Talk:Lotro-Wiki Contributors' Corner/Archive 2011

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Welcome to the Archive of the Talk Page of Contributors' Corner for 2011

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Fishing

Hi im drigon i am hunting for the darter naster trophy and im stuck at the last two redband darter and blackfin darter i tried angmar, forochel, rivendell, and evendim does anyone know where to get those two? Drigon

Hi Drigon - is Darter-master what you're looking for? Check the pages for Redfin and Blackfin Darter; they list the regions you might be able to find each. No promises that the pages are up to date, though, hahah. I don't know much about fishing, but make sure your proficiency is high enough, too. Hope this helps! Sethladan 14:29, 25 January 2011 (EST)

Greetings

hi —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Akirashima79 (Contribs • User Talk).

Hi! Welcome to the wiki. :) Sethladan 15:32, 5 April 2011 (EDT)

Image Uploading

I am receiving this error: The file you uploaded seems to be empty. This might be due to a typo in the file name. Please check whether you really want to upload this file. Not sure what's causing it but it's happened to me a couple times now and is rather annoying. Rogue 19:57, 21 April 2011 (EDT)

Yesterday a similar thing happened to me; I uploaded an icon, and it created a page with the category, but no icon. The page simply said that such a file does not exist, would you like to upload it? I tried to upload it, to no avail. Then I deleted the page it had created and tried again from scratch - same thing happened. I think I uploaded it five times before I decided I was spamming the upload log for no reason. I gave up and went on to another icon, and it did it once more. However, when I went back to the LOTRO Store page after that, instead of the red link that had been driving me crazy, that first icon was there, and so was the second. It fixed itself, apparently. It sounds similar to what you're describing - maybe something with the server? Rubyctook 21:47, 21 April 2011 (EDT)

Had the same today with an image I tried to upload. It created the page, but said it was empty and that I could upload it, which then did not work. Had no idea what was happening, never had this before on the wiki. After 10 minutes or so, all the pictures got uploaded at the same time after all. If it wouldv'e been in-game, it would've been a giant server lag. ;-) --Ravanel 20:04, 4 May 2011 (EDT)

I will review the server cache settings and report back. You might try adding "?action=purge" to the end of the URL when you experience the problem to see if that clears out the cache. --Lotroadmin 21:15, 4 May 2011 (EDT)

Legacy Template

I've been working on a new template for adding legacies. Currently it takes in the name of the legacy, class, LI type, major/minor, how many ranks there are, values for each rank, legacy costs and works if the bonuses are the same for all levels/ages of item, and if they are different in certain cases. I should be able to make it work for legacies where theres a different value for every level/age, but that will take a little longer. Just now I'm looking to get people's opinions on it, any improvements that can be made, etc. The template itself is here User:Amphoras/Sandbox, the description of what each parameter does is here Template:Legacy/doc, a page to automatically make legacies is here User:Amphoras/Sandbox3 and a version with some values added is here User:Amphoras/Test Legacy. The page with the codes for the legacy costs is here Legacy Cost Progression. Amphoras 12:45, 22 April 2011 (EDT)

Thorin's Hall / Thorin's Halls

Many reputation deeds and titles relating to Thorin's Hall have the name pluralized to "Thorin's Halls". However, the in-game deeds and titles have it as "Thorin's Hall". It seems that some of the "Thorin's Hall" pages were deleted and reverted to "Halls"; this seems to be in error and contrary to in-game deeds and titles. Is there a specific reason for preferring "Halls" on the wiki, or should the pages be converted over? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Arkhain (Contribs • User Talk).

If the deeds/titles have "Hall" rather than "Halls", then they should definitely be fixed. I seem to remember a fair amount of inconsistency in game with the pluralization, and that's probably the cause of the reverted pages - someone assumed they were consistent, hah. If you have checked in game and have confirmed that some of them use "Hall" instead of "Halls", then feel free to change them back. If there's something that you don't have the proper permissions to do, then mark them and an admin/bureaucrat will do it. Of course, if there was a legitimate reason for the changes, disregard what I've said - in other words, you should probably wait a bit longer in case there are more replies before making any large scale changes. Rubyctook 10:43, 6 May 2011 (EDT)

Off the top of my head, I don't recall any instances of "Thorin's Halls" in the game, but Turbine does have issues with consistency, heheh. (This was the case with Northcotton Farm where, when Turbine can't make up their mind, we - ahem...I - forced a standard on the naming.) I second Ruby's suggestion of just going ahead and keeping our names consistent with the game. If we run into issues where it's "Halls" in one place and "Hall" somewhere else, then we'll cross that bridge when we get to it. Sethladan 14:02, 6 May 2011 (EDT)

The place is called "Halls" in-game in certain places, such as Quest:The_Second_Gear, but these occurances seem to be the exception. The deeds, titles, and the goat all refer to "Hall", nonplural, in-game, but are pluralized on the wiki. Arkhain 16:22, 6 May 2011 (EDT)

Site Layout

I think that it might be a good idea to make the editors stuff: contributors corner, things to do, and most of the toolbox only viewable to the members of the site. We coud also put most of the main navigation where the hidden stuff for non-members. This would make the site a lot more user friendly. An example of this would be the wiki site: https://wiki.mabinogiworld.com/ be sure to notice the navigation on the left side and how much more categories there are. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Scullvine (Contribs • User Talk).

Maps

I have used the maps of different areas and like them, however...

At some maps the correct S/W location is slightly off, e.g. The Shire. Not much, but enough to stain this fine site a bit :) How to correct that? I guess there is some logic somewhere with the tooltip system that translates the S/W to a coordinate to the image --- I am a software developer after all, just not into web stuff, so give me a hint and I will give it a try.

I just added a map for the interior of Thorin's Hall, which was missing. It is somewhat edited (the interior is pasted into a scaled down map frame) but I believe it can be used together with the tooltip system anyway. How to proceed?

Cheers --Zimoon 07:15, 30 August 2011 (EDT)

Could you elaborate a bit on the reference to the Shire and coordinates? .

... Turbine's maps are NOT particularly accurate. (And some of the maps you have not seen yet are even worse.) I don't know exactly how Turbine develops/integrates its maps... for example between the 2D In-Game maps and the 3D Lorebook maps.Both are generated in-house by Turbine, not by fans. And, if I recall correctly, the "mileposts" and "location flags" have coordinates which differ from those shown as you mouse-over the map (in the lower left corner, not the radar coordinates).

As for Thorin's Hall and other Interior maps... very few (I can't recall any) interior maps have coordinates, so you have to do like I did (and have to remember to re-do with a larger font) with the Enedwaith Map -- use a graphics program to annotate one of Turbine's in-game maps. Ravanell (I think it was) with Minas_Elendúr. Needless to say, such an effort requires "lots of effort". Wm Magill - Valamar - OTG/OTC (talk) 15:17, 30 August 2011 (EDT)

Look for example at Stock^{[32.1S, 63.8W]}, it renders quite a bit south of the road. A friend of mine tried to locate Blackwold's Roost for the deed, but at that time it rendered inside the forest of Far Chetwood. The new coords at the Archet map is better but not exact.

I fail to understand, in my world a snippet of code translates coords to a location at the image, a quite simple piece of math that only requires knowledge of coords in one corner and its diagonal mate. Do you mean that Turbine screw up on the coords in game so they read differently from time to time?

Regarding Thorin's Hall, hovering over the icons at the in-game map reads some N/E-ish coords, but you are correct that they do not read at the lower left corner of the map. Anyway, I believe that operation is easy ... given that somebody helps me somewhat. Hence, how to proceed? --Zimoon 19:09, 30 August 2011 (EDT)

The logic for positioning the map tooltip markers is contained in User:Eleazaros/coords.js, last I checked. As I recall, it was some heavy wading to find that javascript and how it gets called, although this code turns out to be fairly straight forward, itself.

This code requires a 450px map. I have a suspicion that the logic assumes some specific aspect ratio, so if a new map is captured with a different aspect ratio than what the code assumes, the marker will not be positioned correctly. If the aspect ration of the map image is wrong, when you set the constants in the code to make the E/W position right, the N/S position will be off (with an error that gets larger as you move south), and vise-versa.

RingTailCat (talk) 20:16, 30 August 2011 (EDT)

It also has to do with the actual corrdinates used... The Shire Coordinates 32.1S 63.8W, in-game, put you in the courtyard of the Inn... down the road near the "K" in Stock. However, the Stable is back at 32.1S 64.1W. Similarly, the coordinates which show in the lower-left of the in-game "big map" seem to be off by .1 from the location of the flag/milepost/horse head.

Nominally, all the maps are screen-shots and should be the same size? or do they change depending on the size of your screen? Wm Magill - Valamar - OTG/OTC (talk) 20:47, 30 August 2011 (EDT)

Thanks RingTailCat, I found the code and will have a look later on. A quick skim through indicates it is pretty straight forward and about what I expected, but I need to check for possible catches :)

Regarding coords at Stock, I visited these locations in-game and made sure they are correct. I also that they do not somehow suffer from a at-the-border effect so that moving a very small distance would change them a dot. I suspect the tooltip logic is off because of wrong initial pixel values at the image, wrong aspect ratio, or if the image is replaced but code not updated.

Thanks for all input :) --Zimoon 03:30, 31 August 2011 (EDT)

Return to Isengard NDA lifted

Fascinating ... The NDA on Return to Isengard was lifted on August 2nd... just after the first "stress test" on 27 July... But posted on the general game forum and NOTHING in the Beta forums until I posted a question about it last week.... and others have done the same. The most interesting thing is "the thread linked below " does not exist if you go to the head of that forum. (simply click back one link on the top of the posting.) From another thread, apparently the announcement was made via a "twit"...er... "tweet"

https://forums-old.lotro.com/forums/showthread.php?347848-Beta-NDA-officially-lifted

First screen shots:

Isengard

Gap of Rohan

Dunland

The maps are early versions and I expect them to be revised... especially Dunland as there are at least 3 versions now!

Which also begs the question... one or three? Turbine's hype said 3 -- Dunland, Isengard, Gap of Rohan. However, the "original" map of Dunland contained everything... one version still does -- Isengard always had a separate map as did Galtrev. However, there are now additional maps... The Gap of Rohan (posted) another one I though I had a shot of, but can't find. And, unless(when) they change it -- 3 maps Turbine labels "Dunland" each with a slightly different layout.

and what to call them? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Magill (Contribs • User Talk).

Maps without names, hmm that could be a tough one. How are you supposed to be able to select them then through the area list? My advice is, let's wait till RoI is really out and we get the stuff. They're always changing stuff last minute. --Ravanel (talk) 05:04, 31 August 2011 (EDT)

Ok.... I have accumulated "a bunch" (100+) of screenshots of "stuff" from ROI... there are lots of new [[Items]] [[Quests]] and other things I can't think of off hand... which need to be created. The ROI expansion is huge, and probably has a large number of "updates" still to come, just to complete what is there. Needless to say, things are still very much "beta" ... I just submitted 4 or 5 bugs to "T7" (Westfold) Crafting, so things are anything but static.

The question is ... What to do till then (27th)? Needless to say, there is far more to do than I can possibly accomplish on my own. Is there any kind of "private" area on the Wiki? Open to view only by, say Ninjas and Editors or by a name list of people? I would post the "raw" screenshots there for people to wade through on their own and pick "stuff" to begin working on.

