Talk:Lotro-Wiki Contributors' Corner/Archive June10

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Graphics on the LotRO-Wiki

how about new logo for the wiki? anyone up to it? --Xander 05:04, 21 May 2007 (PDT)

Yeah we need a new logo bad!!!! --Hinney 09:07, 23 May 2007 (PDT)

See Lotro-Wiki.com:Logo Contest‎ for more info... --Xander 04:49, 29 May 2007 (PDT)

Cool, hmm, <.< finding time to play with Inkscape. --Hinney 00:36, 30 May 2007 (PDT)

Player Character Template

hi everyone, name is Mike, go by Ealdor. As you may have noticed I have added a Player_Characters template system. Check out Example:Player_Character or Ealdor for an example. This will work very well for people to put bios on there characters. Im still working out some of the rough spots as it was designed for a Style sheet.

Also as a note, I know it is hard to control all the time but one of the ads was for EQ2 gold *frown* Is there a stand on this?

Thanks. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Ealdor (talk · contr).

If there are any gold selling adds just post the URL (try not to click on it) on my talk page and I can see about getting them removed. --Lotroadmin 12:01, 15 April 2007 (PDT)

Back to subject, we need to come up with some way to categorize all the players pages, template does a good deal already but all those categories need to be further categorized =) I started already making all of them as subcategories of Category:Player Characters, but kinship & server categories need another way of doing it, probably something simple like another subcategory only for kinships and only for servers, I just cant come up with suitable name... --Xander 01:11, 18 April 2007 (PDT)

Hello, can I make a suggestion that you add eye colour to the character profile Also, how do you find a link there with having it bookmarked, so from the main page? --Chris 15:01, 19 April 2007 (PDT)

I played a bit more with Mike's template: changed the header and further adapted it so that some fields lead to inclusion of categories only if they are filled with info... this should help us get rid of subcategories like Members, No Kinship Members and so on... may need some further work in including most common things that are written in kinship field, otherwise just leaving field blank does the magic... result is for now at {{pcbeta}}... --Xander 09:16, 7 May 2007 (PDT)
PS: You can test it on the talk page, note the empty kinship field and absence of any nonsensical subcategory for it =) --Xander 09:20, 7 May 2007 (PDT)

One more thing that seems odd to me is that many people write name of their char with {{ }} around it, making a name to template and thus breaking the page a bit, since there's no such template... why would someone do that? how can we prevent it? 'til now i just looked at every new char to correct it and create new subcategories... --Xander 09:16, 7 May 2007 (PDT)

Trophies Cross Ref

Just a note and ask for help. Kinmate asked me about how we know what professions go with what trophies. I said hmm, we need a wiki page for that. SO. Ill start compiling a table which people can use as a cross reference for this. --Ealdor 14:15, 21 April 2007 (PDT)

Infobox NPC

An Infobox appropriate for named NPCs has been created at Template:Infobox NPC. Banaticus 14:40, 23 April 2007 (PDT)

like i commented on talk page for this template, there is misunderstanding as to what npc is, or for the use of this template...

and one more thing is that this template uses other non-existing template. --Xander 01:19, 24 April 2007 (PDT)

If you want to reply on the template talk page, then that's the proper place to reply. Don't split a discussion into two parts. :) Banaticus 19:07, 26 April 2007 (PDT)

I didn't split it, you did... just wanted to warn that on basis of your description & example template didn't do what it was intended to, since some things were mixed up bad, you shouldn't really announce unfinisched things =P --Xander 22:22, 26 April 2007 (PDT)

of skill, item and class infoboxes

how about making all of the float on the right side of page, that way if there's any additional info other than infobox itself it is displayed on the page parallel to infobox...

see Captain's Valour for example... i would suggest removing class infobox from such pages at all or replace it with another text only at the bottom of the page... reducing it as much as possible... in this case perhaps one-liner: "Captain: Skills, Traits, Accomplishments..." or even put this one-liner at the top and add at the bottom bigger one with all the captain traits...

