User talk:Dr ishmael/Archive 5

Recipe Redirects

The Leatherworker page has a dead link in the list of upgrade components because you deleted the redirect from Major Rune of the Adventurer to Rune of the Adventurer. How to fix this without the redirect? Is there a way to make it link to the Rune of the Adventurer page instead of the Major Rune of the Adventurer page while still displaying the "Major" in the table? Sabsi talk 16:48, 11 January 2013 (UTC)

When did I... wow, that was last July. Just go re-create it, since that's how we do things now. —Dr Ishmael

16:57, 11 January 2013 (UTC)

Heh, okay, will do. I just figured it would be kind of rude to simply re-create it after you deleted it, so I wanted to ask first. ;)

Sabsi talk 16:58, 11 January 2013 (UTC)

I've added another parameter to the {{Crafting/Item}} template, itemlink so we can use that to make any pages link directly. (yeah too slow ik) Chieftain Alex

17:07, 11 January 2013 (UTC)

Since our current plan (well, yours, mine, and Relyk's, anyway) is to split up the multi-item pages (runes/sigils/potions), there's no harm in leaving everything as-is with the redirects and the links to redirects. The redirects will be replaced with a page for the distinct items eventually. —Dr Ishmael

17:09, 11 January 2013 (UTC)

If you need help with that, just give me a call. I'd be happy to help. I too got pretty annoyed by pages like that. I was just wondering, though, does this plan include the Template:dualitem type of items? Like the things you can craft with Gold Setting for example? Disconnect 18:27, 17 January 2013 (UTC)

We hadn't specifically considered those yet, but yes, items with fine/masterwork duality (mostly crafted and karma trinkets) would qualify for the same project. —Dr Ishmael

19:57, 17 January 2013 (UTC)

Rollback

It's too bad you didn't bot rollback those edits, seeing as you are the "Man-Bot Ishmael". --JonTheMon 22:30, 11 January 2013 (UTC)

I wasn't going to manually edit the URL for all of those. And I didn't think of using Grease/Tampermonkey to modify the links directly. And just now I realize I could've performed them as Bot ishmael. It was a busy day at work on top of all this, so pfeh. —Dr Ishmael

22:38, 11 January 2013 (UTC)

So mach vandalism in such a short time now. So many odd New users created. But why..why only 1 month of suspension? Hencovic 22:47, 11 January 2013 (UTC)

Because all the vandalism was performed by anonymous users. There's never a reason to permanently block an IP address. —Dr Ishmael

22:53, 11 January 2013 (UTC)

(edit conflict) The problem is that IPs are usually given dynamic so an IP ban most of the time hits the wrong person after a longer period. I would actually guess that it was always the same person, and we could ask Arenanet if they want to hunt down the person behind the IP, or if this is to much work for them. That is the problem when you allow IPs to edit, but it would be a shame if we had to disable this functuionality. - Yandere

22:54, 11 January 2013 (UTC)

You can just edit the url of the contribs list, then middle-click all the things. pling

22:59, 11 January 2013 (UTC)

middle-click all the things - Yandere

23:06, 11 January 2013 (UTC)

The day I realized middle-click could close and undo close tab.--Relyk ~ talk > 23:37, 11 January 2013 (UTC)

You can do that? ... Holy shit. I'll remember that. —Dr Ishmael

23:56, 11 January 2013 (UTC)

Yeah, you can also edit the url of RC and do it from there, but it's slightly more dangerous. --JonTheMon 00:21, 12 January 2013 (UTC)

I was so excited to see I got a message and then I find out you removed it, Ish. I know you don't like people slandering you, Ish, but I want to be able to read my messages in peace! --Lustre Of Havoc 話 07:35, 12 January 2013 (UTC)

But you can read the message... I just did, just compare the two last Revisions of the page.

The only question I have, whys would you want to read the random spam on your talk page? O_o - Yandere

13:56, 12 January 2013 (UTC)

Click the "history" tab at the top of the page to see old revisions. —Dr Ishmael

15:15, 12 January 2013 (UTC)

Drop Table

I want to make something easier to implement but i am not sure how to do it using wiki coding. I want to make a massive table which contains any item that can be dropped and by who drops each item. The reason for this table is so that on the items pages rather then having to constantly update each page separately for each new drop found we just have to update the single table. Its the same idea used in database management. I want to be able just put an automatically updating code similar to the types code used in Flame Legion. So lets say on Flame Legion Stalker page the Drops section will have a bit of code that looks at the table and pulls any item that is dropped by the Flame Legion Stalker. Also in the Small Ritual Bag section it will list who drops it. Not only does this save time trying to update each one individually each time but it also ensures better accuracy. If you could just lay the initial coding i am more then willing to fill the table with all the possible drop items and who with (other people will help too i bet). I will also move that code into its correct location. Suddenflame123 05:12, 16 January 2013 (UTC)

What you're asking for is basically impossible on a wiki. The content of the wiki may be stored in a database, but the wiki front-end does not give any sort of direct access to that database. What we do have are extensions like DPL and SMW that provide different methods of storing and accessing the data that's already in the wiki content. A while back, the possibility was discussed of using SMW to do something similar to what you're suggesting, but it would be one-directional instead of bi-directional.

On bestiary pages, use a semantic property to list items that the creature drops ([[Drops item::Armored Scale]]).
On item pages, use a semantic query to list all creatures that drop the item ({{#ask:[[Drops item::Armored Scale]]|format=ul}}).

The drawback to this (that would impact your proposal as well) is that you can't transfer any special notes like which levels of the creature drop the item, for a creature that appears at many different levels (like Barracuda). The semantic query on Armored Scale would simply display "Barracuda" without being able to tell you which level of Barracuda. The only way to solve it would be to create separate articles for every single distinct instance of a creature, which I'm pretty sure you would be strongly opposed to doing. —Dr Ishmael

05:57, 16 January 2013 (UTC)

Sounds like something wiki should add support for in the future considering how useful it would be. Well thanks for the reply. Suddenflame123 07:46, 16 January 2013 (UTC)

What I can see from drops is that it follows the Tiers pretty well, so for foes in level 1-15 it drops Tier 1 items. With that in mind we can make general drop tables i guess. I will try to do something to show this on later. Hencovic 08:06, 16 January 2013 (UTC)

Drop is different enemies drop different items. Such as Flame Legion will drop package associated with them while a devour will drop

Barb Suddenflame123 17:35, 16 January 2013 (UTC)

Would it perhaps be possible to create a drop list including the mob's level in a dropdown list, so when any is selected, the relevant information will be shown? We would need to create a standard format and a dump page to gather as much information for the drops, including: Area, Level, Mob name, etc etc. Possibru? (Would kinda seem like a pokedex in the end without the insanely cool red cover) -- Axolotl 3:45, 13 January 2013 (UTC)

That is way beyond the capabilities of a wiki. —Dr Ishmael

06:28, 27 January 2013 (UTC)

Multi values SMW

I don't recall, but how do you deal with records where a field might have multiple values? In this case, I want to make additional rows in a table if a certain field has multiple values. --JonTheMon 06:23, 16 January 2013 (UTC)

Multi-valued properties are output as a comma-separated list of values in the property field on a table. Rows in a table are displaying all the articles produced by the query. I don't think multi-valued properties can be used in the way you are thinking.--Relyk ~ talk > 07:29, 16 January 2013 (UTC)

I'm aware that they're passed in comma-separated. I just don't recall how best to go about using it in such a manner. Do I use templates and parser functions to split/duplicate them? Do I use queries in queries to make the initial list give 2 entries before I pump it out? Or is this a new thing and we'll have to get creative? --JonTheMon 13:26, 16 January 2013 (UTC)

#arraymap. —Dr Ishmael

15:42, 16 January 2013 (UTC)

Ghah, and arraymap isn't installed yet... --JonTheMon 19:00, 16 January 2013 (UTC)

Your usual delete-move trick

It almost looks like you're competing with Auron on gww for today's longest list of deletions :D Could you please delete the image currently at File:Tribal Staff.jpg and move {{#ifexist: File:Carrion Tribal Staff.jpg | [[:File:Carrion Tribal Staff.jpg]] | File:Carrion Tribal Staff.jpg }} to the then deleted Tribal Staff.jpg ? (also thanks for deleting the icon redirects so I could start the orrian icons) Chieftain Alex 20:16, 18 January 2013 (UTC)

Done. —Dr Ishmael

20:22, 18 January 2013 (UTC)

engineer skills

If you try sorting engineer skills for my delightful combo tables by Is for weapon first, it just doesn't generate a table for fields because all the fields are from kits and elixirs and these are set on Has skill context, which is hilarious. The simple solution is to just set Is for weapon as the same, but would look silly in a table displaying both.