On Questing in Dunland:
Dunland has Two primary "entrances"... both are directly related to following the Epic Book string, but generally available. These lead to, more or less, "quest paths." It appears that the info at Massively from back in June accurately describes the situation in Dunland:

"Fortunately, for those who might be a little tired of typical questing, Turbine's experimenting heavily with phasing technology this time around. 
This means that the game world will begin to react to your actions, changing as you complete quests. 
Phasing isn't completely new to the game -- Turbine's already included it in past updates -- but the expansion will utilize it so much more than ever before."

The whole quest business "seems" to be much less "obvious" (i.e. visible rings) and much more "threaded." That is to say, there are very few "quest starter" NPCs. But once those quests are started, they "unlock" a whole string of, previously passive NPCs who want something done.

The most obvious implementation of this is "Tâl Methedras - Snow-dusted village of the Falcon Clan - anti-Saurman, Friendly to the Grey Company." This large area is an instance where you pick up the quest to gain entrance to the area back in Galtrev from an old crone, Catrin of the Falcon Clan. She has you do a couple of quests in Galtrev, then sends you off to Tâl Methedras where a whole collection of NPCs compete for your attention ... in sequence, of course (something like 20 quests). This string of quests shows up in your Quest Log as part of VIII, Book 4... but those from Tâl Methedras, are not quite as "directly involving" the rangers. And each quest gives rep with the Men of Dunland (and IXP), not with the Grey Company. The way these quests are presently enumerated may change. I don't know. And I don't know if Tâl Methedras quests will be available other than via the book.

However, the main point is... the way quests are presented forces you to do quests.

As you enter Dunland as part of the Grey Company's move south (via one of two routes) at each "location" you are told to "Help the people of XXX as much as you can then go on to location-next." It is an interesting way of presenting quest material, and I suspect that if one actually enters Dunland via the Epic (Book 4 starts in Lhanuch) that there will be more quests made visible to get you up to level by the time you get to the "location-next." I have no trouble believing that to level from 65 to 70 by the time you get to Galtrev you need to do this, i.e. the Books. (I leveled to 75 via the Eyes and Guard Tavern.) Similarly, I suspect it is not possible to "skip" areas (like most of us do with Angmar and Forochel these days) and still get to 75 in time to survive Isengard...

Also, and I have not explored this at all... there appears to be a "good" and "not-good" path/string for quests. You first encounter this immediately on the Book "string." It is interesting how Turbine has handled them, and unclear, how they will fare as the Beta continues -- lots of comments and bugs with them.

One last comment on Questing (as I've progressed so far)... your first quest into Isengard comes from Galtrev... You get popped into the "forges" underground in Isengard from Galtrev... so far I haven't found a way down from within Isengard... but then I was looking for Quickbeam...

Yes, he's there watching his "charges" being cut down. So far, I have not figured out how to get him to talk to me, but then he may not really be "active" yet (or I may not have done the prerequisites yet)... we still have at least 2 more major patch sessions coming, based on the "new patch every Wednesday" schedule.

All and all ... ROI is an exciting and expansive expansion... fun to watch it unfold. Wm Magill - Valamar - OTG/OTC (talk) 22:44, 4 September 2011 (EDT)

Thanks for the extensive write-up and for giving us a taste of what to expect! Without intent to diminish the planning and preparation you're doing for RoI's launch...I think most people are already up to their eyeballs in keeping up with current content. :-P Just like anything else with the wiki, we'll get to it when we get to it, I guess, heh, especially as things are likely to change right up to (and beyond) the last minute - as you mentioned post-release updates that are bound to happen... Sethladan 23:59, 4 September 2011 (EDT)

If you're wanting to start making some of the pages, you could always make them on the test wiki then copy them over to the main wiki once RoI goes live. Amphoras (talk) 06:27, 5 September 2011 (EDT)

What to do about the rangers?

With the release of the Epic VIII... and especially Book 2, "The Ride of the Grey Company," we find the same rangers in a multitude of locations.
In Book 3 this "multiple location (image) problem" is compounded, and in Book 4... we encounter them in different locations during the entire string of quests.
Up to this point we have created "Halbarad" [which should, to be consistent, now be "Halbarad (Esteldin-1)," and "Halbarad (Esteldin-2)], "Halbarad (Rivendell)," Halbarad (Eregion)," "Halbarad (Enedwaith)" .... ooops, there now needs to be at least ... Halbarad (Enedwaith-3-1)" Halbarad (Enedwaith-3-2)" Halbard (Enedwaith-4-1) ... this is getting quite tedious, and not really relevant as they are all the same image with different backgrounds.

Personally, I would rather see all of the "disambiguations" on one page than have to keep looking for other pages. Especially as the individual pages really do not list any information other than the quests he is involved in. Does anyone have a reason not to combine them? Wm Magill - Valamar - OTG/OTC (talk) 19:31, 5 September 2011 (EDT)

I would say that Halbarad should be listed as (Esteldin), (Rivendell) and (Enedwaith) and just have his many locations - or points in the story - explained in the different sections, or divided on one page however is easiest to understand. Having seperate pages for each time he appears in the quest chain is ridiculous I agree. That way there's only 3, 1 for each map. :) Rogue (talk) 01:24, 6 September 2011 (EDT)

Just an FYI: Updating Epic Quest pages

As folks may or may not have noticed... I have been updating the Epic Quest pages:

to use the "new" Questbox format (which in many cases makes pages MUCH more readable as it gets rid of lots of "wikicode.")
to include the "Chain" (questchain) parameter.

BTW, I note that this displays as "Chain" in the Infobox, while it's predicessor "questrgoup" displays as "Quest Group"

Note that this allows the elimination of the "quest group" info one each page and simply includes the "master" page.

set the "questroup" parameter to EPIC. This automagically inserts all Epic Quests into "Category:Epic Quests"

So far I have completed VIII Books 1 and 2, and Chapters 1 & 2 of Book 3.

I have also started the Book 4 "index" page. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Magill (Contribs • User Talk).

All Epic quests are already included in Category:Epic Quests by virtue of being in their respective book quest categories, right? This is creating a situation where pages are in categories and subcategories of the same category... is this at all useful? Also, "questgroup" was initially set up (as I understand it - this was before my time) to sort quests based on their "folder" in the quest log. With the recent introduction of "questchain," the infobox does look a little redundant when the group and the chain are identical. Any ideas on how we can clean that up while still accurately "filing" quests in the right categories?
That said, thanks for switching things over to {{Questbox}} - it definitely is a lot cleaner! One of Eggolass's finer moments, getting the idea for that, heh. Sethladan 14:48, 9 September 2011 (EDT)

I am confused. The Book should be filled in under "Quest group" so it gets categorized correctly and not only in the bulk folder Category:Epic Quests I thought?

I agree with Sethladan: the pages being both in their Book category as well as the general Epic Quests category is not a good thing. Pages should always solely be categorized in the lowest subcategory. --Ravanel (talk) 20:16, 9 September 2011 (EDT)

Amen --Zimoon 20:37, 9 September 2011 (EDT)

A few things from my side

Magill, as Seth stated above, the "Quest Group" parameter is the category in which the quest appears in your ingame questlog ("L"). I think those are still called "Vol. III. Book 2" in the current official version of lotro. Is that a RoI change you indicated here?
Good work on using Template:Questbox!
Zimoon, as you probably already know there should be no pages starting with "Quest Chain". Those are remnants of a temporary solution and should be replaced by the "questchain=" parameter. Not sure if you knew that while doing edits like this. I can understand that adding the questchain parameter in that case is a lot of work, but please don't add the questchain parameter and leave it empty if that quest is in a questchain. I already considered to parse all pages which lack that parameter for a questbox called "Questchain" and mark them as stubs. If you add the empty parameter, although the quest is in a questchain, those won't be marked and therefore harder to find/correct.

How did I miss this one :(

Either way, message is received ... eventually. --Zimoon 17:38, 6 October 2011 (EDT)

Seth, I already thought about the book quests too.
- The easiest way would be to compare both questgroup and questchain and if they are equal, hide questchain in the infobox. The advantages, it's easy and intuitive. The disadvantage is that it won't work on typos, even a single "." somewhere displays both.
- The harder way would be to parse both of them and if one of them vontains "Vol.", hide the questchain parameter. The advantage is that it's future/dumb-proof. The disadvantage is, that people (including me) will probably get confused when things disappear just because you entered "Vol." somewhere.

--EoD (talk) 22:57, 9 September 2011 (EDT)

1. No. When I started working on these pages last week, all of the pages were already individually in the Category:Epic Quests because they had that specific "Category:" entry on their page. Making the "questgroup" "Epic" simply eliminated that entry.(Put another way, I did not put the individual pages in the Epic Quests Category, they were already there, so I just assumed they belonged there.)
I have no problem going back and deleting them from the Epic Quests category. It's not a big deal, but that is not how I found things. Doing so WOULD clean up the "Category:Epic Quests" page in that it would then only list books (i.e. "Subcategories in the Category") and not individual quests (i.e. "Pages in the Category", eliminating the fact that they are a truly confusing and random collection of entries on that page (some 600 of them).

2. To "match" the in-game folder, "L", the "questgroup" would have to be "Epic - Vol II. Book 7:<name of quest>." (Then, within that folder, the entries are randomly named .. Vol II Book 2 is a good example, it starts off labeled "Book2 Chapter 1" but is then followed by "Chapter 2." ...sigh, thank you Turbine... ) For Volume I quests, this would clean up the fact they they are only denominated as "book," not "volume book" (and the in-game folders are now all consistent).
3. NOTE HOWEVER, it appears that "questchain" puts the entry in Category:<whatever>, the same as "questgroup"... i.e. changing the "questgroup" does not remove a quest from the Category as long as the "questchain" parameter is the same value as the old "questgroup". For the Epic line then, "questgroup" and "questchain," should ALWAYS be equal.

NOTE: "questchain" only appears as "chain" in the infobox... is that a template bug?

4. Similarly, there are (still) a number of Epic Quest pages which were included as members of "<some-location> Quests", when that is true only from a "God's-eye view." That is to say, the quest is only accessible from within the Epic quest line. A random example is: Quest:Chapter 4: Deep Is the Abyss, the two Category tags were added (recently) by Starbursty. Looking at the edit history it appears that the original entry from 2008
[[Category:Epic Quests|{{PAGENAME}}]] was changed to [[Category:Epic Quests]][[Category:Talan Haldir Quests]]

5. One other thing I have noticed... a number of quests are tagged "solo" which is "sort-of" true... except that they can be completed in larger groups as well. While other quests are tagged "solo only" -- which is true for many quests. I would assume that solo = solo only, but that is apparently not true... sigh.... Again, put another way, there are VERY few quests which are not soloable quests (since F2P), including now, all of Voume I and II. I would venture to say that as far as Turbine is concerned, ALL quests except some skirmishes and instances are now soloable. (Which is another issue... some Epic quests are now also "repeatable" instances. Quest:Rescue in Nûrz Ghâshu is one such.