What do you think? --Xander 11:34, 30 April 2007 (PDT)

i think three one liners at the bottom would be fine. In the case of Captain's Valour you would have a one-liner for captain:skills, traits, accomplishments, one-liner for class traits:Bu,Ca,Ch,Gu,Hu,Lm,Mi and finally a one liner for all the captain trait's. Kinda like what you did for the regions, right? Sounds like a lot of work but i think it would be worth it to enhance navigation. --Hinney 19:35, 30 April 2007 (PDT)

ok. i'll start working on it --Xander 00:50, 1 May 2007 (PDT)

here are "alpha" versions, they definatly need some variance in color and style, any suggestions? --Xander 02:03, 1 May 2007 (PDT)

played with colours a bit... --Xander 09:34, 1 May 2007 (PDT)

I think they look good. I would recommend making the {{captain}} to {{class|captain}} so that we can use the same template for all the classes and even the main class pages. --Hinney 09:40, 9 May 2007 (PDT)

Done, more or less... its adopted for all classes and will look like {{class|name=Captain}} see {{class}} for more info!

If you can further simplify it, you're most welcome to do so =) somehow I am not able to do that now, probably as always not seeing something very obvious... -Xander 04:07, 12 May 2007 (PDT)

For colors, should we just consider using the same look and feel as the categories? Otherwise the colors are great. --Hinney 09:40, 9 May 2007 (PDT)

Could you explain what you mean by that? I'm not sure I understand =) --Xander 04:08, 12 May 2007 (PDT)

I think the colors for the navigation subzone template is perfect as it matches the categories at the bottom. I went ahead and populated east of the subzones with the templates you created, but now i kinda wish i would have done something like <noinclude>{{region|{{PAGENAME}}</noinclude> to include a regional navbar and a subzone navbar. I think i'm tad confused about what to use region or zone --Hinney 14:28, 12 May 2007 (PDT)

Well I think we will have to get rid of subzone and replace it with subregion... as for region template, you mean just using one template for example {{region|Ered Luin}} to show both {{Eriador}} and {{Ered Luin}}? It could be made... I just thought to use both templates on big regional pages and subregion templates on page for each subregion. --Xander 16:04, 12 May 2007 (PDT)

Yep, with Eriador below it, and might even take it a step closer that if you did {{Celondim}} it would list both {{Ered Luin}} and {{Eriador}}. Not sure what to provide for the {{Celondim}} but it could contain links to a list of resources, landmarks, NPCs, etc --Hinney 16:39, 12 May 2007 (PDT)

To ;loc or not to ;loc

Typing ;loc in-game will give the current coordinates of the character in a readable format like 15.5 N 37.2 W. While I can see this being very helpful information for quest and accomplishment locations, is this too much information to be given players in this wiki? Or should we start gathering and adding this information?

edit: OK, so I'm a doofus and missed the Landmark coordinates page. I vote we add more loc info into quests as possible.

--CaptainMidnight 14:22, 3 May 2007 (PDT)

Yup go for it. Maybe we can do a mini location template like Xander did for the money template:worth --Hinney 09:36, 9 May 2007 (PDT)

I signed up here originally to add quests, but after plugging in the Weaponsmith quests, I noticed all the crafting info that needed updates. So I asked about ;loc and now I'm doing non-loc inputs. :) --CaptainMidnight 12:55, 10 May 2007 (PDT)

LOTRO Wikis goal

Greetings :) first off, I was very very happy, when I found out, that there is a WIKI dedicated just to LOTRO. Good job, guys and gals! /wave Because I am kind of sick, that some peeps in certain forums just ask the same questions over and over again, compile "stickies" where a WIKI is so much better suited really.

one of the questions pondering me is though, that what do we want to achieve with that WIKI here. reason why I ask is, that

• a WIKI really shines in some areas (like guides, FAQ's, linklists etc.).
• a WIKI has some disadvantages compared to a database though.

Where I am coming from (and excuse my english, am no native english speaker), is that there are already quite a few other sites out there (like allakhazam with bestiary and items DB, or lotro-crafting.com for tradeskills). I have the feeling, that this wiki should NOT (and probably is not capable of)

• listing every quest (maybe the most important ones, yes)
• listing every item
• listing every NPC/Mob

quite a few stubs here already, so starting with flattening the wiki might be a good idea, as well as starting to use templates (i.e. for easier navigation) Please do not take this post as disrespect, far from it. I want this wiki to be an excellent source, for both vets as well as noobs.