I think we want to set Has skill context for kits and conjures as environmental weapons and the Is for Weapon as the name of the environmental weapon. It might confuse people as they don't necessarily consider kits environmental weapons (although they are). But that means moving around stuff on Skill infobox as well and I'm unfamiliar with how engineer kits and elixirs are handled.--Relyk ~ talk > 21:32, 19 January 2013 (UTC)

Frankly, they're not handled very well. Skill infobox needs a massive overhaul (mainhand/offhand/twohand are completely redundant and unnecessary), but I don't have the time or energy to look at it today. —Dr Ishmael

22:49, 19 January 2013 (UTC)

Could use some aid

I want to move [[:File:BWE2 Branded Norn.jpg]] to File:Branded Ogre.jpg since the Branded Ogres use that model, and no point in making a new image. Issue is, when I try moving it I get the following error: Unable to write to file "/var/www/wiki/gw2/en/images/9/97/Branded_Ogre.jpg": file exists - but the file very clearly doesn't exist... So I'm guessing there was some server lag when the file was deleted. Hoping you can or know how to fix this? Konig/talk 01:21, 21 January 2013 (UTC)

Fixed. —Dr Ishmael

01:46, 21 January 2013 (UTC)

Thanks. Konig/talk 02:16, 21 January 2013 (UTC)

Merchant Inventories

I don't have much interest in the wiki aspect of these NPCs but I have noticed that several vendor NPCs which use inventory|standard merchant 1 to show their wares are inaccurate,and I think that there's a deeper problem than a mis-written list. As a typical example, Morriga is said to list copper collecting tools but when I interact with her using a level 24 character, I am offered iron and steel collecting tools, not copper. OTOH, other NPCs do offer copper tools only. So, some NPCs are fixed and others offer a character level variable inventory. I have no idea how one would sort this out but I bring it to your attention. Thanks. Claret 05:24, 22 January 2013 (UTC)

I'm not sure why you came to me about this, I've never done much with those templates myself. User:Ab.er.rant was the one who set most of those up, so you'd do better to ask him or, since he's been somewhat inactive lately, in a more public place like the Community portal. —Dr Ishmael

17:06, 22 January 2013 (UTC)

Sorry, I came to you because you're a prominent member of the community and you are a name I know. Thanks for pointing me in the right direction though. Claret 07:16, 23 January 2013 (UTC)

blegh

Testing stuff on User:Relyk/Template:Skill table4. I got it to show/hide the weapon column but it won't do so with the profession column and it uses the same approach. The fun part is the wiki dies and starts timing out for a full minute or so when I mess with the query. It wasn't updating correctly even with hardcoding description into header, so that seems to be an issue (purging cache and hard refresh be damned).--Relyk ~ talk > 11:18, 24 January 2013 (UTC)

It helps if you call the correct template. :P —Dr Ishmael

15:38, 24 January 2013 (UTC)

No, I checked that like 5 times, especially because it's happened before, and everything is copypasted D:--Relyk ~ talk > 15:48, 24 January 2013 (UTC)

Did you see my edits to it? You were calling User:Relyk/Skill infobox effects, I fixed it to call itself. —Dr Ishmael

15:53, 24 January 2013 (UTC)

Yes I did, the response was an attempt at disbelief that it wasn't the wiki's fault.--Relyk ~ talk > 16:04, 24 January 2013 (UTC)

Ah. My sarcasm detector must need recharging. —Dr Ishmael

16:05, 24 January 2013 (UTC)

Not that I'm trying to troll you or anything..

But did you mean to comment on the guy's userpage rather than his talk? Chieftain Alex 21:27, 27 January 2013 (UTC)

AAAAUGH! —Dr Ishmael

21:28, 27 January 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for all your help and for putting up with me

I can't help but notice you have the word Sysop next to your name. And if its anything like the old days of BBS's, I know that that title involves lots of work, and a level head, and is mostly a thankless job. And if you have a real life, such as a job, I can't image how much work must be involved in a project of this size. So I just wanted to say THANK YOU!

Sorry for any headaches I have caused you of late with my re-linking of images and uploading too many images. I guess I was hoping for a black and white ruling about different models where in fact it's some shade of grey. I'm sure I'm going to make more mistakes in this area in the future, and I think you know I am just trying to make our wiki the best it can be. So I just wanted to say that I'm sorry for any extra work I have created you. Yoe Dude 18:44, 28 January 2013 (UTC)

ishmael can't live without all the extra work you give him, it's his Red Bull to get through the day.--Relyk ~ talk > 19:31, 28 January 2013 (UTC)

I've had to deal with Relyk here for the past six months, so what you've been doing is no problem at all - especially since people like Alex and Konig do the dirty work of tagging/moving images, and all I usually have to do is delete things. (j/k Relyk, I wuv you!) —Dr Ishmael

19:42, 28 January 2013 (UTC)

{{Recipe}}s smw

Don't really want to go into implementation, but will the changes be mainly backend with using semantic objects? The space-gobbling recipe boxes have always bothered me, I don't think we need to display the recipe boxes when we use SMW. I think there was consensus to have recipe boxes though?--Relyk ~ talk > 20:03, 28 January 2013 (UTC)

We'll need to do a lot more than simple backend changes, unfortunately. All of the mat-#/amt-# parameters will be collapsed to a single delimited parameter to be parsed by #arraymap, and the same for the discipline# parms. We also need to add new parms to track how the recipe is learned (auto, discovery, recipe sheet) and the recipe category (refinement/component/upgrade/helm/sword/amulet/meal/dessert/etc./etc.). It's gonna be almost a complete overhaul, really.

I don't remember if there was any consensus, but I've never liked our recipe box. It looks like an infobox in the middle of the page, which just ain't right. Since we're gonna have to overhaul the code anyway, we may as well come up with a new output format too. —Dr Ishmael

20:30, 28 January 2013 (UTC)

Not sure how #arraymap gets implemented, my thought is that you would literally parse it into a #set_internal, as you need an internal object for each recipe.--Relyk ~ talk > 21:06, 28 January 2013 (UTC)

Dunno what exactly you've been doing for that template, but now, the region won't appear and you got strange parantheses popping up on certain pages (e.g., Zone Green), as well as no auto-categorizations for all non-zone/city articles using that. See Category:Mount Maelstrom for instance. Konig/talk 22:54, 28 January 2013 (UTC)

I changed it to work with semantic properties in order to simplify the information that has to be entered into the template. Now all you need is the area where something appears, and SMW can lookup the zone name from the area's properties - or if it's an area (or meta event or something), you give the zone, and it looks up the region. I removed region as a separate parameter since it's now automatic for areas and otherwise isn't a very useful bit of info.

The category issues are a result of incomplete article sets - if the area page hasn't been created, or doesn't have an infobox, or the infobox parameters aren't set right, then a sub-area page can't lookup the area's zone. I'm currently working on fixing this. —Dr Ishmael

02:39, 29 January 2013 (UTC)

I see. I managed to fix the Zone Green, and after hitting the refresh button up top, it now shows the category. Though, interesting - it's not showing up in the category oddly. ~~Nor is Infinite Coil Reactor.~~ After refreshing, the area is, poi still isn't. Konig/talk 02:58, 29 January 2013 (UTC)

Categories won't be re-populated, usually, just by purging a page. You have to (null-)edit the page for the wiki to re-calculate categories and links. Zone Green appears in the category now. —Dr Ishmael

03:05, 29 January 2013 (UTC)

Figured that was the situation, and you edited Zone Green before I got to it. Konig/talk 04:17, 29 January 2013 (UTC)

We can define region as being inside Tyria, if only so the property returns a value and be consistent with the other location infoboxes.--Relyk ~ talk > 10:46, 29 January 2013 (UTC)

Latest icon file

I've tried opening all 3 of the icon folders (32,64,128) of your latest icon batch, but they're all appearing without file formats for me, and the total file size is about 1/3 of normal - so I think there is an error this time with either the rip or the upload. (the previous ones have been great obviously!) -Chieftain Alex 12:34, 29 January 2013 (UTC)

Blech, I had a dumb and used the "(raw)" export option on them last night. —Dr Ishmael

14:26, 29 January 2013 (UTC)