6. Which brings up the matching Template issue... the "fellowshiptype" entry does NOT default to solo as the boilerplate had previously indicated (I corrected the boilerplate to match how it worked). If left blank, it is blank. If you put "solo" in the field, it enters the quest in "Category:Solo Quests." This is how it works, not necessarily as how it is supposed to or expected to work... :)

The only RoI stuff is VIII Book 4 chapter names. Wm Magill - Valamar - OTG/OTC (talk) 01:53, 10 September 2011 (EDT)

Hey, that's a big book you wrote there! I'm not going to react on all, but can say I understood that the category was already like that when you found it. A lot of things are still a mess on this wiki. ;-) I think we can agree on changing it here though (that's what a talk page is for). I think all the people I've seen so far agree on that the pages should only be found in their book category (otherwise, say so now). I agree on that the book categories should be named in a way they resemble each other. And all book quests should be found in their appropriate book quest category, no matter if contributors have listed them differently in the past. --Ravanel (talk) 09:13, 10 September 2011 (EDT)

Yeah, you really wrote a lot magill and I hope you don't mind that I add numbers to your topics.

That is basically Starbursty's work, see this for example.
The parameter "questgroup" is always the precise category name on the left in your "L" questlog. Just copy it and you are fine, although turbine is not consistent on those stuff.
Yes, the questchain parameter, puts the quest in [[Category:{{{questchain|}}} Quests]] and therefore the questgroup and questchain should be equal for epic quests, although the questchain in general is the name which is written below a quest name (on the right on the "L" questlog) and above the "questgroup".
NOTE: No, it's not a bug, it's feature :p. "Questchain" was too long for me, so I chose "chain".
As you saw, it's also Starbursty's work. So you might want to ask him directly.
"Solo" is not equal to "Solo only"! "Solo" is every quest which is not marked as "small fellowship, fellowship or raid". It's again the status of the quest in the left side of your "L" questlog (we want to be as close to the game content as possible).. "Solo only" means, it's a śolo quest you can't complete while in a fellowship.
That was a bug, I fixed it. If fellowshiptype is blank, it goes into "Solo Quests" now.

--EoD (talk) 09:44, 10 September 2011 (EDT)

Regarding Turbine's inconsistency, Magill makes an excellent point that's hard to know what to call quest groups and chains here. It's unfortunate that we advocate sticking as close to the game as possible, but have to make an exception at almost every step. I'm not sure if it's been agreed on as an official standard, but on the wiki, at least, the naming conventions for the books are consistent, as in the top section of Category:Epic Quests - the only peculiarity being that we don't add the Vol. for Volume 1 quests.
That said, I guess we need to reach a consensus (if we haven't already?) to use "our" way of writing the Epic book names for quest chain and quest group instead of Turbine's idiosyncrasy. This will let us use EoD's suggestion above (compare questgroup and questchain, hide questchain if the two are the same).
Otherwise, I'm in full agreement with all of the above. I'm of the opinion that there shouldn't be the need for manual categorization in quest pages, or at least minimally - although reaching that point may require additional tweaking of the template to "automagically" include some desired categories that don't get added at the moment. Sethladan 10:35, 10 September 2011 (EDT)

1. As for the problem of having the Category:Epic Quests being unruly, I think it can be cleaned up to show only the subcategories and not the pages themselves. When I was doing the quests, the category Category:Epic Quests was already there but the naming of the subcategories were not uniform. I agree that it will be cleaner by showing only the subcategories.

4. I added the "Category:<location> Quests" in order to list all of the quests that start from that location as I started going through Lothlórien and Mirkwood to make it easier to see which quests start there. These quests were supposed to be listed under "Related quests that start or are found in this area include:" separate from "Related quests that involve this area:". "involve this area" touches the area as part of the quest. "start or are found" starts the quest in that location/area. Hence, Category:Talan Haldir Quests shows quests that only start at Talan Haldir which includes regular quests and Epic quests.

-- Starbursty (talk) 07:31, 11 September 2011 (EDT)

My 2 cents' worth from someone who's more often searching for things than entering them on the site: When trying to add info to an epic quest, I was shocked to discover that the volume and book name did not appear in the description/name of the quest. I know virtually no one who uses the actual text quest names, except in instances where there are multiple options/branches of the same chapter quest (eg 2.5.5 battles of way of smiths/21st/deep-way).

I realize that the wiki commitment to follow exactly what Turbine has named a quest is causing this problem, but in this one case, I am casting my vote to break with tradition and come up with a different method of doing this. Commenting on the things listed above:

1. I much prefer the idea of each chapter quest residing in a book folder. Looking at the category page, I realize that alphanumeric sorting is also causing problems, because chapter 13 comes before chapter 2. This is even more annoying when showing the maximum number of results (200), as it causes all the chapters 7-9 to appear on a different page, when chapters 10-13 appear right up front. I realize why this is and that most intelligent folks know where to look to find the "hiding" chapters, I'm just complaining that it's awkward.

2. Thbbbbt on Turbine. One vote for "make it look good on here and match what you would expect it to be if Turbine had their act together."

3. It seems to me that with people coming in and out editing this wiki, having it say "questchain" would be a lot more clear than having it say "chain".

4. I think that having the "God's-eye view" location is useful in one way and not in another: It's useful if you're trying to combine your accomplishments... "I'm going to Trollshaws, what can I take care of while I'm over there?" and very UNhelpful if you're trying to complete a quest-completer-deed. "This quest is in the 21st hall, does it count towards Stalwart of the Central Levels? Wiki says it's a quest there, but...oh... it doesn't count."

5. Perhaps a new group level could be created; I lean toward "Scaling" or even "Fellowship, Scaling" to indicate that they have a "preferred" group but it's available to others.

Maybe more than 2 cents, but anyhow it's another perspective. -Adelas (talk) 00:32, 12 September 2011 (EDT)

However many cents it was, thanks for adding a "user's" voice - I know I tend to get caught up in my own little organizational editorial pipe dreams, so the feedback is much appreciated. :)
About the quest names, would you recommend that we introduced some sort of Volume.Book.Chapter naming scheme for the quest pages? For me, the name of the page doesn't make too much difference because I search for quests through Epic Quests and drill down from there, but if you were "shocked" that they didn't include the volume/book info, you probably see something I don't.
Re: Quest Chain, Magill has already suggested that we widen the infobox, so if that happens, I don't see any reason we can't expand that descriptor, too. EoD? Sethladan 01:05, 12 September 2011 (EDT)

Sure, if the questbox is widened the "Questchain" may actually fit into it. --EoD (talk) 04:32, 13 September 2011 (EDT)

On the "sorting" thing, I am not certain but can certainly test it out (when done with the geography class ;)) but I think we can use the category-sort-key. If I get it, we should type something like [[Category:Chapter 2 Quests|Chapter 002]] and issue is solved. And no, I do not suggest that as the final solution, but the sorting feature is there so... --Zimoon 02:38, 12 September 2011 (EDT)

Whew, very interesting discussion. I do want to throw my two coppers into the ring as well. I believe that the most important factor is that the wiki visitor must always be able to find the proper page by typing in the exact text displayed in the game into a search box. That is priority number one. It does not matter in the end how we name the articles and categorize them, as long as the wiki visitor can get to the right page using in game information. As an added convenience, it might be nice to allow the visitor to find the page without correct capitalization or correctly accented characters. Regardless of our opinion of the correctness of Turbine's naming conventions and consistency, the wiki visitor only has access to the information presented in the quest tracker, the quest log, and dialogs. They cannot be expected to know how it should have been done. They can't be expected to use the correct accents, especially when they may not be able to tell the difference between i and í or á and â on screen or in a screenshot. Ok, done now. You got my two silver version. RingTailCat (talk) 08:00, 12 September 2011 (EDT)

I agree on that users should be able to find stuff by typing the exact quest name as it's found in game. This is sort of a basic rule of our wiki. I wouldn't create loads of redirect pages regarding spelling though; if they make a mistake in this, they'll find the correctly spelled page immediately because they'll end up at the Search results page (on which it will most probably be on top). --Ravanel (talk) 08:33, 12 September 2011 (EDT)

Please let me clarify that I was not referring to titling pages ignoring Turbine's naming. I was vague on that in my original post and I realize now it sounded flippant. I was referring primarily to categorization (see below). Furthermore, I think it would be ideal to have a top-level header at the very top of the quest page, even when the quest chain is hidden [which is the default], that lists the "full descriptive name" of the quest, meaning all of the details in a common format regardless of what Turbine calls it; e.g., Volume II, Book 6, Chapter 9: The Mirror of Galadriel or Volume 2, Book VI, Chapter 9: The Mirror of Galadriel', or whatever the standard is chosen to be. -Adelas (talk) 20:06, 12 September 2011 (EDT)

Just to make clear where I'm headed (so that I can be stopped before it gets too far along)... I intend to go back through all of the Epic quests and remove the [[Category:Epic Quests]] entry so that the end result is ONLY the sub categories (i.e. the books) will show up on that Category page. This will have the side effect of eliminating the need for a change in the sort function... however I have noticed that same problem in numerous other situations where 10 appears before 2 in a sort list. I also understand WHY, but hate that issue just as much as I hate being forced to use 01, instead of 1.... :)

So far I have done all of the Volume III books (1,2,3) ... none of them should now appear in the main Category page as individual pages. I have info for Book 4, but will hold off on that till ROI goes live.

FWIW: I have noticed a number of "subtle" changes, rewards mostly, with the ROI versions of VIII Book 3 which I have "snuck in early." The major change likely to come will be in regards to the various "stat" changes for weapons, etc. coming with ROI... "Finesse" and "Stat Consolidation " being the two major changes coming. "Resistance," "Tactical Mitigation" and "Critical Hit Rating" and the related "Removal of all secondary characteristics" are part of the "consolidation" ... still a very fluid area. It is also interesting to note that, apparently, a great many of the various "changes" still happening in the Beta, take place without "patches" -- that is to say simply with a "server bounce." (Don't know why they can't simply say "reboot.")

One last point, I think Adelas reference to "shocked to discover that the volume and book name did not appear in the description/name of the quest" was my reaction on first visiting Category:Epic Quests. The pages section has all of the quests from all of the books jumbled together. And the Volume I books have no volume mentioned. (Undoubtedly from WHEN they were created.) I don't know if fixing THAT problem is best handled with "redirects" or some other technique. I haven't looked that far back in time yet :) Wm Magill - Valamar - OTG/OTC (talk) 17:18, 12 September 2011 (EDT)

I think that's a marked improvement in the Epic Quest category. You're probably right on the Volume I stuff; to anyone reading this, is there any reason why the categories for Vol 1 shouldn't be listed as Vol I Book _ ? As before, I'm not advocating changing the page names, but the category/quest chain names.-Adelas (talk) 20:06, 12 September 2011 (EDT)

I think it's fine if those categories get renamed to "Vol I"; as Magill said, that's probably from the time there wasn't a "Vol II" yet. The reason that volume and book doesn't appear in the quest name is because we always take the quest name as they appear in-game - and that's actually how they show up in-game. As long as they're correctly categorized and the pages contain a quest chain, this shouldn't be a problem. I agree it's not really nice and even against basic categorization rules that all pages are both in their book category as well as in the general epic quests category. --Ravanel (talk) 06:56, 14 November 2011 (EST)

Update to Boilerplate: Quest

Based on the discussion above, (and to sort out my own confusion tomorrow when I've forgotten what I read today :) ) ... I expanded the boilerplate quest page to include several annotated screenshots to indicate WHERE specific information comes from and what it looks like.