--Kajolus 05:39, 9 May 2007 (PDT)

No disrespect taken, it's always good to discuss the wiki especially if an improvement to the wiki is the outcome.

I think a wiki is a great place to have the quests and items as you can easily update the text and as you mentioned provide a guide and FAQs and link the required mats etc. Now currently where the wiki lacks is with displaying a map with the little dots to find a certain mob that you need to go kill 20 times. The wiki has the power to solve that as well, just no one yet has implemented a solution, but then again a /tloc is just fine for me. The nice thing is each quest page has a talk page that everyone can agree on the best guide/spoiler for the quest and attempt to provide only the most useful information on the quest page. If you noticed we requested that the items and quests have their own wiki namespace so you can focus searches and the wiki category system should also help finding that unique quest or item.

What do you mean by flattening the wiki? It's pretty flat as we have tons of links on the main page and I know a few have talked about adding more hierarchy to the wiki to make the main page not look so busy.

For navigation there's of course the categories to follow, but you are right we need more navigational templates. There are a few navigational templates in use and a few more being developed but I think currently we have more data entry folks than we do maintainers and we don't have enough time to keep up. --Hinney 09:33, 9 May 2007 (PDT)

Flattening the wiki (taken from our corporate WIKI): "Please help flatten the wiki. It is better to have a single dense page of information broken into sections and subsections rather than having a hierarchy of sparse pages. Having to click down through layers of "navigation links" in order to get to content can become confusing. It's best to start out by putting all your content on one big fat page at first, and over time, refactor out stuff that has enough merit or substance to have a page all its own." I was under the impression, that sites like Ent's_Strength or Dwarf_Axe-damage_Bonus are simply one pic sites... BUT, when used with templates, it of course has the benefit of simply needing to chane in one lcoation... hmmm...I guess leave it as it is right now is the best, hehe.

As to navigation templates, I am really no pro, but can try to find a way in case I have enough time. And lastly, the WIKI and quests and items well, I just thought better leave it to the pros (like alla and other sites). but, again, just my point of view, and I might be off here. :) bummer, back to work for now... --Kajolus 05:41, 10 May 2007 (PDT)

Fixing Weapons Infobox

I can't figure out how to change this but the weapons infobox indicates that a hunter gets the crossbow skill at 20. As a hunter I can tell you that we don't get that skill until 30.

Can anyone confirm/deny this? So hunters and guardians both get crossbow skill at level 30? Skeeve 08:00, 9 May 2007 (PDT)

Confirmed. Hunters get crossbow at level 30 --CaptainMidnight 07:25, 11 May 2007 (PDT)

FAQ list

Greetings, I just started an FAQ stub. as I am not sure, if something liket hat exist already, I was reluctant to link it somewhere.

--Kajolus 05:21, 10 May 2007 (PDT)

Lorebook

I guess we're out of business now, see wonderfull Lorebook from Turbine! --Xander 16:13, 10 May 2007 (PDT)

/cry

Well it was fun doing the wiki.. So do we close this puppy down? Can we migrate over the kinship lists and PC or just let everyone migrate over? Should we refocus this wiki? --Hinney 18:03, 10 May 2007 (PDT)

Either we refocus, but somehow once Lorebook goes live I can't imagine that people would edit our wiki rather then official (except that for now we Europeans cannot post on turbine forums and that means also we can't edit Lorebook)...

or one of you US guys get in contact with them through your forums and ask if they want our information incorporated in their lorebook before going live...

And you're right it is/was fun doing this wiki, I learned a lot! --Xander 23:42, 10 May 2007 (PDT)

I think that was a mistake on Turbine's part to split EU and US up, but I'm sure codemasters will just create a copy in english, french and german. so it might just work out for the best.

We still have to see if turbine will allow user generated game guides, spoilers and the roleplaying information.

