 facets to this project:

• The what: definition of what a fansite is or isn't.
  • First of all, while we understand that it's an important topic, we do not want to give a completely formal definition of what this is because, in our experience, the nature of fansites has evolved and this may continue in the future. There are also grey areas where some sites may be on the edge of definitions.
  • Because of the above, we think that the definition does not need to be precise and we should include sites that provide a general service to the community at large. As a consequence, this list of fansites will probably be very large, but it's ok. This only means that we have to be careful about the design (see below) so as to not make this page unusable.
  • As explained in this blogpost, we do not want a traditionnal fansite program. So there is no "ranking" within the fansites and they all exist within their space, for their own part of the community, within the bigger ecosystem of Guild Wars 2 communities. They also need to be "active" but this is likely to be important only when removing sites from the list and can probably be a verification that can be included in the whole process of managing the page.
  • We're not ok in general with guilds being included in this list, but acknowledge that there may be exceptions when their site provides services widely used by the community.
  • Fansites also have to abide by our Terms of Use and this is the absolute bottom line. But beyond this basic requirement, we would like the community to reflect some core values that we highlighted in the blogpost above: respectful, welcoming, inclusive and friendly. Fansites should also be judged by the standards that they enforce upon themselves. This is probably the point where this project may need the more guidance from us and where my suggestion to have a group of editors in charge of the page comes from.
    • Last but not the least, what should we list about a fansite. We should start with a minimum of information: a name, a url, a category. I don't think we can ask to have a site contact but may list a potential "about" section. We can improve this as we go along.
• The how: the actual functioning of this list comprises 3 aspects:
  • How is it updated? A certain level of control has to be exerted so that this list is not the door open to abuse, since we want to use this page in an official capacity. That's why I'm not sure how TEF's idea is going to fit it and may require more work overall than managing a page. My initial thought was to have a "Request to be included in the List of fansites" page that a group would evaluate, but this is still open for discussion.
  • What does it look like? (I'm talking about the list we're linking to, see next bullet point for the actual implementation behind this)
    • It probably needs a brief introduction to explain how the list is organized and that it is regularly updated.
    • It needs categories (PvP, PvE, forums, blogs, tools) and I think that we should separate English fansites from other languages, because there are a lot more of them.
    • Possible presentation: list, table;
    • Having sections you could hide/unhide could improve the readability of the page, see for example the ToggleDisplay extension.
  • How is it implemented? This is not in my opinion essential as long as we ended up producing a list that we (ArenaNet) can link to.
    • TEF's idea could do the trick if a nice, organized and readable list can be create. I'm afraid that doing it this way will suffer from the same problems that happened when the guild namespace was added to the GWW, plus anyone can creat bogus entries and there's no real verification in place (not breaking our Terms of Use, listing the right information, etc.). I hear however your point that GWW Feedback namespace is working ok if we ask registered users to edit these pages, I'd like to hear more feedback about this idea.

Last I'd like to mention an example of this kind of page on the French wiki. This was created by them and follows the general ideas I described, although guilds should stay out of this and I think that presentation/readability can be improved.--Stephane Lo Presti talk 19:31, 26 June 2012 (UTC)

Quick technical note: we currently have show/hide functionality via a custom JS package written by poke. When the MW 1.19 upgrade comes through, the same functionality will be available as a core MW feature. —Dr Ishmael 19:47, 26 June 2012 (UTC)

Very nice, thanks for the info Ishmael ^^ --Stephane Lo Presti talk 19:56, 26 June 2012 (UTC)

A bit late chiming in on this, but I think a Fansite namespace would end up being a bad idea for 1 reason: multiple user-created and maintained pages. An implementation I could see working would be akin to the main page and the edit copy. As for design, we could use collapsible tables or have guidelines for "try to split up a category if it gets X big". --JonTheMon 20:07, 26 June 2012 (UTC)

The biggest advantage to a Fansite-space is that it delegates some maintenance to site boosters and away from the wiki community. I think there are lots of ways to prevent the same site from being listed multiple times and to prevent bogus sites from being listed. I also think it's possible to avoid all the pitfalls of the GWW Guildspace, but ... it seems that I'm alone in that view.