Hopefully I "got the explanations right."

1- Please correct anything I mucked up...

2- I've tried to get the "Explanation of Fields" section to NOT show up when you Create new quest. It seems long -- although that might not be an issue for folks new to the Wiki. I don't know how many folks look at the Boilerplate before trying to create a new quest. Opinions?

3- <noinclude></noinclude> doesn't do it. What does?

4- I noticed that, in addition to "Item | mode=imlink," there is now a "Rewards" ... thingie. * {{Reward|Zudrugund Trousers}} which appears to do the same thing as "item|mode=imlink", but shortened. Should that now be added to the boilerplate instead of the "Item" description? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Magill (Contribs • User Talk).

<includeonly></includeonly> seems to stop is appearing on the Create new quest page. Dunno if we want it to show up there or not.

I think {{Reward}} is the preferred option now so it should probably be added. Amphoras (talk) 17:01, 10 September 2011 (EDT)

Sorry about forgetting the sig... I think I'm remembering it about half the time :(

<includeonly></includeonly> stops it showing up on both the Create new quest page (where it may not be relevant) and the Boilerplate:Quest page, where is should show.

I guess the alternative would be to create a table... but I don't know how to get the table used to display the images 3-up within the table. Ideally it would be a "pretty" table like the Questbox table. ... have to play with that a bit. Wm Magill - Valamar - OTG/OTC (talk) 21:55, 10 September 2011 (EDT)

Looks like I have "some" of it done.... check out User:Magill/Boilerplate-quest. I haven't been able to figure out how to get the "hide" and "title" stuff to be someplace other than the first column, forcing a 2 column table when it expands. Wm Magill - Valamar - OTG/OTC (talk) 23:13, 10 September 2011 (EDT)

Back to the Moors

Those of you who have been working Ettenmoors pages, please take a look at User:Magill/Sandbox-7, and User_talk:Magill#Back_to_the_moors Wm Magill - Valamar - OTG/OTC (talk) 13:04, 11 September 2011 (EDT)

I compared your Sandbox 7 with the page Monster Play, for I think that is the page you wanted to change. Am I correct? You asked for advice, so here are some things I'd do different:

I wouldn't put the infobox halfway the page. This looks less neat.
I find the caption "Playing for the Free Peoples" a lot more logical and clear than "Getting to the Ettenmoors as an ally of the Free Peoples". I would not change this.
I don't feel "Lainedhel's Recruiters" is important enough to be a (minor) caption. You also tell a lot more about the recruitment of freeps than of creeps (creeps have introduction quests for which they have to talk to NPC A and B too etc). I feel the information under this caption is too long and not always relevant.
Over all I get the feeling of an information overload if I look at your extended version of the article, which I don't get when I look at the current Monster Play article. I feel it is too long to keep my attention and to understand the structure. It might be an idea to consolidate your texts so you still get an overview of everything there is, while you put the detailed information on other pages. (For instance: put the detailed geography information on the Ettenmoors page and describe this in one or two sentences on the Monster Play page, while linking to the Ettenmoors page.)

I hope you're not hurt by my suggestions, after all it's only my opinion (I don't know if other contributors feel like this). I haven't been doing much with the Ettenmoors on the wiki either, although I am a regular Ettenmoors player of both sides. If you want immediate feedback, please feel free to join the IRC channel. I prefer that much above lengthy talk pages. :) --Ravanel (talk) 08:24, 12 September 2011 (EDT)

Yes, Monster play was what I was looking at.
Thanks for the comments. (I've got a thick skin, so changes don't bother me.).. I actually haven't looked at it for a couple months now, and have no idea what I was thinking back then. What I remember is that when I started the first time in the Moors, I had a hard time finding out info. As I recall, what I wrote was kind of "OJL...." (on the job learning), As I found out things, I wrote them down... kind of stream of consciousness... or maybe stream of discovery.

If you feel you missed things back when you knew nothing of the Moors, you could always check what these things are and make sure they are linked to from the Monster Play page. --Ravanel (talk) 07:45, 14 September 2011 (EDT)

They just posted two Dev Diarys... Rise of Isengard: Developer Diary: Monster Play Changes – Creep and Rise of Isengard: Developer Diary: Monster Play Changes – Freep CREEPS, Make certain you read the LAST PARAGRAPH in the Freep Diary!

Also Rise of Isengard: Developer Diary New Stat Updates Wm Magill - Valamar - OTG/OTC (talk) 03:18, 13 September 2011 (EDT)

Nice updates. :) Although the creeps of my server moan that they want more new stuff. ^^

Perhaps a good idea to update the corresponding pages with these changes (e.g. Ranger Session Play) if you're still working on Monster Play articles. Would be great to have it up to date, at least when Isengard is there. --Ravanel (talk) 07:45, 14 September 2011 (EDT)

How does the quest infobox get widened?

Re: Quest Chain, Magill has already suggested that we widen the infobox, so if that happens, I don't see any reason we can't expand that descriptor, too. EoD? Sethladan 01:05, 12 September 2011 (EDT)

Sure, if the questbox is widened the "Questchain" may actually fit into it. --EoD (talk) 04:32, 13 September 2011 (EDT)

I'm guessing that changing the "width=180px" to 190 or 200 or 210 is what we are talking about needing to do to get the "titles" to one line?

I would think it would be better to force that first column to be a fixed width (so that the "titles" are all always one line, and then let the description "float."

From: Template:Infobox_Quests ....

  {| class="altRows" style="margin: 0 0 0.5em 1em; border:1px solid silver; float:right; text-align:left; font-size:90%;" cellpadding="5"; width=180px
  ! colspan="2" style="font-size:110%; text-align:left; padding: 10px" | [[Image:Feather-ring.png|25px]] {{{name}}}

So, lets see now....
1) Who gets to, is going to, change it? (I don't feel confident enough to do it mainly because I don't yet understand the test-wiki setup.)
2) Where does the "Quest Chain" value get inserted/changed?
3) How do we do the "if questgroup=questchain only print one" thing?
4) Which one ?group? or ?chain? ... ( suspect since this probably one effects the Epic quests, where it will/should always be true, that it doesn't really matter).
5) Does that change happen "wiki-wide" immediately, or do individual pages need to be re-edited to get it to kick-in? (see 1 above) :)
Wm Magill - Valamar - OTG/OTC (talk) 00:48, 14 September 2011 (EDT)

2) If you are going to Template:Infobox Quests, search for {{questchain}} and you will find

{{ #if: {{{questchain|}}} | {{!}}{{!}} Chain {{!}} [[:Category:{{{questchain|}}} Quests|{{{questchain}}}]] }}

The {{!}} is a special version of | and will be evaluated outside of the {{#if: ... }} (i.e., will be seen as a | in the table, but not in the {{#if: ... }})

3) I will do that as soon as there is a general agreement on how exactly it should be.

4) Depending on 3), but I would hide the chain one.

5) Yes, this will happen wiki wide. If you don't feel confident enough, just register on testwiki and give it a try there.

--EoD (talk) 08:19, 14 September 2011 (EDT)

TOC ... a feature or a bug?

I have just noticed that some pages have some very long TOC boxes.... that apparently do nothing but take up space. They look like they should be doing something, but nothing happens.

Take for example: User:Magill/Sandbox-2. The first two items in that TOC look like "links" ... you mouse over them and they "change." And lo and behold, you click on them and you shoot down the page to those sections, as you would expect.

However, the third line: 2.1, starts out as if it is going to do something, but doesn't.... The URL in the address bar ("go to box," or whatever you want to call it) changes to what appears to be a spot on that page,
User:Magill/Sandbox-2#Volume_I.2C_Book_1:_Stirrings_in_the_Darkness - but nothing happens. (I have no idea where the ".2C" is coming from... "collapsed" maybe?)

I have noticed this same behavior in random other pages as well and didn't think anything of it at the time -- but right now I can't find them, naturally :(.
So a related question becomes ... should the TOC "work" in preview mode? If not, that might be what I'm remembering. Wm Magill - Valamar - OTG/OTC (talk) 12:53, 14 September 2011 (EDT)

I would say that's a bug, not sure I would call it a MW bug though.. It's an issue with CSS hiding the text and the same page HTML link unable to jump to that part of the page because it's hidden. Perhaps the TOC for those pages need to just do the first level of headers or just remove the TOC. --Lotroadmin (talk) 13:57, 14 September 2011 (EDT)

As Lotroadmin said, it has to do with the collapsed tables and the text in them being "hidden" by the JavaScript. If you uncollapse all the tables, the respective anchor links work. Also, the ".2C" in the URL is probably a comma - see here (because I know W3C is your favorite reference, heh). That said, feel free to float (with {{Toc-right}} ) or hide (with __NOTOC__ ) the ToC if they bother you on your sandboxes.
On a semi related note, I think we should avoid using headers in those Epic Quest category pages for this reason - they show up in the table of contents when it's not entirely appropriate. See an example where the ToC is in the quest text section, but it includes (nonfunctional) links to headers "outside" of that section. Doesn't really make sense to me. Sethladan 16:05, 14 September 2011 (EDT)

Inserting Partial Pages - can it be done?

There have been several times when I have wanted to insert part of one page into another page, but I don't know if it can be done.
I know that you can insert a complete page, such as the way the {{:Crops}} page is part of the Resources page. However, I was hoping that only PART of a page could be inserted into another page- preferably without the section title text - because only that SECTION is relevant to the referring page, and because the section does not merit its own page.
A good example is how I want to insert Metal#Precious Metals into the Jeweller#Materials section. Since "Precious Metals" is more like a word-of-mouth categorization (that is, everyone I know refers to the metals used by jewellers as precious metals because it's faster than saying "metals used for making jewellery") and is not an official game term or in-game categorization. It is an appropriate name for a page section, but not for its own wiki page.
If I type in {{:Metal#Precious Metals}}, it just inserts the ENTIRE Metal page. Can anyone help me with this issue? Is there a workaround?
Also, another example is for the "edible crops" vs the "dye crops" in the Crops page/tables - I want to insert the edible ones into the cook page and the dye ones into the scholar page, but not include the "unusable" crops for each profession. (PS I'm still working on adding those last two tables. I'll get it done, I promise.
Thanks guys! -Adelas (talk) 01:54, 15 September 2011 (EDT)

Perhaps look at this: ~~User:Sethladan/Wiki Markup and Editing~~ (Sorry Seth for abusing your user page once again. Perhaps we should write this up somewhere official). You can use <onlyinclude>==Precious Metals=== Ore...blablabla</onlyinclude> to do just what you want. (Or ==Precious Metals===<onlyinclude>Ore...blablabla</onlyinclude> if you don't want the heading). You can then use {{:Metal}} and only the Precious Metal part will be transcluded. Granted that the page you're doing it is not already included in a similar way on another page, because then it will mess it up.