--Hinney 23:56, 10 May 2007 (PDT)

I too have learned a lot & will miss this place if it doesn't continue - but there may well yet be a place for the guides and spoilers at least. Separate US & UK versions would be stupid - oh wait, they've already done that with the gamer itself :p - well it's been nice meeting you all :D DancesInTrees 00:05, 11 May 2007 (PDT)

If I might make an observation...sometimes trying to predict how things will go leads to some, um, missjudgements in what will happen. It might be a bit premature to decide that people will obviously prefer the "official" wiki. We don't know what the editing rules will look like, we don't know if we will be able to customize the information into useful formats, we don't know if Turbine will suddently be deluged by 1,000,000 complaints that we all worked on different wikis and pull the plug on the project, etc. I would suggest we just keep going and allow things to take their course.--Nemmerle 06:05, 11 May 2007 (PDT)

Maybe you're right...

I would still suggest that we use this coming week to gather suggestions as to what should we do with this wiki! And next week we could (or rather should?) hold a vote on this issue... --Xander 09:57, 11 May 2007 (PDT)

I think this is a good idea,no matter what, and something we should do more or less continuously. I noticed one thing right off about the Lorebook (which is really cool, IMO) - the information was not well formatted. I am wondering how much control Turbine will insist on having over the format and design of the individual pages. For example, the Crafting Professions pages are awful. Few will like the recepies organized alphabetically - it's not the way we think about it. People want their skills organized by level because that's how they encounter the topics in the game itself. If Turbine sticks with their formats, there will still be a role for "rogue-wikis" to reformat the content into more useful order.--Nemmerle 13:20, 11 May 2007 (PDT)

Well, after reading forums a bit more i gather that you will be able to do there everything you are able to do here... they will just have more control over it, and very few users will get more abilities and those named were only protecting the page... (look through the turbine tracker section of the forums and check out dev answers to all things concerning lorebook)

So speaking for myself only: I would rather edit official wiki... even in the beta and with mistakes it already has more info then we do... adding a few navigational templates plus a few additional pages with different order for skills recipies and so on is going to be very easy... and i know that official wiki that is built-in into game is going to be visited far more often then anything else... ever... so it will attract more people and more contributors...

If we offer something unique however it might help... but even those crafting wikis or other lotro wikis on the net do not have more info than we do... and did not get as many visitors as we did... --Xander 14:24, 11 May 2007 (PDT)

It would be a dreadful mistake to abandon Lotro-Wiki just because Turbine is adding an official one. There is absolutely no way to know what their policies will be, nor their commitment to the project, nor the effect of allowing hundreds of thousands of authorized editors. I do know that it will never look as clean and functional as Lotro-wiki, and that the very best it can possibly turn out is no better than what this wiki is already on its way to turning out. Just to give one example, it seems pretty clear that the one killer thing they could do, given their ownership of the database, would be to auto-publish coordinates for NPCs, named mobs, POI's etc. A few lines of code and they'd instantly beat all our future efforts. But they're not going to do it. To them that would be like an easymode button. So the same as here, players are going to have to do it - only because it's Turbine owned and mass subscribed, players will then have to hope that their coords aren't erased by management or defaced by goofs. If we've got to do the work anyway, I say do it here, where there's independence, and where the average contributor's IQ exceeds his heart rate. I'm going to start contributing here even at the cost of lowering that average IQ. :) Stay the course! --Carfilhiot 13:27, 12 May 2007 (PDT)

Wikia

Hello. I'm from Wikia and we currently have a small lotro wiki that we're intending to promote and develop but I thought it would be better for us to join forces rather than compete. Therefore I would like to offer the lotro-wiki community completely free hosting from Wikia. Nothing about the site would need to change and the URL would continue working as normal.

Wikia is already building many of the world's largest wikis, including Wookieepedia, Memory-Alpha, Uncyclopedia, and soon the World of Warcraft wiki. We'd love to make Lotro one of the next big wikis so I would like to invite your community to join us in building that.

We use a version of MediaWiki, so all of the content here could be easily imported to Wikia which also uses the GNU Free Documentation License. We also have some extra features that you might find useful as well as an optional skin which includes article rating options and a display of the most popular pages. See this example of the new skin. Try logging in to see that editors get only a very small advert.

Wikia is working on ways to remove gold ads on our gaming wikis.