Also, I think you may have had a dumb of your own on File:Tear of Grenth.png (refresh your cache, you muppet :P) —Dr Ishmael

14:28, 29 January 2013 (UTC)

AAARRGGHHH. Yeah I haven't cleared my browser cache since I uploaded the other version >_> (I've checked 95% of the plainly categorized icons uploaded before 1st jan 2013.. so I've got loads of icons in the cache) Thanks for fixing it. -Chieftain Alex

14:45, 29 January 2013 (UTC)

Table of mesmer combo skills

(cur | prev) 15:01, 29 January 2013 Dr ishmael (Talk | contribs) m (1,343 bytes) (Undo revision 504911 by Nuvanda (Talk) excessive - it may work for mesmer, but just try doing that for elementalist or engineer) (undo)

That table what you have deleted, just show exactly same information what table are above and combo effect of combinations. What do you mean with "excessive - it may work for mesmer, but just try doing that for elementalist or engineer)" ?? Nuvanda 16:24, 29 January 2013 (UTC)

I mean that mesmer combo effects are fairly simple because they only have access to 2 different fields. Elementalists have 5 fields and engineers have 6, which would make that table really big and ugly. Besides, how hard is it to just reference the table on Combo? —Dr Ishmael

16:36, 29 January 2013 (UTC)

The projectile finishers for Warrior is pretty long and Wrrior only has one field: Warrior list. And elementalist has a crap load of fields that would create giant rows. Mesmer is pretty tame. And the first table shows the possible combos, unless you need a cheat sheet. Having a table that pairs fields by effect and combos by effect doesn't give information about which ones you can actually use together.--Relyk ~ talk > 16:43, 29 January 2013 (UTC)

Very good point about which combos are actually viable - Nuvanda's table would have implied that you could use Chaos Storm x Feigned Surge, which is impossible since one is a land skill (staff) and one a water skill (spear). —Dr Ishmael

16:46, 29 January 2013 (UTC)

:D

:D ^^--Relyk ~ talk > 00:46, 30 January 2013 (UTC)

YES! I was planning on doing just that, to that and {{event infobox}} and maybe a couple other things. You're such a good little prodigy! ^_~ (srsly, I'm really happy that someone else is catching on to this whole SMW thing) —Dr Ishmael

00:59, 30 January 2013 (UTC)

I spent two months leaving out the region parameters for it to be implemented. I am still waiting on Has skill context so I can meddle with the monster that is {{Weapon skill table row}}.

btw I wish there was equivalent of subqueries for grabbing properties so you could do User:Relyk/SMW/subquery.--Relyk ~ talk > 01:49, 30 January 2013 (UTC)

You'd have to nest two #show queries to get that: (owait, yours already does this)

{{#show:{{#show:Snowlord's Gate|?Located in|link=none}}|?Located in}}

I agree, being able to chain properties for output (instead of only in the query terms) would be a useful feature. —Dr Ishmael

04:01, 30 January 2013 (UTC)

I'm guessing we'll be displaying comma-separated areas with #arraymaps, I can only think to add a break after each area/zone pair. This will happen in the event, object, and NPC infobox.--Relyk ~ talk > 11:37, 30 January 2013 (UTC)

Deletion of "Ulgoth"

I was actually wanting to keep that redirect since it's akin to Caudecus for Minister Caudecus. Hence why I only tagged the talk for deletion. But no biggie I guess. Konig/talk 22:23, 2 February 2013 (UTC)

I think I was in bot-delete mode at the time. You're right, it's a useful redirect to keep - restored. —Dr Ishmael

22:32, 2 February 2013 (UTC)

Quick wiki question

Uhm, if I happend to upload a file with a wrong name and want to MOVE it to the correct name, how do I do that? I watch the movelog, but don't know how. Hencovic 15:39, 4 February 2013 (UTC)

Files have a "move" tab the same as any other page, to the right of "history". —Dr Ishmael

15:55, 4 February 2013 (UTC)

Trait table

I imagine an wicked evil laugh echoing through the halls of Grenth when the dpl was switched to smw, using single lines of code. Too bad you didn't kill the backwards compatibility with fire.--Relyk ~ talk > 07:28, 6 February 2013 (UTC)

I forgot about it. I never even bothered to edit the trait line pages to update the syntax. Maybe I'll work on that today if I have time. —Dr Ishmael

13:40, 6 February 2013 (UTC)

BALEETED! —Dr Ishmael

17:49, 6 February 2013 (UTC)

Ecto

Your rewrite is probably the clearest version the article has seen to-date. Also appears to be better than nearly anything I've seen out there, on blogs, reddit, guru. Should be helpful for people who are just starting to get into ecto trading or acquisition. Nice work. 75.37.20.148 17:44, 7 February 2013 (UTC)

Well, you put it up there first, I just revised the style and verbiage a bit. Still, I'm glad you approve of it. —Dr Ishmael

18:38, 7 February 2013 (UTC)

Any particular reason

Is there any reason why you didn't just block 216.154.64.0/19 to combat the an8ght etc named bots? (theres like 55 bots under that range + not one legit user.)-Chieftain Alex 00:11, 8 February 2013 (UTC)

Probably because I assumed the botter was using random proxies and didn't feel like bothering with IP checks. Speaking of which, how did you figure out the IP addresses? (i.e. did I miss something obvious?) —Dr Ishmael

01:43, 8 February 2013 (UTC)

Turns out Jon had already blocked that range, but with the "block anonymous users only" option checked. So the botter could continue his user-creation spam, but only while logged in as a user he had previously created (thus the recent spate of "user creating new user" spam). I modified it to remove that flag, but left the expiration the same (Feb 11). —Dr Ishmael

06:08, 8 February 2013 (UTC)

every time a vandal gets created on GWW, it gets created here too. -Chieftain Alex

09:35, 8 February 2013 (UTC)

I totally did not check if users were creating other users. That's a bit annoying. --JonTheMon 12:52, 8 February 2013 (UTC)

Ish, my regex learning has gotten pretty soft lately, any thoughts on how to get it to match any name that contains angth8, all of those characters at least once, and nothing else? Would it require a 6-part rlike statement? --JonTheMon 13:18, 8 February 2013 (UTC)

I think I got it, use 6 backreferences to make sure each character appears once before the end of the string. —Dr Ishmael

13:54, 8 February 2013 (UTC)

Not sure if this site is legit, but regextester dot com says that your filter will trigger on less than at least 1 of each character (running default options under preg). --JonTheMon 14:24, 8 February 2013 (UTC)

Hm, that's not what I get. Only lines I type that only have all 6 characters get highlighted (red+underline) in the results. —Dr Ishmael

15:13, 8 February 2013 (UTC)

Isn't the preg dialect the one that abusefilter uses? PCRE? 'Cause the javascript option does show that anything less than 6 isn't matched. --JonTheMon 15:15, 8 February 2013 (UTC)

Nevermind, I was using more than 1 line at a time, so that must have thrown it off. --JonTheMon 15:16, 8 February 2013 (UTC)

Yeah, preg = PCRE. Well, then I checked their 2.0a version, and it does show it matching with less than all 6 present. Weird, that shouldn't be working, because all of the lookaheads have to match. Will investigate further. —Dr Ishmael

15:21, 8 February 2013 (UTC)

Relevant.