For the crops table I wouldn't know another way then just dividing the crops into a new table manually on another page. You might be able to do one half of it with a lot of onlyincludes, but the result might be... interesting. :P Although there are worse nerds than me on this wiki and perhaps they have something to add here. --Ravanel (talk) 05:30, 15 September 2011 (EDT)

I have an idea on how to do this, don't have time to try it right now, but I'll give it a go later on. Amphoras (talk) 08:39, 15 September 2011 (EDT)

Ravanel, thanks for the ideas. Unfortunately, in most cases (And both the examples we're working with), the whole page is used in some places, and in other places I want Table 1 and in yet other places I want to use Table 2. Keep the ideas coming! -Adelas (talk) 13:39, 15 September 2011 (EDT)

Following instructions of Selective transclusion, it's relatively easy to define & use sections of any page, I did some tests in this sandbox page, only the leading colon seems missing in their example. Hope it can help! :) --Goingbald (talk) 01:27, 16 September 2011 (EDT)

Goingbald...brilliant! I can't believe I'd never seen/thought of that before. That's fantastic and I can't wait to play with it in other places, too. :) Sethladan 10:14, 16 September 2011 (EDT)

I would argue that relatively easy to define & use sections of any page is an inaccurate term. Maintaining the content of this organization of pages on the transcluding and transcluded pages requires a little extra knowledge and experience on the part of the editors! It seems to me that putting the bits you want to transclude into separate pages creates a less fragile page structure that will survive clumsy, new or naive editors much better than selective transclusion. I do like the idea of pulling in parts of a page, but selective transclusion seems to require a lot of effort on both ends of the transclusion. It's an tricky solutions. RingTailCat (talk) 10:41, 16 September 2011 (EDT)

RTC, I agree that it's not easy, and it does make the page structure fragile, in the sense that accidentally deleting a } or a : could screw it all up. On the other hand, having information "live" on one page, and "visit" on other pages (ie be transcluded) has impressive benefits, the two most important being:

When new stuff comes out, only one page needs to be updated, and then all the other pages are up-to-date
All of the "containing" pages have the transcluded data formatted the same way

In that sense, it makes the data that people are looking for less threatened by new or naive editors, because the data only lives on one page, and can't even be edited on the other pages. At the same time, like you said, the "containing" pages become a bit more complicated, and although one would hope that all editors hit "show preview" first to make sure they're not breaking anything... well, at least there's the rollback feature. :)

Goingbald, I'm so glad you broke that down - it was kind of making my brain hurt on the instruction page :) I have a couple questions for you (or anyone else that might know):

Is there any way to tell the wiki "show me all the pages that contain this page or any section of it"? I'm pretty sure there is a way to tell the wiki "show me every page that links to this page", so my question doesn't feel TOO far-fetched.
- There's a link "What links here" in the toolbox on the left for that, select any page you want, then click this link & you'll see pages that link to it, those that linked via transclusion are precised explicitly by "(transclusion)" --Goingbald (talk) 14:06, 17 September 2011 (EDT)
If there is NOT a way to do that, then if the page, or the name of a section gets renamed, can a script-thing be written that says "find every place on the site that includes this text "<onlyinclude>{{#ifeq:{{{transcludesection|commonname}}}|commonname|" and change it to this text: "<onlyinclude>{{#ifeq:{{{transcludesection|newname}}}|newname|"
- That would be the job of a bot, that can run automatically and leave a trace in page logs, but I don't know how to configure one, yet --Goingbald (talk) 14:06, 17 September 2011 (EDT)
If the sections are independently named for transclusion, does that mean that each section is truly ONLY included if it is named independently? Ie, you no longer have the ability to say "transclude this whole page", you ALWAYS have to say "transclude this page, which means section 1, section 2, and section 3" [listed individually in the code]. I've never actually hit a situation where this would be a problem, but it would be good to know the mechanics of it.
- If you see the tests I've done, if you don't specify any section in particular, all the page will be transcluded, according to the different tags it contains (see Translation Markup) --Goingbald (talk) 14:06, 17 September 2011 (EDT)

Can I just say that I literally made an "angel choir singing" noise after reading those answers?-Adelas (talk) 15:15, 17 September 2011 (EDT)

Overall, I think as long as my questions above are addressed, this would actually make LESS work in the future, for the regular users and thus for the admins who have to check the users' edits.-Adelas (talk) 12:11, 17 September 2011 (EDT)

Okay, I was eager to try this out, but obviously I did something wrong. Here: User:Adelas/Sandbox-transclusion is what I tried to do with the Crops page. Clearly it is not happy with the table. I know just enough about coding to get all muddled; I realize that the transclusion text ends with a |, which is a table-cell-separator, so then I think the first | in the table is confusing the page. How can I explain to the page that the {| is starting a new table within the transclusion section? -Adelas (talk) 15:27, 17 September 2011 (EDT)

Hmmm, I should have tested with a table... Maybe should keep it simple by putting the page section in a new page and refer to it from where you need it, like what was done for Oils Index, Shield-spikes Index & the various trait pages like The Quiet Knife Traits. --Goingbald (talk) 16:58, 17 September 2011 (EDT)

...*groan!* that would take us back to square one - I don't think these sections merit pages of their own. I'd be happy to MAKE the pages and do the function that way, but in my Crops example, what would we call the pages? Vegetables and Grains are pretty obvious (in the sense that the game terms for these things are clear, although I personally get annoyed calling an Apple Tree or Tea Leaf a vegetable...), and Dye ingredients might work if I expanded it a little and only transcluded the table into the Crops page, but what about what I've titled "Spices", ie, crop/cook crit items? There doesn't appear to be a game term for them other than Cook Mastery Components.

Overall, I guess people aren't going to use these "reference" pages all that much, so this may be much ado about nothing, but I do want to aim for notability and at least TRYING to follow the game terms.

What does everyone think of me creating the following pages: Vegetables, Grains, Dye Ingredients, and ???Cook Mastery Components (although I'd like to leave the section title on Crops page to be called Spices and just explain the "mastery component" term in the section text), each page containing basically just tables marked "onlyinclude" and a very little bit of "noinclude" clarification text, and then using those to populate the Crops page (and Cook and Scholar, which is how this all got started)? Please chime in. -Adelas (talk) 17:36, 17 September 2011 (EDT)

It can still be done using tables, you just need to "trick" the page into showing you what you want. The if statement works in the following way: {{#ifeq:a|b|c|d}} if a is equivalent to b, do c, otherwise do d. The pipes | divide up the separate parts of the statement, but the system can't tell the different between a pipe thats meant for the if and a pipe that's meant for something else (in this case a table). You can get round this by using templates that insert a pipe into the page, but aren't read as a pipe but the if. The ones we need for this are {{!}}, {{!!}} and {{!-}}. These produce a |, || and |- respectively. Using these, you can change the table into a form that will not mess up the if, but will still look the same. I changed the first table on your sandbox page to this format as an example. Amphoras (talk) 18:03, 17 September 2011 (EDT)

Sidetracked.... :)

Sigh.. RL got in the way for a couple of days... and lo and behold, they end the Beta...

So I am quickly trying to grab the info on the various Rep Recipes and stuff. Men of Dunland and Théodred's Riders. These are patterned after the other Rep pages, more or less. Right now, they have complete inventories of "stuff" (Items and recipes) available from the respective rep vendors. ... but naturally, I don't have enough rep to get the recipes and probably won't before monday... grrr. All in hopes that they don't change things too much twixt now and release.

Which led me to create a new stub: {{Stub/Construction}}

It's annoying that one can only grab 4/6 items at a time in screen shots.... Lots of cutting and pasting... phew. Wm Magill - Valamar - OTG/OTC (talk) 22:57, 17 September 2011 (EDT)

I can think of at least one other editor who would probably love to use this "Under Construction" tag - good idea! Re: capturing information, I've recently been considering some sort of screen video capturing software that I could just turn on while playing and review later on, instead of having to remember to stop and screenshot everything. That way you could just mouse over things as you go along, and then you have a record. Not as handy to have as a screenshot, for sure, but another option, I suppose.
Edited out your template call here: It was adding this page to the "Under Construction" stubs category. Sethladan 12:34, 18 September 2011 (EDT)

Quest-template and race= issue

It was briefly mentioned the other night that it would be nice if race= within the Quest-box template could automagically add to the categories, such as race=Elf yields Category:Elf Quests. And if it at the same time linkifies Elf in the display-box.

Rogue fixed the first part, for a single race the category is generated. However, not if there are more than one, such as for the introduction quests which usually are "Hobbit, Man", or "Dwarf, Elf". That yields "Category:Dwarf, Elf Quests" O^O. However, Rogue mentioned that somewhere else this had been done, and that Seth was best-suited to possibly look into this.

Personally I lend towards: "if this is too much hassle, don't do it but revert Rogue's suggestion, and we continue to manually add categories for race. I do not know how many race-bound quests there are but the introduction-quests are manageable, no doubt.
-- Zimoon 06:50, 18 September 2011 (EDT)

I saw the changes you guys were trying to make, and have been thinking about how to make it work. Should be possible, although it's a fine little jig that the code would have to dance, heheh. I know there are some race-specific quests in the Volume II Prologue, some more in Enedwaith, and I'm willing to bet more coming with Rise of Isengard (Magill can confirm one way or another with that).
I'll try to get it worked out today (New York time) for you to test it out and find bugs and screw it up. :D Sethladan 12:28, 18 September 2011 (EDT)

Can't say about race specific ... only been playing 2 Dwarves and an Elf and haven't really noticed anything races specific except dialog -- "I'll not die at your hands <race>" The only other one I think I remember is the way in which you are greeted, and then possibly given a corresponding quest, is in the Hobbit area of Enedwaith. So far, what I've seen in the book quests (done by an elf mostly) Wm Magill - Valamar - OTG/OTC (talk) 15:32, 18 September 2011 (EDT)

Add race2 to the template :) --Goingbald (talk) 16:19, 18 September 2011 (EDT)

Today was a busy day...

See Seth's comments on Template talk:Infobox Quests‎ for the changes there.
Zimoon, Seth and I talked about a "Dialog" box... for those quests where including the dialog portion of the quest REALLY made the quest display long. See: Quest:Chronicle: The House of Isildur for an example
Note that the "Objective" items in the Dialog box are Bold, not "====", this prevents the TOC box from really getting absurd. Note that this dialog section tends to be captured Chat Log, while the contents of the "Quest Text" is from the Quest Journal. This technique is definitely appropriate for "Session" quests where capturing the "flavor" of the quest is far more important than the simple "go here-do that" Objective listings from the Journal.

Comments welcome.
In our IRC discussions today, it was pointed out that using === as a header in Category sections causes issues on Transcludes. Consequently tonight I "fixed" ALL of the Category pages for the Epic Quest string.
Basically I replaced the === with <span style="font-size:125%">'''Volume I, Book 1: Stirrings in the Darkness'''</span>. This preserves the Font Size associated with === ; the text entry is bolded.
Zimoon has been working on a major update of the various Introductory areas.... lots of good work there.