However, I also like Jon's idea: imagine if we created a data article, similar to the Nick's research page on GW1, but in the editcopy fashion that Jon suggests (only authorized moderators could promote the copy to the main) and then DPL would be used to create a sortable, filterable table with whatever criteria we like. This requires more work imo than a fansite-space, but not the amount of work the old system requires. For example, someone could choose to view English sites with a forum feature and they'd get one table, while someone else could view German sites with a recipe db.

(I'm not a fan of collapsible tables that we use often here & at GWW because I think they create more work for the casual reader, but they are a viable option.)

I like the defining fansite as basically any site about GW2 that offers any sort of timely service for fans. I also agree that it's a bad idea for this wiki to rank sites based on any sort of arbitrary criteria (although, see below).

However, I'm still concerned that the more inclusive the list, the less useful it is for players. Human beings typically have trouble with parsing lists beyond a certain size...and it's clear that, even after filtering, we're going to have tons of sites. I don't like the idea that we might present 25 GW2 English-forum sites without any way for readers to distinguish them without following each and every link (that tends to artificially rank sites by alphabetical order, which might be worse than editorial ranking). Love it or hate it, GW2 Guru is huge and generates tons of traffic, while other sites generate fewer than a dozen posts/month. So I wonder if we could do something similar to what CNet's download.com does, i.e. offering a wiki-community written description of the site. We could use terms like "big" or "new" or a quote from the fan who recommended it. (We'd have to be careful to avoid being so neutral we conveyed no information or to be too subjective.) – Tennessee Ernie Ford (TEF) 21:53, 26 June 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for sharing more details TEF. I don't know how Nick's research page is technically implemented, can I get a link that explains it? Having an inclusive list is very important to us because we (community managers, CMs) have seen the value that some smaller sites can bring to the community and believe that it's important to create an ecosystem (not simply point people to a limited number of options). In other words, it's quality vs. quantity. Our community philosophy is based on values (respectful, welcoming, inclusive, friendly) that are difficult (if ever possible) to convey when you rank sites by traffic. If that's what people are looking for, they'll easily find it by looking at the site activity. We'd rather have a list that encourages players to find their "own space" based on needs and atmosphere (something that the wiki wouldn't show of course, but people are free to discover). Maybe having an "about" or "description" section could help better qualify what I mean?

Something I forgot to mention: we also have to build a list that is scalable, where size does not change the design. I think it's fair to say that this list will be long in total (even excluding French, German and Spanish; which I think makes more sense since we'd be linking from the English, French, German and Spanish websites to the respective lists). That's why I think that categories are so important, but I'm open to other ideas. --Stephane Lo Presti talk 22:36, 26 June 2012 (UTC)

There's nothing really special about the Nicholas research page - it's just a table, basically, but it's set up where the data for each row is passed into a template that formats it in a consistent manner. There are other pages that use the same idea, so I'm not sure why Ernie used that specific page as an example (it's the most notable?).

@Ernie: using either DPL or SMW to organize the data would require that every fansite we list had its own article in the wiki where the data was stored. For various reasons, including Jon's argument against a Fansite: namespace, I don't think this is a very good idea. —Dr Ishmael 00:00, 27 June 2012 (UTC)

The nicholas page has multiple calls of the same template for each week, but the relevant ones can be called out and used (like on the main page). In the same way, wouldn't we be able to have multiple templates on some master page and filter out those with dpl or smw, right? --JonTheMon 00:04, 27 June 2012 (UTC)

Ah, I didn't know the page was being used like that. So, are you and TEF saying that this page, List of fansites, should be set up that way, as the "master page"? And then people can generate whatever lists they want off of it? I don't know how useful that would be. For DPL, it assumes that people would know how to write DPL queries to get what they want, which isn't a viable option for most users. For SMW, it *might* work by using the Internal Object data type, but that would depend on what sort of data we're going to store for each site. And it still depends on people knowing how to use SMW to write a query for what they want (it's definitely easier than DPL, since there are special pages to facilitate it, but it's not something Joe Gamer is going to bother with learning).