15:39, 8 February 2013 (UTC)

Turn off the /s flag - it makes the . in the lookaheads match across newlines when you put multiple lines in the test box. You said "with default options," I should've caught that the first time. —Dr Ishmael

15:45, 8 February 2013 (UTC)

zzz

I was JUST about to change it back XD--Relyk ~ talk > 19:10, 8 February 2013 (UTC)

It still doesn't work because damn multi-item pages. —Dr Ishmael

19:11, 8 February 2013 (UTC)

I was JUST about to change that, now I have a null edit.--Relyk ~ talk > 03:29, 10 February 2013 (UTC)

Has event type

{{#show:Defeat the misplaced steam ogre|?Has event type}}

Group event

Except Defeat the misplaced steam ogre is a group event and the property lists such on the page. All the other group events are set as "Dynamic event" when viewing on the property page. The meta events and skill challenges work fine though.--Relyk ~ talk > 02:47, 11 February 2013 (UTC)

It's because group event is a redirect. SMW equates redirects with their targets, so "group event" = "dynamic event". Meta event is an article, so that's why it doesn't cause any problems. Either we convert group event into an article, or we change the property to a string. —Dr Ishmael

04:56, 11 February 2013 (UTC)

Group events don't have any special properties, which is why it redirects. Good reason to treat is as a string.--Relyk ~ talk > 05:05, 11 February 2013 (UTC)

I think we'll be fine with this one as a string property, anyway - the point of a page property is that queries will automatically produce links, but since these are simply a few different event types that don't really have much distinct info (I mean, group event was a redirect), we're not losing a whole lot of functionality there. Special event doesn't even describe individual events, either, it's concerned with the overarching storylines. —Dr Ishmael

13:49, 11 February 2013 (UTC)

I'm not sure why you moved Has event type into a #set function. It should work fine the way it was in the square brackets. —Dr Ishmael

13:56, 11 February 2013 (UTC)

That's because it's still making a wikilink. My reason for the change is just so it can set the correct property. Adding special event to the event infobox was my hack job, it's implemented in-game like a type of event and so I treated it as such. Not having a wikilink to the type of event in the infobox seems wrong.--Relyk ~ talk > 13:54, 12 February 2013 (UTC)

References

Perhaps I am just to stupid to find the mistake, but the reference section on the Karka page doesn't seem to work properly. - Yandere 10:02, 12 February 2013 (UTC)

That is because of a current bug of either DPL or the references extension that prevents them both from working on the same page. The list of karkas is a DPL list and prevents the rendering of the references. poke | talk 10:19, 12 February 2013 (UTC)

It's DPL. I remember reading it a few months ago, but it goes something like this: DPL calls the wrong "flush" command when it's finished generating output, which makes it flush the entire output stream instead of only flushing its own output, so that when the parser gets down to the <references /> tag, it can't find any citations to generate because they're no longer in the output buffer.

To see this happening, take the karka page, copy the reference down below the DPL list, and preview. It will appear in the references list because now it's in the output that <references /> has access to. —Dr Ishmael

13:34, 12 February 2013 (UTC)

Ah ok. Could we give a short waring message to the editors? In this case User:Zesbeer deleted the section, because he thought there wasn't any references that page which is an understandable error to make if you are not aware the dpl can kill references. - Yandere

17:19, 12 February 2013 (UTC)

What would be better is to work around the problem. Either move the references section above the DPL list, or don't use a DPL list and just give a link to the category. —Dr Ishmael

17:20, 12 February 2013 (UTC)

The point is that this is done on quite a few page. This is the first time I realized that, so I guess it is a resent problem. - Yandere

17:34, 12 February 2013 (UTC)

Its somewhat hard to find, but I did add a note a while ago about the lack of integration with dpl on Guild Wars 2 Wiki:References. -Chieftain Alex

18:00, 12 February 2013 (UTC)

@yandere thanks for catching this I had no idea... also Dr Ishmael's on my watch list.- Zesbeer 21:11, 12 February 2013 (UTC)

Skill challenge

Hello, I noticed that you changed some skill challenges in Queensdale in the location list from listing the event (fighting) to the item one interacts with to trigger the event. My reading of the guidelines is that "sparring" skill challenges should be listed by the event. I have seen challenges listed as you did reverted to the event being listed. Or am I missing a policy change? Thanks Claret 05:46, 13 February 2013 (UTC)

There's a cartography project at Guild Wars 2 Wiki:Projects/Cartography. I discussed this on the talk page there, and the new consensus was that it is more consistent among the types of challenge to always list the challenge initiator, i.e. the NPC or object that you interact with. Dialogue and commune challenges only have an initiator, while consumable challenges also have an item and battle challenges also have an event. Since the item and the event are not directly visible to anyone walking around the game world (unless the event happens to be active), it makes more sense to list the thing that *is* visible.

The previous method of listing events for battle challenges was actually a bad influence, because it encouraged other editors to make up events for non-battle challenges (e.g. "Commune with Earthen Magic" for Earthen Magic). We've mostly eliminated those now. —Dr Ishmael

05:58, 13 February 2013 (UTC)

Thanks, I guessed it would be somewhere. I would hope the Guild_Wars_2_Wiki:Skill_challenge_formatting would be changed in due course. Interestingly (to me at least) my father altered some to that format and had them reverted, before the discussion/consensus, as it seemed logical. I'm never quite sure where these discussions are and where the consensus is reached. Too many places to read :) Claret 06:04, 13 February 2013 (UTC)

Semantic Maps

The queries for the maps seem possible albeit a migraine-inducing exercise, but the only thing I can find on custom images is mw:User:Danwe/maps with image layer. Have you already investigated that far? It's really a beast of a project to tackle.--Relyk ~ talk > 20:22, 14 February 2013 (UTC)

What the hell

Since when can one account create another account? 20:33, 14 February 2013 (UTC)

Never mind, I guess it's been possible all along.

20:35, 14 February 2013 (UTC)

Eeeeyup. I wonder if there's a way to disable that feature... I can't imagine anyone ever legitimately needing to create a new account while already logged in to a different account. We could probably do it with AbuseFilter, action = create & user_userage > 0 or something. —Dr Ishmael

20:39, 14 February 2013 (UTC)

SMW Helper

I apologize for my extended absence from the wiki, school had gotten in the way and left little time for this. I was hoping you could catch me up on what I have missed and perhaps any specific goals we're actively working towards that I could aid with on the SMW addons. Eearslya 20:07, 20 February 2013 (UTC)

GW2W:SMW. My baby's all grown up. *sniff* —Dr Ishmael

21:10, 20 February 2013 (UTC)

Wait until it hits adolescence when we get the extensions, you'll be crying for all the wrong reasons.--Relyk ~ talk > 21:13, 20 February 2013 (UTC)

Pure of Voice vs. Save Yourselves

I guess I haven't specifically tested, but I was under the impression that the "allies" affected by Pure of Voice included the person using the trait. (Most effects affecting "allies" seem to include the user.)

If that's the case, then failure to convert someone else's condition into a boon with "Save Yourselves!" before drawing all conditions from them to the caster might or might not be a bug, but surely failing to convert one of the caster's conditions could only be a bug? Or, if I'm wrong about Pure of Voice applying to the caster for unbugged shouts (all two of them), that should probably be noted explicitly on the page. --Felbryn 17:48, 22 February 2013 (UTC)

The issue, I suspect, is that a) the condition conversion happens after the shout, so when they've had their conditions removed there's nothing left to convert, and b) the shout itself does not affect the caster, but rather the big ball of boons and conditions is applied after the shout's effect.

18:02, 22 February 2013 (UTC)

Exactly, Felix. A) Traits that supply additional effects to skills (rather than altering how a skill functions) are usually calculated after the standard effects of the skill. Thus, SY removes the conditions from other allies first, and there's nothing left for PoV to act on. B) The primary action of SY is to remove conditions from other allies, so of course this primary action does not affect the caster, thus PoV can't affect the caster through this primary action. The secondary action applies those conditions to the caster, and it would appear that PoV takes effect only after the primary action. —Dr Ishmael

19:11, 22 February 2013 (UTC)

I don't buy any explanation that relies on saying that SY doesn't affect the caster. Whatever else it does, it also applies 7 boons and a stun break to the caster, which IMO is the primary effect (the condition transference is less significant and not even necessarily a benefit). Even if ArenaNet disagrees with me and believes that the caster isn't affected by the "primary" effect, nothing in the Pure of Voice text restricts it to "primary" shout effects (nor is "primary effect" even a defined game concept), so it's still a conflict between the specification and the reality, i.e. a bug. It's possible that bug would be fixed by changing the description rather than the behavior (though I doubt it), but that doesn't make it not a bug, just as Absolute Resolution making the Virtue of Resolve tooltip display a higher healing amount than the game actually gives you is a bug even if it's just the tooltip that's wrong.