Wm Magill - Valamar - OTG/OTC (talk) 21:44, 18 September 2011 (EDT)

Just to note, I'm not too enthused about the idea of adding new boxes to quest pages and mostly stayed out of that "Dialog" discussion. I did (and do) agree that sometimes the dialogue can be overwhelming in the quest text. I recall reading some conversations somewhere from before my time where the merits of including dialogue were debated, but Magill made a good point that it's nice to be able to go to the wiki and reread some of the flavor that happens during a quest that we might miss while actually playing the game.
That said, an ideal (to me) solution would be some sort of unobtrusive show/hide setup where we could keep the dialogue in line with the quest text like it is now, but invisible unless the user "clicks here to view dialogue" or something of the sort - along the lines of the collapsible boxes we have now, or the Tier1/Tier2 business for creatures. Barring someone (EoD, Amphoras, or me, most likely?) finding the time to develop the JavaScript for that, though, I leave the discovery of a more workable solution to our more energetic editors, heh. Sethladan 22:29, 18 September 2011 (EDT)

Hey guys, good to see you have been busy with getting the quests solved! Just wanted to add that I agree with Seth. I don't think it's a good idea to add another box in the template. I know that in the past there have been weeks of discussion about the current quest template and how it should show up and it actually looks nice like it is now. More boxes makes it less clear. An elegant solution with clicking to open up the quest text or something of the like is preferred, and seems possible to implement. --Ravanel (talk) 05:51, 19 September 2011 (EDT)

I agree that too many boxes is just confusing, but it is also confusing to find tons of dialog in the objectives if a player just wants the objectives and maybe some stuff not covered in the walk-through, which ain't there always. So between cholera and the plague, I am undecided. Actually if I really had to vote, I'd say 'get rid of the dialog-text' for cleaner objectives. BUT, I really do like being able to read them too ;)

I have absolutely no idea if it would be possible to have "two versions" of the stuff within the objective-area. One lean, and one full. Web programming is quite far from what I work with for food -- google for Simics and I am one of those guys doing the core of it ;) -- so I cannot say something intelligent here, but it would be reeeeeeeally ccol. -- Zimoon 12:20, 19 September 2011 (EDT)

^^ What Z said! (minus the part about doing anything involving programming for a living). -Adelas (talk) 17:29, 19 September 2011 (EDT)

OK... how about doing it this way... Now See: Quest:Chronicle: The House of Isildur -- The dialog section is now inside the Walkthrough and Notes section (which could be renamed "Notes, Walkthrough & Dialog." In reality, the "Dialog" is actually the Walkthrough ... i.e. it records virtually all activity in the quest. Off hand, I don't recall any quests where there is a "walkthrough" which differs from that. Mostly, that section contains "Notes" ... where to find "stuff" etc. (It appears that when you open the Walkthrough box, the nested DIalog box causes the walkthrough box to widen ... to accommodate the beveled edge. That I understand. What I don't understand is why the color of the nested box changes. And, actually, I kind-of like the fact that the box bar has become the background color, makes it less obvious.) Wm Magill - Valamar - OTG/OTC (talk) 21:51, 19 September 2011 (EDT)

I am undecided ... wonder if the dialog would not fit better with the quest text ... eeeh ... I don't know really ...

As long as the walk-through is helpful I guess we can live with whatever. -- Zimoon 02:03, 20 September 2011 (EDT)

I like the Dialogue show-box, but wish it could be a sub-part of the quest text box. I don't agree that it belongs as part of the walkthrough and I think if someone came upon the site without reading our conversation here, they wouldn't think to look in the walkthrough for that.

Also, although both spellings are technically correct in American English, I prefer "dialogue" to "dialog". Also, since so many other game terms (jewellery, armour as two stand-out examples) skew towards the British spelling, I think "dialogue" fits in better.

Always inserting my 2 cents :P. -Adelas (talk) 14:52, 20 September 2011 (EDT)

For me, a big part of the appeal of the game is the story. I find that sometimes the game flow does not let me take the time to read the bestowal dialog, background and dialogues. I get left behind, or blindsided by enemies. Even with chat logging, it is hard to recreate the sequence and flow of the quest. I asked someone else, "Who was Nár talking to?" They didn't know, because they were not able to read all the dialogues and keep up with their fellowship. I find that having the dialogues from NPCs and escorts in the quest, embedded in the correct sequence with the objectives, is very valuable. I can always skip the parts I don't want to view, but I can't always recall, recreate, or precog the bits that are not there. BTW, the British spelling is a tip of the hat to the author of the story and is part of the unique flavour of the game. RingTailCat (talk) 15:49, 20 September 2011 (EDT)

Category Tree

I've made some tweaks to the Category Tree which greatly improved how they expand, for example: Category:Worlds. If you notice anything that could be improved with the category tree let me know. --Lotroadmin (talk) 23:15, 19 September 2011 (EDT)

ROI Goes live on MONDAY 9/26/2011 -- yes, a day early

Sapience announced today that the severs would come down early Monday morning, and when they came back up ROI would be live.

FWIW... the initial Bullroarer "patch" took about 45 minutes to download. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Magill (Contribs • User Talk).

On what kind of connection was that? T1, dialup, etc? -Adelas (talk) 23:27, 23 September 2011 (EDT)

A Search issue

Cannot find a better place to post this alert. The search boxes (the top/right under Log in/out, and the one at the search result-page) support suggest-as-you-type. That is really cool :) However, type a dash and it is confused. Try type "Bree" and everything looks nice, add a dash (minus) and it still nice, add "m" and it is confused and includes whatever that begins with "Bree-". Sometimes it does not matter but if the possibilities are too many it rally does ;) Probably some regular expression is used which do not interpret - verbatim but in some other way, is it? -- Zimoon 04:32, 24 September 2011 (EDT)

Today I noticed that this issue also affects special characters, such as ú. Try typing searching for Dúnedain: "Dun" or "Dune" does not list Dúnedain ... perhaps it should because of all those with non-international keyboards? ... Try typing "Dún" and lots of things beginning with "Dun" (without acute accent) are listed. Try adding an 'e' to get "Dúne" and, loo and behold, nothing at all.

Is this code in our hands? Or is it built in with Wiki? If the first option I could give a look, unless somebody else wants to ;) -- Zimoon 03:00, 26 September 2011 (EDT)

Renaming pages and Where to ask small questions besides IRC

Hi guys, I didn't know where else to put this. I uploaded several images recently that had the wrong spelling (they all said Gabilizan instead of Gabilazan). Afterward, I added the move template to the image page, but they don't appear in the Move Candidates category. Specifically:

File:Gabilizan_Captain.jpg
File:Gabilizan_Guard.jpg
File:Gabilizan_Foreman.jpg

I have two questions: First of all, what did I do wrong so that the files would not appear in the category? And secondly, if I need something like this taken care of, is this the best page to do that, or is there somewhere else that multiple admins are guaranteed to see? This really applies for other questions that I want advice on, too. I put comments on discussion pages, but if nobody is watching the page, then nobody knows I was trying to ask a question. Usually I feel those questions aren't important enough to put over here and clog up this page. I know you are all often on IRC but I'm not able to get on there from this computer. Thanks guys! -Adelas (talk) 20:13, 24 September 2011 (EDT)

Hiya! Regarding the move template, you may be doing more work than necessary: Just add {{Move}} to the page in question. It looks like you're copying the code right out of Template:Move, which works fine for adding the box, but then the categories get reversed.
As for asking small questions, this page seems to get a lot of traffic lately and has become something of the "water cooler," I guess. Definitely feel free to ask small questions here. You can also try the forums or even just leave a note on your favorite admin's talk. Anything template or syntax-related ("how do I...?"), you're more than welcome to bug me about; other editors have their own little pet areas (Ravanel and creatures or Lore-master skills, for example). Of course, it's often hard to tell who's working on what around here, so public discussions can always go on this page. :) Sethladan 21:19, 24 September 2011 (EDT)

Moved the pages in question. Thanks for those additions; they look great! Sethladan 21:24, 24 September 2011 (EDT)

Creating a new recipe ...

Sigh... looks like I've found another can of worms, like I did with create quest ... ... started to add a new Westfold Crafting Recipe...
(I still don't completely understand how the different parts here do/don't/should work together, but I think I'm getting to see more of the gestalt.)

A) It appears that each thing in the "Article "Creation"" section should have:

From the Help page: the "Create <something> entry"
The Template:<something> - the thing which does the work
- Template:<something> Preload -- not certain what this is
The Boilerplate:<something> - (i.e. the documentation that is inserted in the Create box)
Help:<something> - some of these are missing for create pages and some are a cross between documenting the Create page and explaining how to create a documentation page.

As we have been chatting ... "us en-ga-neers tend towards consistency"

Towards that end, I have "sorted" the Help page and expanded some names to better explain what they are.
I have updated the Article Creation article on the help page to reflect current expected usage of the "Create Article" section.

B) Help/Create a recipe .... creates a page Item:<name> which contains "something to edit."

That "something to edit" does not match the contents of Boilerplate:Quest ... which IS displayed ON TOP of the edit box

Easy example, look at the entries for "name=" "icon=" "disambigpage="

in the boilerplate it reads:

| name = <<recipe name>> Recipe

| icon = <<proficiency profession>> Recipe-icon

| disambigpage = Item:<<recipe name>>

in the Recipe section it reads:

| name = xxx Recipe

| icon = Proficiency Profession Recipe-icon

Both of these are "different" from the similar field for the "Create Item"

Create an Item reads:

| name = {{subst:PAGENAME}}

| icon = {{subst:PAGENAME}}-icon

| disambigpage = Item:{{subst:PAGENAME}}

Similarly, the Crafting section of "something to edit" has:

| name =

| icon =

while the "Crafting" section of the boilerplate has:

| name = <<recipe name>>

| icon = <<recipe name or name of icon if different>>

1-I suspect that each "Create" page template and corresponding boilerplate should use the syntax found under "Create Item"... i.e. all Create templates need that update (as do the corresponding Boiler plate and template doc pages.

Easy enough to do, but I don't have a clue what "impact" (i.e. unintended consequences) that will have.

C) Pages to delete:From Category:Template_Documentation...

Template:Deed/doc -- Blank page
Template:Crafting/doc -- page does not match Boilerplate:Crafting
Template:Legacy/Doc --Blank page

One presumes that the Boilerplate pages SHOULD be the doc pages for all of the top-level templates? Wm Magill - Valamar - OTG/OTC (talk) 01:45, 26 September 2011 (EDT)

Can we have one question at a time, please? :D (And succinct-er headlines). Template:Deed/doc and Template:Legacy/Doc are not empty. Template:Crafting/doc documents only Template:Crafting, while boilerplates are intended to describe layout instructions for a full page. Hope that starts something of an answer there. Sethladan 02:58, 26 September 2011 (EDT)

I believe we can deprecate the Boilerplate:Crafting. I notice that the Create new recipe is using the Template:Recipe and Boilerplate:Recipe and somehow the Template:Crafting is included? Hence, remove Boilerplate:Crafting and unify boilerplate to Boilerplate:Recipe with help-text and examples. It is that one that an editor will see when creating a new recipe. (EDITED) -- Zimoon 11:46, 23 October 2011 (EDT)

Template:Deed/doc and Template:Legacy/Doc don't display anything for me. Wm Magill - Valamar - OTG/OTC (talk) 13:34, 26 September 2011 (EDT)

Template:Legacy/Doc does contain info, it just only displays it on Template:Legacy (I know for a fact because I made it). I assume Template:Deed/doc is the same. Amphoras (talk) 17:40, 26 September 2011 (EDT)

Regions and maps in ROI

Ok... Dunlending is linked to Eriador not to Rhovanion, despite the "obvious hole" seen on the Rhovanion map where Dunlending should be. In addition to the top level map change, all deeds appear in the Deed Log under the Eriador tab.