It would be a shame to see all the efforts here go to waste because people want to use the official wiki instead. With the extra features Wikia can offer, there's a reason for people to stay on an independent wiki, but I don't think that's likely if both sites are using an unmodified version of the same software. The same issue happened when the official Guildwars wiki launched in competition to an independent site (not a Wikia one) that had 15000 articles. Despite their size, many people still left for the official wiki which has build up almost 7000 articles in just three months!

This community would continue to be responsible for your own content and administration and you could set whoever you like as sysops, and bureaucrats. Unlike Lorebook, Wikia isn't going to impose any content or style guidelines on you. And you have the advantage of maintaining ownership of your own text since that is all released under the GFDL, meaning no corporation can ever take away from you your own rights to do whatever you want with it!

We offer not just free hosting, but also some optional new features that will help to bring in new editors, and smaller ads for editors. We're also happy to make individual wikis for guilds or other groups with Lotro. For example, our Earthen Ring wiki is one guild realm from the World of Warcraft.

We'd like for lotro-wiki.com to become the number one independent site for lotro fans and I do believe that Wikia can help you with that. We can provide you with 100 million impressions of our spotlight ads which appear on other Wikia sites to bring in new users, and you'd be part of a wider gaming network that includes wowwiki.com.

Sorry for those who'd already read my message on Skeeve's talk page but I wanted to bring my proposal to the wider attention of the community.

Angela 14:31, 11 May 2007 (PDT)

Thank you, Angela. We apppreciate your efforts, but we have to think it through, such a decision is not taken lightly! I myself have an account on wikia and contributed from time to time here and there, I know there's a great community on wikia and some very helpful admins... so just have a bit of patience with us...

I am rather surprised to see wowwiki move to wikia, but i know they had their problems... and Earthen Ring wiki is not a guild but a server wiki, I am not sure you really have guild wikis, since I requested a wikia space some time ago for a relativly small project, and though it was granted the process was rather lengthy and confusing...

So like I said thank you for your offer, we'll let you know our decision... --Xander 14:56, 11 May 2007 (PDT)

As I said before, you're welcome to join us if you don't want to compete :)

Couple of questions

• What are these extra features? A link to a page with details is fine :)
• Why should only editors get smaller adverts? Surely we want the best possible experience for all our visitors?
• Presumably if we were hosted with wikia, we would be displaying adverts for other wikias in return for ours being shown on others - would these be on that extra strip on the right or are they moveable? (Almost all your example links have the (annoying) right hand bar.)

DancesInTrees 01:39, 12 May 2007 (PDT)

The extra features are all optional, so if there's any you don't like, you don't have to turn them on. These include intrgration of videos from YouTube, email notification of changes to the wiki, calendars, Google Maps, dynamic pages lists, parser functions, spam control, automatic listings of good content and active users, article rating, public voting and commenting, Wysiwyg editing, user challenges, forums, and blogs that pull content from the wiki.

The reason editors get smaller ads is a reward for their work on the wiki. We can't offer that to everyone because large wikis are extremely expensive to host and the advertising revenue all goes to supporting that cost.

There would be ads for other wikis and in the new skin these appear on the right sidebar - we've got rid of the left sidebar in the new skin which leaves more room for the content compared to the current one on Wikia where we have bars on both sides. In the next release of that new skin, each box on the right bar other than the google text ad at the top is going to be movable, so if you didn't want to see the ads for other wikis, you could just move that to the end of the page where you would hardly see it. If you want the expert tools box at the top because you use it a lot, you can move it there. If you're a newbie who doesn't want expert tools, you can hide them. Each user will have control over how their own sidebar looks. In future, we're also going to have extra widgets that you'll be able to your sidebar if you want them. For example, you could display a list of which users are online or changes to your favorite articles there. If you don't like the new skin, there's the option to just switch back to monobook (the default MediaWiki skin) or even to one of the really old skins like cologne blue which doesn't have ads. Angela 08:18, 12 May 2007 (PDT)

We currently have no plans to merge this wiki with another website. We also don't mind if you use firefox with adblock plus to block the ads if you considered them annoying. We do our best to filter the gold ads, but the ads are only here to cover the web hosting and nothing more. --Lotroadmin 12:48, 12 May 2007 (PDT)

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