Also, Dr Ishmael, what's your basis for saying that traits adding effects to skills are usually calculated after the standard effect? I haven't noticed any other situations where it would even matter, and would be interested to know of any. --Felbryn 19:52, 22 February 2013 (UTC)

Weapon swap - one offhand only

Hi sir, per our discussion User_talk:Mora#Thief.27s_weapon_combination_mechanic, if the information I've provided does not belong there, then where can we find the information concerning it? Should we add the information here Weapon_Set or here Off_hand Thank you. --Sir Vincent III 22:26, 22 February 2013 (UTC)

Either of those places would be a good fit for the info, yes. —Dr Ishmael

22:31, 22 February 2013 (UTC)

Shadowstep as Profession Mechanic

Can you please elaborate on how shadowstep is not a profession mechanic when theives are the only one can use them and on the skill page shows a lot of shadowstep skill? Thank you. --Sir Vincent III 18:42, 25 February 2013 (UTC)

Because it is not a fundamentally unique mechanic of how the thief's skill bar functions, it's simply a profession-exclusive ability, much like turrets for engineers, or banners for warriors, etc. Stealth skills and dual wield skills are included because they do modify how the skill bar functions. —Dr Ishmael

18:51, 25 February 2013 (UTC)

Thank you, but warrior's banner do modify the skill bar functionality when held in hand same goes to turret (activated ability) when placed. On the other hand, shatter skills and burst skill does not modify the skill bar functions, so it doesn't seem to explain it. I was under the impression when I saw "profession mechanic" that it means profession mechanic and not skill bar functionality.--Sir Vincent III 19:16, 25 February 2013 (UTC)

Shatter/burst/F1-F4 skills are different for every profession, that's how they modify the skill bar. Special skill types don't modify any functionality: banners and kits are bundles that give you new skills, just like a bundle you find laying on the ground; turrets and mantras are sequence skills that don't change how the skill bar functions, they just swap skills in the same slot.

Stealth skills are different from sequence skills because an unrelated effect is what causes the slot-1 skill to change. Dual wield skills are completely unique in that they depend on the combination of main- and off-hand weapons equipped. That is how they modify skill bar functionality, and why we consider them profession mechanics. —Dr Ishmael

19:23, 25 February 2013 (UTC)

To be specific, banners are environmental weapons and the activated turret skill is a sequence skill.--Relyk ~ talk > 19:26, 25 February 2013 (UTC)

Stealth changes how skill 1 functions, but positioning also changes how the skill 1 functions while in stealth. So, what is "skill bar functionality"? --Sir Vincent III 19:42, 25 February 2013 (UTC)

What does positioning have to do with it? Except for Backstab, none of them mention positioning at all, making that a feature of the Backstab skill itself (and not functionality of the skill bar). —Dr Ishmael

19:43, 25 February 2013 (UTC)

Tactical Strike also changes function depending on position. But I just want to understand what you meant, so to avoid wasting my time on editing that I thought to be useful only to see it undone. Thank you. --Sir Vincent III 19:54, 25 February 2013 (UTC)

Okay, I missed that one. But I hope you understand the difference between skill functionality and skill bar functionality. Shadowstepping is a skill function; that it is unique to thieves should be explained on the Thief page (I noted this in my edit summary), along with their unique skill types, as is done for all other profession-specific skill types and abilities. —Dr Ishmael

20:06, 25 February 2013 (UTC)

I understand what skill functionality is, but I don't understand what you meant by "skill bar" functionality, since the one that changes is not the skill bar, but the skill. Looking at the skill bar, all professions have F1 in their skill bar. Pressing the same button doesn't change F1 to something else (i.e. F10), thus F1 is F1. Now the skill in the skill bar changes function, not the skill bar itself. So when you say, "skill bar functionality" what exactly do you mean if not the "skill functionality" themselves? Also in the case of Stealth and Dual Wield, I am under the impression that the skill functionality in the skill bar changes, not the skill bar. --Sir Vincent III 21:54, 25 February 2013 (UTC)

How about "the functionality of how a skill comes to be placed in the skill bar"?

The availability of slots F1-F4 and the skills that go there are dependent on your profession (and sometimes additional requirements, like main-hand weapon for burst skills or current heal/utility skills for tool belt). Thus, they are quite obviously profession mechanics.
Skills 1-5 are normally assigned by your equipped weapons, with 1-3 coming from main-hand weapon and 4-5 coming from off-hand (or all 1-5 from a two-hand). Normally, there's nothing special about this, so nothing here is a special skill bar function.
- Stealth skills are abnormal because they are assigned by being in stealth.
- Dual wield skills are abnormal because they are assigned by the combination of main/off-hand.

It's the abnormalities that we call out as special skill bar functions, and since these are both unique to the thief, we called them profession mechanics. —Dr Ishmael

22:05, 25 February 2013 (UTC)

I understand it now, but why call it "profession mechanic" when it can be easily misunderstood more than it can be understood? Because I know that thieves can shadowstep, but it's not part of their profession mechanic? -- doesn't makes sense. Whether the shadowstep can or cannot functionally change the skill bar, it is a profession mechanic that affects the profession in game, just like dodge. I think my misunderstanding is that I understand profession mechanic as in tools or mechanism that comes with the profession. I understand steal, stealth, and dual-wield being profession mechanics since they are tools within the profession, that's why I'm wondering why shadowstep is not included. But thanks for having the patience in explaining to me. Much appreciated. --Sir Vincent III 23:03, 25 February 2013 (UTC)

(Reset indent) "Profession mechanic" is a term used by ArenaNet to refer to the F1-F4 stuff, so that was canon laid down by the powers on high. When I wrote up the List of thief skills page, I was trying to explain why they have so many funky things going on in the skill tables, and since the stealth skills (within the tables) are shown the same way as the warrior's burst skills, and those are described as the warrior's profession mechanic, I decided to call stealth skills a profession mechanic. Maybe that's where the problem is, and we shouldn't be calling stealth or dual wield skills as profession mechanics. —Dr Ishmael

23:17, 25 February 2013 (UTC)

The primary point is they need to be noted somewhere on the Thief skills page. A quick reference Type section for all the skill types available to the profession since we already list skill type, as dual wield and steal skills are regarded as skill types as well as mechanics specific to the thief.--Relyk ~ talk > 23:26, 25 February 2013 (UTC)

That would actually makes sense. Just keep the Function Key skills as profession mechanic and everything else as profession-specific skills and/or abilities. --Sir Vincent III 00:23, 26 February 2013 (UTC)

locator maps

--Relyk ~ talk > 03:29, 26 February 2013 (UTC)

XD Jink and I both needed that laugh - me after a long and annoying day at work, and her after a long and annoying dungeon run. You, sir, are a hero. —Dr Ishmael

03:35, 26 February 2013 (UTC)

I don't know how you did it

But I've totally erased the abbreviation CP from my memory + now only recognise ComPort -Chieftain Alex 21:24, 28 February 2013 (UTC)

BWAHAHA! And here I had finally given in and decided to start using the more standard acronym. D'oh. —Dr Ishmael

21:26, 28 February 2013 (UTC)

Achor

This[1] doesn't look like it came out as intended. --Felbryn 22:22, 1 March 2013 (UTC)

Fixed - it was meant to be {{anchor}}. pling

22:41, 1 March 2013 (UTC)

Dungeon

We need 1 person to complete our wiki/irc group for SE explorable. Wanna come? pling 21:44, 2 March 2013 (UTC)

We've going to meet some friends for dinner shortly, otherwise I'd come. —Dr Ishmael

21:48, 2 March 2013 (UTC)

~~But.. but... dungeon!~~ Have fun :P pling

21:49, 2 March 2013 (UTC)

User:Relyk/SMW/Heart infobox

I culled the map parameter because one infobox uses map1 parameter and no infoboxes use further ones or the npc_map parameter. I doubt we need more than a single map for a heart anyways.--Relyk ~ talk > 09:23, 5 March 2013 (UTC)

Dungeon template

Not that I want to impose or anything, but I've added another parameter to the template which could be used like | style = float:right to align the table to the right but not misalign those icons. -Chieftain Alex 16:07, 7 March 2013 (UTC)

I didn't notice that when I saved. It's due to these CSS rules:

.table[class*=left] > tbody > tr {text-align:left}
.table[class*=right] > tbody > tr {text-align:right}

I don't know why Alfa made them with wildcards instead of simply .table.right. floatright is a default class from the Monobook/Vector skins that he may not have been aware of. Anyway, thanks for the fix. —Dr Ishmael

16:19, 7 March 2013 (UTC)

omg it's magic

User:Relyk/SMW/heart. Will reward properties be a general property?--Relyk ~ talk > 06:25, 11 March 2013 (UTC)

Do they really need to be properties at all? They are derived from the heart level, so only the level needs to be a property, and anything that wants to display the rewards can look them up from the level. —Dr Ishmael

15:09, 11 March 2013 (UTC)

I don't know about re-deriving the values whenever we want to display them if we've already done so in the infobox. Querying for a semantic property that is defined on the heart page using the lookup table template instead of constantly referring to a lookup table to get the values in a template seems like the elegant approach.