Anyway, that's probably getting ahead of ourselves. First we have to decide the basics of how this page is going to be maintained, and then we can work out a method to make the data on this page available for queries. —Dr Ishmael 00:23, 27 June 2012 (UTC)

I'm not sure that I understand what's being discussed here, at the whole design that is discussed is a bit unclear, but it looks like it would require a lot of expertise from fansite posting information here? I'm not against the idea, but this also means that a guide/tutorial would need to be put in place. I'm going to leave you to continue this discussion so that we can list all of our options once we understand them. Also: since SMW was mentioned and I'm not sure when this'll be here, I'd like to mention that, in the interest of having this project happen fairly quickly, a monolithic page could be set up at first while we tackle a more complex architecture. --Stephane Lo Presti talk 00:30, 27 June 2012 (UTC)

(Reset indent) Ah, my apologies. In retrospect, I realize that just linking to the Nick research page wasn't going to be enough to explain the idea.

My datatable idea is that we have a List of fansites/Data in which each row represents a unique website. We'd have a copy, List of fansites/Data/Edit copy that would allow anyone to add a new row; only moderators would promote the copy to the main.

• The rows would be added using a template, perhaps {{Fansite data}} with parameters like URL = and Fansite name, with Forum = [Yes|No] to indicate the presence of particular features.
• The template could evolve, as we learn more about what people want to know about the sites. We'd make room for a "community's self-description" and (perhaps) a "GW2W notes."
• The page currently known as List of fansites would use code to generate a list dynamically. If that cannot be done with DPL, then perhaps it will require a common.js javascript. (If we go that route, we can just use a form for people to add/edit something to editcopy, which would show them how the site's row would be listed)

Alternative, we could create a Fansite-space that would be completely protected from misuse and abuse:

• The space would only be editable and viewable by the "Fansite moderation team" and sysops (I suggest a new group, b/c I hesitate to burden the sysops with another janitorial duty).
• Anyone could fill out a form, which would create a version of the {{fansite infobox}} that the FMT could use to create an article in the new space.
• List of fansites would be dynamically generated by DPL or SMW. The "editcopy" of the page would then be a place for readers to suggest alternative queries and anyone would be able to create their own (e.g. for adding to their user space).
• We'd have to provide some sort of page that would allow people to offer corrections to the data.
• We could decide to make it really easy to add a site to the list, and empower the mods to remove sites quickly (for violations of ToA, duplications, etc.). Or we could just set it up so that only mods can add sites.

Whatever we setup, I think it's critical that it not require a tutorial to make sense of it — that has worked out very badly for the GWW Feedback space (otherwise intelligent people had trouble creating their initial page or first suggestion). Yes, we have a guide for people who prefer to read and to understand nuances. But the average wiki reader should be able to easily suggest a site without understanding the details of wikicoding. – Tennessee Ernie Ford (TEF) 16:42, 27 June 2012 (UTC)

July update

Hi TEF, thanks for your work on this. This version of the page seems to be checking all the boxes for me from a technical perspective. I guess it's what you implemented on your sandbox?

My suggestions about this mockup:

• Change "News" to "Category"
• Change "Other" to "Tool"
• Rename "Other information" to "Description"

It seems that we could use the DPL request you have on your sandbox page directly on the List of fansites.

About the details of your namespace idea: I don't see what you gain compared to the idea above, apart from the "form" (where would these submitted form end up?). It seems that there isn't a strong support for it either.

We're in complete agreement about the fact that very minimal knowledge and explanations should be needed to submit a candidate fansite.

I'd like to try to get some traction on this idea, at least in a mockup kind of way. Waiting for more people to weigh in. Thanks! --Stephane Lo Presti talk 00:39, 3 July 2012 (UTC)

This discussion seems to be at a standstill. TEF has been the most active here and given that her prototype implementation is the only starting point we've got at the moment, I'd like to know if other people have opinions or ideas. Thanks! --Stephane Lo Presti talk 22:47, 9 July 2012 (UTC)

I apparently missed your reply last week for some reason. (I, too, have been trying to post less here to give others a chance to opine.) (Unfortunately, I think figuring out how to maintain a not-quite arbitrary list of sites is not quite as exciting as trying to get the wiki caught up to the latest/greatest discoveries in the game.)

• Regarding columns: a little bit below, Medigo & I discussed some other features that might be of interest to players, e.g. maps, database, builds, bios, "media" — does that fit in with your suggestions above? The idea is more columns make it easier to filter/sort.
• Re: namepspace. This does two things of value:
  • for maintenance, it allows us to use infoboxes and DPL/SMW queries. Not so important in Aug 2012, but perhaps more important in 2013 when different people are responsible for maintenance.
  • for the person entering data, it makes it easier to check (getting templates correct is always a challenge)
  • It should make little difference to the reader.
• That sandbox page is an example of using a template to enter data instead of the current manual process we have. That makes it a lot easier to maintain and change column orders later. (Writing DPL queries is much easier using whole articles — you can pretty much copy/paste someone else queries. Queries based on tables are less transparent.)
• In theory, after using a form, it would either spit out an article in the namespace (if we went that way) or the template code to add a row. See Tub's drop rate tool for an example.