I have started logging what I'm doing and have done on User:Magill/Projects- ROI-update

Discussion on Categories versus Templates wanted

I have written a talk-article that became quite long.
With the best of intentions though.
Please visit and discuss at User:Zimoon/Discussion_on_Categories_versus_Templates.
--Zimoon 15:12, 2 October 2011 (EDT)

Integrating {{New}}

It was mentioned on here about possibly starting to migrate {{New}} from the test wiki into use here. It should have pretty much no effect on the appearance of items, and the only thing that would immediately need changed would be {{Item Tooltip}}. Once it's added, we should start using the separate templates for each type of item. These would be smaller, more specific templates that would only use the variables needed for those items. This should avoid the problem where {{Item Tooltip}} currently has loads of variables, with each page only using a few. Some of the new item templates have been created, all that needs finalising is which variables they should use. There are another few items templates that still need made, but once the variables are decided, that shouldn't take too long. Items is not all {{New}} can be used for. If we decide that we want to, it can also be used for effects, skills and traits (so far, others could be added if they were wanted). Some examples of how the pages would look using {{New}} as a base: effect, skill and trait. Changing them to use {{New}} also allows things like popups, imlinks, etc. that items currently have. Some examples of these: examples. So, what do people think about starting to use {{New}}, and what templates should we enable it for (eg. items, skills, traits, effects)? Amphoras (talkTalk to me!) 18:19, 2 October 2011 (EDT)

Any chance we could come up with a better name for it? :-P "Tooltip" is the first thing that comes to mind, but that's unfortunately already taken... Sethladan 19:48, 2 October 2011 (EDT)

Itemtip ? --Zimoon 19:59, 2 October 2011 (EDT)

We could call it "Tooltip" and move the current one to "Old Tooltip" or whatever else. It should just require copying Tooltip to the new name, changing all links/references to the new name, then deleting the current template to make way for {{New}}. It would take a few hours to do, but the only "difficult" part would be making sure the command used would change everything properly and not mess anything up. Amphoras (talk) 05:20, 3 October 2011 (EDT)

I just wanted to point you over to [my comment] on Zimoon's category discussion, because my question about categories and lists brought up some observations that might be useful in coming up with new types of item templates. I love the idea of separate templates for different types of items. The link when you say {{New}} doesn't work. I don't know where to find the test wiki. Where should I go to read more on what is already being done with this, and give input/ideas/more observations on what might be missing or needed when creating new item templates? Thanks! -Adelas (talk) 01:20, 3 October 2011 (EDT)

Sorry, I should have added those links. {{New}} is here. There's a rough sort of table here which shows the suggested different item templates and the variables to use in each. As I'm sure you can guess, the ones with red links haven't been made yet, and you can see an example of how they work here (that's the one for Armour items). All of them use {{Item}} as a base, which then uses {{New}}. Amphoras (talk) 05:20, 3 October 2011 (EDT)

ah, thanks for helping with that. Now another question: since that is already the discussion page, where can I make comments or suggestions? for instance, I think there should be a line for "is it craftable by a player" (obviously shorter parameter like "crafted" or something) and then "what profession crafts it" (craftedbyprof or craftbyprof?) so that ultimately the system can identify all items that are crafted by a given profession. Also, some quest items are only for specific classes, for instance, Item:Clouded_Worm_Eye. The tricky thing is that they can be picked up by players of all classes, but they are only a QUEST item for certain classes. I think I have a few other suggestions, but again let me know the best place to put those. -Adelas (talk) 15:46, 3 October 2011 (EDT)

On here is fine, probably better actually as more people will read it than on the test wiki. Amphoras (talk) 17:25, 3 October 2011 (EDT)

In preparation for this, {{Tooltip}} has been copied to {{Item Tooltip}}. At some point tomorrow, I'm going to run my bot to convert all current pages to use {{Item Tooltip}}. After this, {{Tooltip}} will be replaced by {{New}}. After that is done, pages can start being changed from {{Item Tooltip}} to the new item templates. Amphoras (talk) 20:05, 4 October 2011 (EDT)

Just remember the Create_new_item, maybe a page similar to Create_new_location ?? --Zimoon 17:33, 6 October 2011 (EDT)

Skirmish Mobs: how to designate HP

Hey guys. I was doing a skirmish on Tier II for the first time, and one thing led to another, and I ended up trying to figure out how we designate the skirmish mobs' health when it's different for every level/group size/tier. Should each mob end up having a giant grid that lists all possibilities like the one that has been started on Ufglup? Has this already been discussed somewhere that I should go and read about it? --Adelas (talk) 19:06, 7 October 2011 (EDT)

What first comes to mind is to just indicate its type, compare Difficulty indicators. That would be Normal, Signature, Elite, etc... I am not sure the exact numbers are that interesting but rather their strengths and their weaknesses; if these two are not "hintful" enough, a tentative stratagem.

Mind you, this is sprung out of a mind that is not yet caffeinated ;) -- Zimoon 04:33, 8 October 2011 (EDT)

FYI - Interesting... Turbine Forums has a problem..

Posted sometime this morning/aftenoon (Wed 12 October)

"We have identified a potential issue in the forum system. As a precautionary measure we have disabled our forums while we investigate. We will bring the forums back online when we complete our work. We thank you for your patience.

One wonders if this is related to the recent (Monday this week) hack of WINEhq.org (Userids and passwords stolen from their Wiki.) Both Bugzilla and the main App Database was compromised:

We are sorry to report that recently our login database for the
WineHQ Bugzilla Database was compromised. We know that the entire
contents of the login database was stolen by hackers. The password
was encrypted, but with enough effort and depending on the quality
of your old password, it could be cracked.

We have closed the hole in our system that allowed read access to
our database tables.

For more detailed information about this hacking, please read about
it at this link:
https://www.winehq.org/pipermail/wine-users/2011-October/097753.html

Again, we apologize for any inconvenience this has caused.

Wow... here it is Friday (14 October), and the LOTRO Forums have been down all week... you might think they were using Blackberrys as servers :) Wm Magill - Valamar - OTG/OTC (talk) 22:16, 14 October 2011 (EDT)

They have had a security breach, change your password for lotro and anywhere else you use the same password. https://www.lotro.com/news/latestnews/1497 Amphoras (talk) 07:37, 15 October 2011 (EDT)

Who's "in charge" / able to assist with major site functions?

Hey there. Is there a list of people who are best able to assist with certain major site functions, or working on those functions, such as site search, upload file, templates, etc? The question came up because I have persistent problems with the search function but don't know who to notify/discuss it with, but I think overall it would be a good thing to have written down somewhere. -Adelas (talk) 04:37, 20 October 2011 (EDT)

For things like the search function, Lotroadmin is probably best to ask. Amphoras (talk) 04:58, 20 October 2011 (EDT)

Can someone explain Special Pages: Orphans

Can someone explain: Special:LonelyPages? Or is this (and the related "What links here" function broken?)

The explanation at the top of the page.

"The following pages are not linked from or transcluded into other pages in Lotro-Wiki.com."

Is clearly incorrect....

Example, the third entry: Acolyte of Pestilence is clearly linked "to" by Lost_Temple#Creatures yet neither LonelyPages nor "What Links Here" shows any link.

The Lost Temple page uses:

==Creatures==
''Click ''[+]'' to expand a list of mobs found within the instance.'' 
<categorytree mode=all >The Lost Temple Mobs</categorytree>

And, for what it's worth... the statement should probably read... "The following pages are not linked to from other pages, nor transcluded into other pages on Lotro-Wiki.com. Wm Magill - Valamar - OTG/OTC (talk) 16:46, 29 October 2011 (EDT)

I would suspect that the categorytree bit on Lost Temple doesn't count as a direct link to Acolyte of Pestilence, since it's just listing things in a category - remove the page from the category and poof, it's not linked to anymore. Not sure if we can change the message at the top of the special pages (probably somewhere, we could), but I'm not sure what the difference is between the current description and yours. :-P Sethladan 17:03, 29 October 2011 (EDT)

I concur with Sethladan as I run into this not long ago. Technically, a categorytree does not generate any links whatsoever, they exist only during the brief moment the page is dynamically compiled and sent to the visitor, then it is gone again and the brief existence was just in transient RAM memory. What-links-here displays statical links based on what is stored in the database. Transclusions are actually more static as the server compiles and caches the result, it is not transient but volatile storage. Thus the text is correct. -- Zimoon 07:09, 30 October 2011 (EDT)

The existing sentence is very poorly constructed and does not convey the intended meaning without the reader inferring a great deal.

The way the existing sentence is read, one is told that the pages in the list have no links FROM them to other pages.

I guess the "lesson" here is that "Category Tree" should NOT be used on pages, instead one needs to list the specific entries.
... either that or the "Orphaned Pages" and "What Links Here" pages are actually misleading, i.e. they do not provide either useful or accurate information some unknown portion of the time. That is, one CANNOT trust the determination that Orphaned pages with nothing linking to them are really a waste of resources and should be deleted! Or put another way, it is a waste of system resources to run those two reports as those reports are not correct, for an unknown portion of the information in them. Wm Magill - Valamar - OTG/OTC (talk) 15:19, 30 October 2011 (EDT)

The presence of a page in the Orphaned Pages is not necessarily a bad thing. That page may be the top of a tree. Or simply not directly linked. As long as the page is categorized, it can be found by dynamic queries. I went through the orphaned pages this morning, looking for things I recognized. Some of them I could link up, but others ... like skirmish mobs ... must be found using the category lists. Blindly deleting pages in the orphan list would be a very bad idea. RingTailCat (talk) 16:05, 30 October 2011 (EDT)

I'm not sure where the notion appeared that pages appearing in Special:LonelyPages should be deleted. Quite the contrary (in my eyes) - it's a sign that there's potentially valuable information here that may not be immediately accessible to a user traversing the wiki via links (as opposed to the search bar or the category structure). They are - like orphans - existing without a solid connection to the rest of the wiki (note here that <categorytree> is an extension, not part of the core Mediawiki software, so it makes sense that its operations are outside the scope of Special:LonelyPages).
Consider similarly Special:DeadEndPages - there's nothing at all wrong with them, but a user traversing the site by links only has nowhere further to go from those pages short of using the Back button. Neither of these special pages (nor Special:WhatLinksHere) are "useless;" they serve very specific purposes based on the richness-of-interlinking theory of a wiki. Yes, perhaps they are "misleading" in that they don't cover every possible way of accessing a page, but even if there were no category tree, even a totally isolated page wouldn't be completely dead thanks to the search bar and Google; such pages might also be directly linked to from outside sites or from other pages within the wiki using the external link format. Sethladan 16:14, 30 October 2011 (EDT)

I do not read "from" that way, I read it the other way around from start. Perhaps I am corrupted by reading to many API and man-pages. However, there is a confusing "or" starting a sub-phrase that should be delimited by comma signs: "The following pages are not linked from, or transcluded into, other pages in Lotro-Wiki.com." Maybe also an "any" before "other pages". But I am Swedish and had no problems without knowing much English grammar. You may be right because of my last sentence ;)

The "Special Pages" are most often meant to indicate something to be fixed, not to be deleted. Lonely-pages should not be lonely, they should have something linking to them, or they should be transcluded. Why are they lonely? That is the problem. Sometimes they get lonely because of somebody editing and erasing a link. By mistake? On purpose? Who knows but the a lonely article will seldom be found. More important as a start is to find uncategorised pages and find a proper category for them, even if that is Category:TODO if one exists.