If we do that, the heart rewards template takes up too much space as a list. The template can be reused to output a list mode and inline mode. Or we can have three separate templates calculate each one, so they can be displayed however we like... We will be displaying the gold reward for events, which would require a similar approach but just using gold value variables.--Relyk ~ talk > 20:10, 11 March 2013 (UTC)

I love how

I add an area infobox and there is a locator map magical there already--Relyk ~ talk > 03:48, 17 March 2013 (UTC)

:DDDD —Dr Ishmael

03:51, 17 March 2013 (UTC)

Template:Heart infobox

I have been editing these pages a lot lately, mostly adding the NPCs and Objects. And moving the description into the infobox where it belongs, but after your recent change I have been doing it wrong. I try and catch the ones I just edited, but for some of the older ones... I'm sorry.

P.S. I really loved the new .png files you uploaded for Ranger pets. I know making those for monsters is on the list of things to do, but I doubt if I could make as nice of files as you did. I think you deserve a Barnstar! Yoe Dude 20:04, 17 March 2013 (UTC)

The order doesn't really matter - if I cared enough I could run a bot to rearrange them on every task page, but I don't, so don't worry about it.

The pet icons that are used in the Pet Management interface exist as textures in Gw2.dat, which is why we have them on the wiki. The targeting icons for monsters/npcs, as well as pets and player characters, are generated on-the-fly, i.e. they don't exist in Gw2.dat, so capturing them for the wiki would be a very arduous task. (You'd have to run the game through uMod, find the creature and target it, then search through all the loaded textures to find the one that was just generated for the icon.) —Dr Ishmael

20:20, 17 March 2013 (UTC)

Bot request

Afternoon, I wanted to ask if my request on GW2W:BOTS is something that would be considered? It would help with recipe listings since it would prevent the names of the items appearing incorrectly -_- I began doing them by hand a while back, but its pretty tedious. -Chieftain Alex 14:57, 18 March 2013 (UTC)

Sorry, I forgot about that. Done. —Dr Ishmael

15:20, 18 March 2013 (UTC)

Thanks very much! -Chieftain Alex

15:22, 18 March 2013 (UTC)

Linking my site

This may be the wrong way to add to the User talk, but here goes. I placed the links on the sections where the particular site was relevant and would be most helpful to the community. Thanks for the heads up on how to do it properly. --Stumpzy 17:19, 18 March 2013 (UTC)

EOM

Thought on Talk:Extended Online Manual‎? --JonTheMon 20:55, 20 March 2013 (UTC)

I tend to dislike transcluding from mainspace articles, since there's no indication on the source article that it's being presented somewhere else (the Template: namespace is an obvious indicator of this) and editors can easily destroy the transclusion by editing the source article without this knowledge.

Granted, that's probably a small risk, so if you're willing to accept it, I have no other objections. —Dr Ishmael

21:02, 20 March 2013 (UTC)

Well, since it's being transcluded onto a protected page (it can be one of the first time a new person would see the wiki) we could have it also cascade protect... But, it looks like just a copy will be used. Oh, on that thought, should the copy retain all the icons? The current block is just text. --JonTheMon 21:27, 20 March 2013 (UTC)

IMO, the EOM could use more images all over, so I'd say yes, keep the icons. —Dr Ishmael

22:45, 20 March 2013 (UTC)

How do we prevent recipe/requires to mess up with items for which there exists multiple ways to craft them?

Don't know if it was mentioned anywhere before but I couldn't find anything about it. There are many pages that have one or more template:recipe boxes for items you can craft WITH them, so I think they should use a template:recipe/requires box instead. However, a problem arose. Some items have multiple ways to get crafted, like for example Minor Sigil of Luck. If I create a template:recipe/requires list on the Copper Doubloon page and add |Minor Sigil of Luck to it, it gives me also the recipe requiring Silver Doubloons. Do we have a solution for this? Disconnect 20:59, 20 March 2013 (UTC)

Not currently. Semantic Forms will solve everything with its #arraymap function, though, and the last I heard from Stephane they're still on track to complete our upgrade by the end of the month. —Dr Ishmael

21:04, 20 March 2013 (UTC)

Editorials for informative stuff here

It would be very nice (and informative) if the best questions/answers on all of Dr Ismael's talk pages are copied and given their own page after some minor edits. There is a lot of hard-to-find info in all of it. Disconnect 21:02, 20 March 2013 (UTC).

The question then is, what do you find informative? I probably have a higher threshold for this than you do, for example, so I may not be the best suited to compile this "best of" list. —Dr Ishmael

22:47, 20 March 2013 (UTC)

That has already been proven, because (see below) you feel the need to delete a non-empty category claiming it is empty, and deciding for others what they find useful and helpful. 69.183.17.156 18:36, 22 March 2013 (UTC)

skill table row

Can't hijack the template and I don't want to, but I want to use User:Relyk/skill table row on bundles and tonics D:--Relyk ~ talk > 10:48, 21 March 2013 (UTC)

you reverted the trivia about half a second ahead, I didn't even get an edit conflict saving the page.alshdg ljasghd--Relyk ~ talk > 22:37, 21 March 2013 (UTC)

Deleting instead of adding

Nice to see that you are willing to delete a useful piece of information (re category edits) and claiming the reason for the delete was "empty category" when 1, it wasn't empty when you deleted it, and 2, it is a useful bit of information. It is also convenient that you deleted the corresponding discussion page, instead of actually discussing it. How nice of you to decide for other people what they find helpful and useful information. 69.183.17.156 18:34, 22 March 2013 (UTC)

Hes already been bitched and moaned at on your other IP talk page. Recreating the category link is inadvisable. 5 users pretty much agree that the category shouldn't exist. -Chieftain Alex

18:37, 22 March 2013 (UTC)

1) It was empty when I deleted it, Relyk had already reverted your other edit (and I hadn't seen that edit at the time). 2) The information is already listed on another page, in a much more useful format than a simple category listing. As I explained at the link that Alex gave, we don't categorize vendors by what they sell because that would overly bloat our categorization system (and we can make much more useful tables like the one I just linked). —Dr Ishmael

18:41, 22 March 2013 (UTC)

Effective Level

Is the Effective Level as listed on zone pages supposed to be that level seen in green on the bottom-left of the game window to the left of the white number which is the character's actual level? The reason that I ask is that some explorable zones seem to be way out from that when listing areas in the table? I read the explanation and it seems to be that way but before I change any more, I would like confirmation. I may just be misreading stuff. Thanks. Claret 19:57, 22 March 2013 (UTC)

Yes, that's why the column header links to dynamic level adjustment (which is the title of the pop-up you get if you hover on the green level number). What I've seen is that the effective levels usually start 2 or 3 levels above the zone's stated minimum level, except for starter zones which start at 4 or 5, and end 1 or 2 levels above the zone's stated max level. —Dr Ishmael

20:03, 22 March 2013 (UTC)

Thanks, so if I am changing stuff, it should be the "green" effective level for all areas in a zone? Claret 20:05, 22 March 2013 (UTC)

Yep. —Dr Ishmael

20:59, 22 March 2013 (UTC)

Thanks Claret 21:04, 22 March 2013 (UTC)

Hey

I suppose you played part in crafting the skill tables. Is there a chance you could lend me any type of editable template for such a table that I could tinker with for skills of a made up profession/race? -Cursed Angel 21:29, 24 March 2013 (UTC)

The skill tables are generated using data from the individual skill pages - it requires that the skill pages already exist. I don't think it's really suitable for your purposes. —Dr Ishmael

22:13, 24 March 2013 (UTC)

Map completion

Hi, another question :) Looks like I've [[User:Malgalad/0x04 codes by zone|finished]] grinding IDs for open world. And... I have an anomaly. The question is: which points count towards number in left upper corner? In-game, there're 512 waypoints and 721 PoIs, 1233 in total, 101 of them are on WvW, so 1132 in PvE. I've written all explorable zones, plus Claw Island, Chantry of Secrets and Eye of the North. Simply counting all WPs and PoIs there, it gives us 1146 points, minus surely uncounted Eye of the North - 1145. Even if Southsun Cove doesn't count, it is still 1136, 4 more then it should be. So, Claw Island count towards map completion, but doesn't show in map progress? Or smth else? MalGalad 22:39, 27 March 2013 (UTC)

Claw Island counts for Krytan Explorer, but not for map completion. Otherwise, you've got it right. —Dr Ishmael

22:43, 27 March 2013 (UTC)

A-ha, now I think that I get it. Thank you.
Any progress with map points ID? Or it's a poke's eparchy? I mean, I'm ready and thirsty to make use of my work (if you're still not tired of me ;)). MalGalad 22:51, 27 March 2013 (UTC)

Take a gander at any PoI in Metrica Province, e.g. Transformer Hub Kachong. I installed the [[MediaWiki:GameLinks.js|javascript]] for it today. —Dr Ishmael

00:18, 28 March 2013 (UTC)

Am I missing something, I see Game Link [&BG4EAAA=] for Transformer Hub Kachong - is this what I am supposed to see? Claret 02:21, 28 March 2013 (UTC)

Yep. ID gets input to the infobox, game link gets output. —Dr Ishmael

03:15, 28 March 2013 (UTC)

Well done Ish! I will try to get some more work done tonight on the extension so the other direction will work soon too.