Next steps? Short of seeing more feedback from others, my recommendation at this point would be to use a template (like that in my sandbox) and continue with the current system, but be somewhat more liberal in what we add. That gets us a good list that is more easily maintained than the current one, a method for growing the list, and something that will work until we need something better.

Remaining non-tech issues: I still have two remaining issues about what to include on the list:

• What otherwise legal sites should not be added to the list? For example, on the top of the page, there's a suggestion to add a site that some of us felt was basically unused (less than several posts, month-old news → almost no evidence of current activity). I believe it's a disservice to bloat the list with sites that are all-but-inactive.
• When do we remove an otherwise legal site? That's basically the same question, but I feel strongly that we should have some criteria for deciding when to drop a site, otherwise the list ends up looking like it did when there was a near-consensus to delete this article.

– Tennessee Ernie Ford (TEF) 01:06, 10 July 2012 (UTC)

I assume that if people wanted to voice their opinion, they would have (unless they're on vacation). About the various points you raise:

• Columns: I don't think that "the more, the better"; if you want to add granularity, what about have a "tool" column where you can list maps, database, builds? Would you still be able to sort? What are bios? A media column sounds like a good idea;
• Namespace: I'm still not keen on the idea but I agree that it's something we can consider for later; I'd prefer if we could release a first version engineered the way you did and then learn from running the page to improve it;
• Your sandbox page and using a form: I'm not sure that I understand the various tech bits;

Next steps: I agree; I wouldn't worry too much at this point about what you call liberal and since it's a projected we initiated, we will stay in touch with the page and the people managing it;

Remaining non-tech issues:

• Activity levels: I don't think that this is very important, unless there's clear evidence of a site being not updated and not used (which is always tricky); as I said before, I think that we should let players make their own decisions (e.g., selecting the right criteria in the table) and provide a big picture of the "Guild Wars 2 ecosystem of communities";
• Removing entries: I know where you're coming from but I'll go back to the point above: we don't need to, unless the reason is obvious (breaking the terms of use); the previous list was long but most importantly it was unusable, because it was completely flat; we think that the Guild Wars 2 community ecosystem is large and expanding, so size is inherently something that we should deal with by providing organization. Here's an example: look at the page you linked and separate it by language, and it then doesn't look as bad.

Let me know what you (or anyone else) think about all of that. I'd be willing to work on populating the list with you if we're willing to all move ahead with this. I believe that once we get a better view of what such a page would look like, we can talk more about the details and less about the principles (which are important but can cloud the judgement). --Stephane Lo Presti talk 23:18, 10 July 2012 (UTC)

Yes, I'm willing to move ahead (even though we might still disagree about removing dead sites; that can be revisited at any time). 99% of the remaining issues will get resolved by prototyping (and the remaining 1% will be forgotten).

Regarding columns: more is better to a point, because it's easier for people to mentally sort/filter (jamming a lot of ideas into a few icons or 1-2 columns makes things more difficult). Too many is just as bad as too few, so there's a balance. (BTW: bio referred to some sites that offer a utility for answering the biography questions, so you can prepare for go-live; it's very different from build tools, that focus just on weapons + traits).

Re: forms. Did you get a chance to look at Tub's drop rate tool linked above? Basically, you enter a standard website form, press submit, and it spits out the wiki code you would need to paste into a table. It makes it easy for users to get the syntax right without having to understand it. (Required skills: copy/paste.) This can (and should) be done separately from the data table/display prototyping, since (a) the data table can be created without it and (b) it's twice as much work to update the form-tool while we are still engineering the rest. tl;dr this is something that can be considered after we have a working list.

Re: next steps: I would like to be able to draft an example that takes a data table and displays more than one version of it, but I won't be able to do this until the end of July at the earliest. If that is an unnecessary delay, then maybe someone else can take up the mantle. – Tennessee Ernie Ford (TEF) 02:03, 11 July 2012 (UTC)