Some of the Special Pages are something that comes for free with a wiki engine, an admin need not do much but perhaps disable them. They do not waste any resources as long as nobody clicks the link though, and it seems to they work. Perhaps we look at the issue from orthogonal perspectives? In my opinion this one works as expected, whether poorly worded or not I am not able to judge. -- Zimoon 16:52, 30 October 2011 (EDT)

Special Template for Scalable (eg Skirmish) Mobs

Hey everybody. I'd like to know what everyone thinks about creating a special, different creature template for all of the skirmish mobs. I have seen discussions about how to treat those mobs, and there isn't a good answer when we're using the current template. However, if we had a special template for them, we might even be able to come up with a mathematical way to auto-compute the scaled HP and Power...?! But if nothing else, my ideal replacement template...

would not have a space for HP and Morale
would include yes/no parameters for Lieutenant and Encounter
would include ReqFellowSize (sample name) parameter for "if lieutenant, what size group must you have to see it?" (eg Emissary of War which only appears if your skirmish size is fellowship or higher.
would automatically include sections for Abilities and Stats. (see Blood-rook for an example)
would ideally auto-compute the Stats section based on the parameters (eg, Signature, Normal, lieutenant, encounter)

Please chime in with your comments! -Adelas (talk) 05:31, 31 October 2011 (EDT)

I have thought about this many times, and I agree. It is obvious that we need something different for scalable mobs. However, if we're going to put in work, I'd love to do it totally right (if possible). Scalable mobs are the future, and Turbine is going to create more and more of them. My ideal template...

would have a space where the visitor enters level, tier and grouping
would show morale/power, type and resistances dependent on what you filled in in that space

(Many skirmish mobs use the same scaling, it's just a matter of finding out which one uses which. The template could use either filled in tables that are hidden somewhere else, or (even better) formulas if we can figure them out. It would need a parameter where we can fill in the table name or formula.)

would have encounter mob, regular skirmish mob, skirmish boss, regular scalable mob and scalable boss as options to fill in in a parameter, categorizing as such where necessary
would perhaps have the info of in what sort of skirmishes (also grouping level) they are found written manually under Location, not in the template (not sure about this one)
would have abilities info written down manually under the template, just like with all other creatures

I am not capable of creating such a template myself though, and only dare asking this if someone would see it as a challenge to develop it. It would be a template that will be heavily used, but a LOT of complicated coding work to design. If nobody wants to do this, we could do with the "emergency solution" and make a version that only shows the things that are constant for scalable mobs. We should use morale/health tables that are transcluded on skirmish mob pages. I think it's preferable to have the articles for scalable mobs resemble that of 'normal' creatures (and thus the Lore-master inspect) as much as possible. However, remember that even Resistances and Mitigations are dependent on tier (and level, but that works the same as for normal creatures). --Ravanel (talk) 08:07, 31 October 2011 (EDT)

Rav and I have talked about this in the past, and it would definitely be a lot of fun to try and develop. :) I agree about keeping the formatting similar to the current creature template, and would love to see a formula sort of thing worked out to predict the morale/power, etc. (Rav and Fin and I were talking in passing about doing the same for ordinary resistances, but we all had other projects going, heh.) I suspect figuring part of that - the mathematical bit - would help with determining what other fields we need. If all scaling mobs scale the same way (doubtful), then we might not need to distinguish between skirmish, classic, lieutenant, etc. within the template itself and can leave that part in the descriptive text.
Rav's idea about having level/tier/grouping "fields" for the user to play with makes it really interesting. I guess I could just put in 65 Tier 2 Duo and have it spit out exactly what I'll be facing in that particular skirmish. Very cool, if we can make it work. Would take a lot of JavaScript, but definitely doable. (Wouldn't work for people who have JS disabled, though, so we'd need a default display.)
If someone wants to start a placeholder page for the template at Template:Scalable Creature or something like that, then we can start gathering info on the talk page and deciding what parameters we need and all! I have a long list of other things I promised myself I'd finish first, so I can't help much, but I'll be happy to do any coding that's needed once the design is all banged out. :) Sethladan 11:10, 31 October 2011 (EDT)

Do we have an new "editing engine?"

Do we have a new editing engine or did I some how manage to toggle a different interface?

I now get tabs for "Wikitext" "Preview" and "Changes" at the top of the screen.

While similar, the "Preview" tab at the top displays the text, but not the editing window, as does the "show preview" button at the bottom. ... I just realized that that is what the "Wikitext" tab does ... duh.

With the "Changes" tab and the "Show Changes" button there IS a radical difference... namely while entering this via "Add topic" ... the "Show Changes" button only lists the previous paragraph -- 10 lines maybe. While the "Changes tab" lists the whole rest of the page... apparently in reverse order!!! i.e. the changes are at the top and the "old text" goes below.... very strange.

This is signed with the new "Signature and Timestamp" button. --Wm Magill - Valamar - OTG/OTC (talk) 23:54, 5 November 2011 (EDT)

Part of the MW18 update is this extension, you can disable them by deselecting the following in the editing preferences.

Enable enhanced editing toolbar

Enable dialogs for inserting links, tables and more

Enable side-by-side preview

--Lotroadmin (talk) 00:34, 6 November 2011 (EDT)

Are there tuneable parameters for the new editor window. Specifically, I would like to reduce the vertical line spacing, as there seems to be too much white space between each line. (You can see how much there is by doing a select all (Ctrl-A).) Could you provide a link to the extension doc for us?

There seem to be a few problems with the side-by-side feature.

When I tried to see changes when I had not made any changes yet, I got a "loading" throbber that did not go away.
When I looked at changes when editing a section, it showed me parts of the page from outside the section I was editing in the left-hand comparison panel. This is a pain when editing a small section of a large document.

Otherwise, it seems to work as well as the old one, with a more modern look. RingTailCat (talk) 04:27, 6 November 2011 (EST)

It's called WikiEditor, as there are ways to tweak it there doesn't seem to be easy ways to customize it, probably can tweak the css through common.css. --Lotroadmin (talk) 16:46, 6 November 2011 (EST)

How to make work the side-by-side feature? You type in wiki format and see the change in the other half of the screen? Can't figure how to enable it... Is it because I'm still using MonoBook? Thanks for any advice! (I'm on Opera, does it work on this browser?) --Goingbald (talk) 03:30, 7 November 2011 (EST)

Is there a way to do / find this...?

Been side tracked by "real life" lately ... trying to level up my LM; get my other toons up to 75, Westfold Master and Master of the Guild; etc... :)

At any rate, I actually have the Atom (RSS) thing working for "My Watchlist" in OS X mail (but still can't get it to work in Safari). This gives me a very terse pointer to what someone has added... For example:

     "/* Just an FYI: Updating Epic Quest pages */ (Ravanel) ... more"

I have finally figured out how to use that information. Clicking on "more" takes me to the page where the update happened... in this case, the page involved is this page (the page you are reading) ... Talk:Lotro-Wiki_Contributors'_Corner. However, when I click "more" I am taken to the TOP of that page, rather than to the actual sub-heading involved
Talk:Lotro-Wiki_Contributors'_Corner#Just an FYI: Updating Epic Quest pages Which brings up question #1
1- Does anyone have knowledge of what SHOULD happen? Or, put another way, is this simply a deficiency in the Atom code in the WIKI or in the way it is interpreted?
It appears to be the WIKI. The raw text of the email message associated with the RSS feed is:

Subject: Talk:Lotro-Wiki Contributors' Corner
Mime-Version: 1.0 (Apple Message framework v1251.1)
Content-Type: multipart/alternative;
	boundary="Apple-Mail=_332EDD16-42B6-4758-9E53-1E2385D4D7D2"
X-Mail-Rss-Source-Name: Lotro-Wiki.com - My watchlist [en]
X-Mail-Rss-Article-Identifier: 2f468ec047ffd0f62210a49a63ab0a4b6719b3c5
X-Mail-Rss-Article-Url: https://lotro-wiki.com/index.php/Talk:Lotro-Wiki_Contributors%27_Corner
X-Mail-Rss-Source-Url: https://lotro-wiki.com/api.php?action=feedwatchlist&allrev=allrev&wlowner=Magill&wltoken=31a2af1b16c2172baa7ff5eeb23ea7925df50eff&feedformat=atom
Date: Sun, 13 Nov 2011 18:20:12 -0500
X-Mail-Rss-Source-Homepage-Url: https://lotro-wiki.com/index.php/Special:Watchlist
Received: from PubSub; Mon, 14 Nov 2011 06:56:36 -0500
Message-Id: <183EBE60-EB73-4DD0-908A-EBEC6D94A3C1@mcgillsociety.org>
X-Uniform-Type-Identifier: com.apple.mail-rss-article
X-Mail-Rss-Author: Ravanel


--Apple-Mail=_332EDD16-42B6-4758-9E53-1E2385D4D7D2
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Content-Type: text/plain;
	charset=us-ascii

https://lotro-wiki.com/index.php/Talk:Lotro-Wiki_Contributors%27_Corner

/* Just an FYI: Updating Epic Quest pages */ (Ravanel)
--Apple-Mail=_332EDD16-42B6-4758-9E53-1E2385D4D7D2
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Content-Type: text/html;
	charset=us-ascii

<html><head></head><body><h3 id="AppleMailRSSTitle" style="font-weight: normal; padding-top: 5px"><a href="https://lotro-wiki.com/index.php/Talk:Lotro-Wiki_Contributors%27_Corner" style="text-decoration: underline">Talk:Lotro-Wiki Contributors' Corner</a></h3>/* Just an FYI: Updating Epic Quest pages */  (Ravanel)</body></html>
--Apple-Mail=_332EDD16-42B6-4758-9E53-1E2385D4D7D2--

2- The corollary question is then: if I use the "diff" in "My Watchlist" itself, I get a showing of the newly added text and a "brief" context. However, and here is the question -- it also shows a Line Number. But I have no idea how to show those line numbers! Does anyone know?
... and for now, I'll completely ignore the silliness which the "new" editor does with those line numbers when you click "Changes." But what it does is clearly a bug. <br .>Wm Magill - Valamar - OTG/OTC (talk) 12:31, 14 November 2011 (EST)

Lotro-wiki "pointed to" by Celestrata in Yule time Surprise posting...!

"A Yuletime Surprise: Sunday, December 25th, 2011 Winter has finally come to Middle-earth. The town of Winter-home has opened their gates to travelers once more, and our Game Masters are getting into the holiday spirit! Right now, as we speak, our GMs are out wrangling a whole herd of Cremello Steeds. On Sunday, December 25th, we'll be giving them away to random players in game!

GMs will be randomly choosing players all day long across all of our servers to win one of these special player-created mounts. If you're a lucky winner, you'll receive a Cremello Steed code in your mailbox along with instructions on how to redeem your new mount. If you’ve never seen the Cremello Steed before, our friends at LOTRO Wiki have a picture of both the horse and the pony!

So, if you're online during December 25th, good luck and all of us here at Turbine wish you all a very happy holiday season!"

https://forums-old.lotro.com/forums/showthread.php?437463-A-Yuletime-Surprise-Sunday-December-25th-2011