And also thank you MalGalad for all that work you put in those lists :) poke | talk 11:52, 28 March 2013 (UTC)

Yes, thanks Mal! I decided to build an Access database to link all the locations together, and I've been looking up IDs in your PDF file. The OCR fails for almost anything starting with "I", but once I realized that it was easy enough to work with. —Dr Ishmael

13:00, 28 March 2013 (UTC)

reset indent *just learned about /wiki [shift+click]... :sad face:*
Well, maybe I'll also make such list for skills? MalGalad 18:04, 8 April 2013 (UTC)

North Nolan Hatchery

When I was in the North Nolan Hatchery, hovering over the minimap displayed Town of Nolan. Or so it seemed. Claret 15:42, 28 March 2013 (UTC)

Strange. I took a new character out of Black Citadel, and the map uncovered for Town of Nolan did not include the hatchery - the boundary between Nolan and Arcovian Foothills did not change. It could be because the instance is entered from Town of Nolan, and the area displayed on the minimap defaults to the last non-instanced area you were in. Could test this with personal story instances. —Dr Ishmael

16:09, 28 March 2013 (UTC)

It's just to keep you informed, it may indeed behave weirdly. Claret 16:11, 28 March 2013 (UTC)

Sometimes the minimap lies, such was with Malchor's Fingers :3--Relyk ~ talk > 16:46, 28 March 2013 (UTC)

Damn you, minimap, who can you trust? Claret 16:48, 28 March 2013 (UTC)

(Edit conflict) That's just a string mismatch, where the map annotation uses a different string than the minimap overlay, that's not getting the completely wrong area. —Dr Ishmael

16:49, 28 March 2013 (UTC)

I had to read that carefully to see what you're saying. You could test it by being in one area then having a party member enter the instance.--Relyk ~ talk > 01:22, 29 March 2013 (UTC)

Navs

Just noticed that {{Diessa Plateau nav}} lists the "old" form of skill points, not the new. Not looked at any others. Seems will need fixing :) Point me at where it is and I do not mind doing it. Claret 22:58, 28 March 2013 (UTC)

User:Jyavoc makes the area navs, so you might ask him if he has anything planned. There hasn't been an overhaul in skill challenges yet although we changed the format, so it's something we'll have to sort out eventually.--Relyk ~ talk > 01:27, 29 March 2013 (UTC)

Check the edit that poke made to your post. :) —Dr Ishmael

02:41, 29 March 2013 (UTC)

Yeah, he took the emphasis out of my message. :) Claret 03:10, 29 March 2013 (UTC)

...by replacing it with a link to the template you need to edit. —Dr Ishmael

04:07, 29 March 2013 (UTC)

Yeah, sheesh, you guys are no fun at all. Actually thanks, poke. Claret 04:16, 29 March 2013 (UTC)

Oh… so you were actually looking for a link to the template? Interesting! Because I was looking at the question and didn’t really get what you were asking xD Well, you’re welcome then ^^ poke | talk 16:46, 29 March 2013 (UTC)

March/April icon packs

Will we see them? Or where can I download ones? Or maybe I can make them myself? MalGalad 13:14, 6 April 2013 (UTC)

Ishmael feels the need to deprive us of our image packs until we grovel at his feet in despair.--Relyk ~ talk > 13:21, 6 April 2013 (UTC)

Sorry, I just hadn't felt like doing it since I discovered that Jump To Victory does it better by culling out only the new icons (see here, the links for "Updated UI textures"). I suppose having a complete archive of all the textures is still useful, so I'll get them up later today. —Dr Ishmael

15:28, 6 April 2013 (UTC)

New icon archives are up. And I decided that instead of getting depressed by what JtV does, I'll just take it as inspiration - from now on I'll be offering deltas, archives with subfolders containing only the files that were added/changed/deleted versus my previous archives. Have fun! —Dr Ishmael

22:34, 6 April 2013 (UTC)

Awesome. Previously I couldn't find the "archives" you'd mentioned before, but this has made it very easy to find! thanks. -Chieftain Alex

22:44, 6 April 2013 (UTC)

Thank you, Mr.Ishmael! MalGalad 00:01, 7 April 2013 (UTC)

That's DR Ishmael to you!

05:07, 7 April 2013 (UTC)

Queen Bee Dog revert

Tips go on the walkthrough for the dungeon or any event, where it has context. The partial removal of the summary is because it describes the Queen Bee Dog in World 1 Zone 1, which is already described on the related zone page and isn't true for the ones in the other two zones.--Relyk ~ talk > 19:30, 6 April 2013 (UTC)

I can't agree with you. In zones 1 and 3 you have to go through the maze, and in zone 2 you don't have to - like stated in the description. It's true for all zones that Queen Bee Dog is guarding a honeycomb and Bee Dogs can lead you to it. Maybe we can remove the part with flowers, cause it doesn't relate strately to the Queen Bee Dog... And as for the hints section, they are also true for any of the zone. MalGalad 19:37, 6 April 2013 (UTC)

I never said the hints weren't true; it's taken out of context. NPC articles aren't walkthroughs.--Relyk ~ talk > 19:57, 6 April 2013 (UTC)

Because this foe appears in multiple zones, it makes a lot more sense to put the tips on the foe's page instead of triplicating them on all 3 zone pages. —Dr Ishmael

20:25, 6 April 2013 (UTC)

That's only possible with enemies in SAB because you have the level playing field and the enemies all behave them same way. And for redundancy, it's not bad at all; we can't tell people to look at the NPC page for hints and strategies in the middle of a walkthrough. A possible approach is to summarize enemies on the SAB page or similar for reference instead of having people navigate each NPC page, then you will already inform readers how to approach the bee and avoid the need for redundancy or using the NPC page. It's like making gamefaqs guide :3--Relyk ~ talk > 22:54, 6 April 2013 (UTC)

The Queen Bee Dog is entirely optional, though - you don't have to fight it to complete any of the achievements in any of the zones. It's not an essential part of any of the walkthroughs, so you just mention it and move on. Anyone who wants to fight it then goes to its page, and should only have to read it once, since the strategy is so simple. —Dr Ishmael

23:43, 6 April 2013 (UTC)

“That's only possible with enemies in SAB” – So? Is that a problem? Formatting guidelines are just guidelines; we do not have to follow them if there are better ways to document the game for a certain case. This is a wiki not a fixed database, so it is perfectly fine to stray off the usual route and just document things in an easier way. poke | talk 01:26, 7 April 2013 (UTC)

@ishmael, It's needed if you want to increase team score, however minor that point is. The walkthrough can simply link to the NPC page and list the strategy in a section, but that doesn't mean we should. I don't think a walkthrough should restrain itself to only information essential to completing a task either. If people want to fight the bee, it's just as well to put it directly in the walkthrough as it is to have them navigate to the NPC page and read a "walkthrough" there. I want to mention the bee and the strategy to fight because it is essential to the walkthrough of the zone, despite the fight being optional. However, if conensus prefers to keep non-essential information off the walkthrough, I made my prior suggestion as opposed to using the NPC pages. I don't like using NPC pages whatever the case because it's out of context of where the enemy is and what situation you're fighting it.

@poke, I don't get your point. Formatting guidelines isn't the issue, there are no guidelines for this case and I'm not arguing to follow any guidelines. I'm not sure how the wiki not being a fixed database is related to discussion on strategy/walkthrough. I proposed a way that would be better to document the game in the same breath. I might be muddling my point in mentioning previous practices (or guidelines if you wish) for approaching the issue.--Relyk ~ talk > 07:23, 7 April 2013 (UTC)

"out of context of where the enemy is and what situation you're fighting it" The terrain might be slightly different in each zone (e.g. very limited space in zone 3), but otherwise the context doesn't matter for the QBD - the situation is exactly the same every time you fight it. It's not just the duplication of the info that I'm worried about, it's the possible future fragmentation of the info that worries me. Especially since Josh Foreman has already stated that the QBD will be immune to Whip in the future, the strategies for fighting it will have to change drastically. Changes like that are much easier to handle when the information is in one place instead of spread out over 3 different pages, where a random editor might change it on zone 2 but never realize that it's also present in zones 1 and 3 - then the 3 pages are out of sync, and it would take someone like you or me to come along, realize the discrepancy, then update the other 2 pages. It's more work for very little benefit. —Dr Ishmael

14:33, 7 April 2013 (UTC)

The strategy for defeating the Queen Bee Dog with only the stick is given on the chance that you don't have a whip or other weapons. It's only 3 pages for a specific boss that won't dramatically change (immunity to whip isn't a big deal), so I wasn't worried about fragmentation problems as it currently is. There will be fragmentation in the future as they introduce new skills and they possibly make team score significant, so I can agree there. I will admit using the NPC pages for strategies on enemies in SAB make sense because they are already in the context of the dungeon and you have a fixed skill set. I'd still like an "overview of enemies" for a quick reference to enemies and strategies so you can go both ways. I sort of have a table for that on the SAB page already.--Relyk ~ talk > 21:24, 8 April 2013 (UTC)

Skill table header

So, a friend was looking at short bow at the skill table and noticed that thieves apparently have a recharge on skills, which isn't right, it just costs initiative, but the table is wrong. Would the best course of action be to split the current table in 2, or do some coding/variable magic? --JonTheMon 15:53, 8 April 2013 (UTC)

The problem is just in the column header - the numbers displayed in the table correctly show the initiative cost on thief skills. I realized this when I reformatted those tables (same problem for dagger sword pistol spear harpoon gun), but I decided to ignore it until someone complained on the assumption that most people would realize that initiative replaces recharge for thieves. Does that explanation suffice, or do we still need to fix something? Include the initiative icon in the column header? —Dr Ishmael

16:13, 8 April 2013 (UTC)

The explanation makes sense, but something about it bothers me. Slightly misleading is still misleading or something like that. I would have suggested putting initiative in the profession header, but the icon is above that, meaning we'd need a new header (and table). Alex went ahead and split up shortbow, which is kinda the less concise but technically correct solution. --JonTheMon 16:34, 8 April 2013 (UTC)

You could wrap the |- class="<profession> ! colspan="6" | portion with a template so it displays an appropriate row header for each class. Although that could just be putting an activation icon and recharge/initiative icon when appropriate. I'm don't know why |- class="thief" ! ===={{t}} [[Thief]]==== || || || || {{initiative}} || breaks the section header. Is there a trick to embedding section headers in a template?--Relyk ~ talk > 19:15, 8 April 2013 (UTC)

try taking a newline at the start and using single pipe notation for columns. -Chieftain Alex

19:36, 8 April 2013 (UTC)

^ Putting anything on the same line as a header = bad stuff.

However, I really dislike this idea, because it splits out the "header" information from the actual header row and into the profession subheaders. I.e. bad design. —Dr Ishmael

19:42, 8 April 2013 (UTC)

And it simply doesn't look pretty because it's in the subheader. The other two options are doing put in another column for initiative or recharge/initiative in one column so it's not as misleading. If we want to reuse the header template for profession weapon skill lists and weapon type skill lists, we can have a parameter to include an initiative column for weapon type skill lists. For lists that don't have thief skills, it doesn't take up much space and would keep the format the same for all weapon type skill lists. Doing activation/initiative in one column header is probably the neatest solution and makes sense to do so; and no mucking around with parameters.--Relyk ~ talk > 21:02, 8 April 2013 (UTC)

Hello Again

I just looked at your user page and I think I am doing something similar to you. Crazy me and my objects... I thought it would be easier for me to keep track of things if I stayed on one type of page and worked my way thru the game. And I picked Heart Missions. So I have been adding NPC/Objects to the ones as I do them. I am 100% complete with Bloodtide Coast and Iron Marches, and I'm working on finishing Fields of Ruin and Wayfarer Foothills. I guess I am wondering if I am making all the needed changes to these pages to bring them up to par. (I also am moving the description into the infobox, and I am hoping someone doesn't fix this problem via "bot" since it is a great way to know if the pages need fixing.) I am also posting my progress on my user page, and now I know to check yours too before moving to a new area, but I don't have a coolie chart like you. =(

My secondary project has been adding screenshots to all area and POI pages. (I use the POI image if the area has one.) And taking stub area pages and again adding NPCs/Objects. I am not that comfortable in writing long descriptions so I may just be making stubs? I am 100% done here with Mount Maelstrom. Again please look over some of my pages here to see if I am missing anything. I'll be in Fields of Ruin all week it looks like, since most of the area pages are just stubs.

And... (yes this doesn't go here but) I am having a issue with the object infobox. Most of the other infoboxs can display multiple locations ect. with either " <br> or , ", however the object box does not allow this. Locations can be a problem so I use area or region, I am mostly concerned about "goals =". Any suggestions? Yoe Dude 23:12, 8 April 2013 (UTC)

My intent is to ensure that every page (area/poi/skill challenge) exists and has correct data. I won't be bothering with any screenshots or long descriptions. If what you're doing fulfills the criteria I have listed (you can get the poi IDs from Chat link format/0x04 codes; don't worry about task IDs), feel free to check off a box. When I see that, I'll go and double-verify what you've done, just to be extra sure. —Dr Ishmael

02:19, 9 April 2013 (UTC)

Forcing a page name to not be capitalized

Is it possible? For example there's a spear called "ooOoo Spear" :) The page name will be created as "OoOoo Spear", which doesn't matter much but doesn't have the same visual impact. What about search implications if the page is not capitalized? Is it best to create it capitalized then "move" it to non-capitalised to get automatic redirects on searches? --Alad 20:21, 9 April 2013 (UTC)

Unfortunately no, that’s not possible on this wiki with its current configuration. poke | talk 20:25, 9 April 2013 (UTC)

(Edit conflict) MediaWiki treats the first character in all page names with ambiguous case - it is both lowercase and uppercase at the same time. At the top of the page itself, it is displayed as uppercase by default; for searches and links, you can use either case. You can "fix" the displayed title in cases like this with {{DISPLAYTITLE:ooOoo Spear}}.

(cf. w:iPhone, they have a fancy template for it, but it does the same thing) —Dr Ishmael

20:28, 9 April 2013 (UTC)

@poke: Nande yo neeeeeee?! Why is DISPLAYTITLE disabled here? (he's right, it doesn't work :( ) —Dr Ishmael

20:29, 9 April 2013 (UTC)

Cool, thanks. It worked :) -> ooOoo Spear --Alad 20:44, 9 April 2013 (UTC)

Ugh, ignore my outburst. I used a pipe instead of a colon when I tested it. >.> Alad is smarter than me and probably copied the example I gave instead of typing a new one. >.< —Dr Ishmael

20:45, 9 April 2013 (UTC)

Quick note: ooOoo Spear is also sold by Duidda. —Dr Ishmael

20:47, 9 April 2013 (UTC)

LOL, no I didn't copy it, I retyped it :) And hesitated between an "=" and a ":" because it wasn't working in the Preview. I also looked at the wikipedia "Lowercase" template! hehe. Anyway, that ooOoo Spear sold by Duidda is most probably a higher level spear. I'll check it out, thanks. Looks like Guard Lugung also sells one with 6 'O's :D This is going take all evening... --Alad 21:06, 9 April 2013 (UTC)

Hm, you're right, the one sold by Duidda would be a higher level, probably 37. However, I'd suggest swimming out to Lugung to verify the name of the item he sells. Based on the quote that you included and the item's level, I think the item you posted is the same one. —Dr Ishmael

21:17, 9 April 2013 (UTC)

“MediaWiki treats the first character in all page names with ambiguous case” – Actually no, it normalizes titles which includes upper-casing the first character. ^^ At least that’s the case with our configuration (which is the default); it is possible to have completely case sensitive article names though. But if DISPLAYTITLE is enough for you, even better :) poke | talk 23:06, 9 April 2013 (UTC)

But all functionality, like searching and linking, allows you to use either case for the first character, that's what I was referring to. I know that internally the page name is stored with an uppercase first character, but in terms of what normal editors/readers see, it's ambiguous. —Dr Ishmael

23:56, 9 April 2013 (UTC)