User talk:Shardis

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Hello, Shardis, and welcome to LotRO-Wiki, the Lord of the Rings Online Wiki!
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Auto-bestowed Quests

I am using the following standard for pages involving auto-bestowed quests. I am basing this off what has already been done with Category:Level Up Quests and Category:East Rohan Quests.

--Shardis (talk) 19:30, 27 April 2013 (EDT)

Please add links to examples of each usage to help document this recommendation. RingTailCat (talk) 07:39, 26 April 2013 (EDT)

Projects vs Talk

Hi, just a suggestion to put all your projects on your user page User:Shardis so it's easier to 'talk' to you literally! :) --Goingbald (talk) 12:58, 26 April 2013 (EDT)

Still new to some of the interacting with fellow editors. Followed your suggestion and moved my projects to my main user page. At some point I may do like I have seen RTC and others do by creating sub-pages off my main user page for projects. --Shardis (talk) 13:16, 26 April 2013 (EDT)
You may want to do what I have done... my main page: User:Magill is primarily an index page... which has turned into an index of indexes --- I keep hoping for some thing which will allow me to remember what I'm working on ... "senior moments and all that" ... I also have so much crap that I've also created my own category: Category:Magill's Corner so there is some chance (however small, like Gold item drops) that I'll be able to find a page "tomorrow" that I worked on "yesterday." ... to much time, not enough projects .... strike that, reverse it ... umpa-loompa-doobie-doo....
Wm Magill - Valamar - OTG/OTC - talk 20:58, 26 April 2013 (EDT)

update 7 quests

From User Talk:Magill#.22Update_7.22_Quests:

Be my guest... That was part of the pre-release update information from Bullroarer Haven't been back to Moria for a while. ... to many projects half done :(
Wm Magill - Valamar - OTG/OTC - talk 21:06, 26 April 2013 (EDT)

quest categorization tree

Some notes for own reference to make sure clear in my mind (others free to add own insight):
Been trying to get a good grasp on current quest categorization tree as part of updating Moria pages post-revamp. Looked at other regions and came up with the following observations:

  • Every quest is member of at least 2 categories
    1. One category representing the narrowest geographic location under which the quest starts: settlement/landmark -> area -> region -> land
      • Example - Category:Haudh Lin Quests and Category:Durin's Way Quests
      • for most regions, areas are subsections of the big region map (Example - The Greenway area within The North Downs region)
      • for Moria, areas are have their own separate maps (Example - Durin's Way area within Moria region)
      • geographic categories follow hierarchy according to location.
        settlement/landmark category is member of area category, which in turn is member of region category.
    2. One category representing quest group in quest log that the quest falls under
  • in addition to base 2 categories, quests can be members of other special categories
    • some special categories are auto added to quest based entries in boilerplate
      • Example - reputation, item xp, quest chain, steed xp, group level, class categories and others
    • other categories must be manually added based on particulars of quest
      • Example - timed, carry, escort, fishing categories and few others
    • all special categories are either directly members of Category:Quests or members of a subcategory (example - Category:Other Quest Categories)
      • no pattern as to where special categories can be found
        Some auto added categories can be found in both and same applies to manually added categories

--Shardis (talk) 19:31, 27 April 2013 (EDT)

Mount Icons

Thank you for consolidating the horse and pony icons! I've been trying to organize some mount stuff and was so frustrated seeing so many duplicates; wasn't sure how (or even if I could with my edit rank) to do so myself. An idea in relation to...perhaps rather than just have it under the horse name, it could be named for the steed with a (skill), ie File:Bloodbay Steed (skill)-icon.png Or perhaps File:Bloodbay Mount-icon.png? Something consistent and relevant as the Pony itself would also be using it. Would appreciate a short message when you are done consolidating them all so I can go through my property tags and make the changes -- thanks! Savi (talk) 17:57, 3 May 2013 (EDT)

Thanks for the helpful steps on moving/consolidating the icons! I will focus on that for my next project ^_^ Savi (talk) 09:35, 6 May 2013 (EDT)

Addition of Category to main page?

What were you intending to accomplish by adding the entry : Gameplay to the main page?

Depending upon your point of view a "category" is not a reasonable "starting point" from the home-page. It is nominally, an internal Wiki working document. There is a long-running debate in Wiki land, over the essentially "hierarchical" nature of the Category system vs the "random access" nature of a "wikified" document.

That particular category is both "empty" and has no text describing it.

You should create explanatory text on the Category page you point to, remove the entry from the main page or change it to point to something more meaningful and "complete" like Game Guides.

That said, I suspect that this is a classic "jargon" problem -- we have a number of pages which were written when one batch of Jargon was common and which have been "duplicated" by other pages which are named for the current usages. I run across them periodically and wind up either re-wirting or re-naming one page or the other to capture the information which is relevant, but different on the two pages. It seems to me that "game play" and "game guide" fall into this situation.

As for the category being empty -- the name is redundant with the name of the section header; however, it has almost no edifying content. I.e. an explanation of WHAT it is that you are looking at. While experienced WIKI editors may recognize it for what it is; "joe user" has probably never seen it before. For example, minimally, one would expect the remainder of the entries in that section (Emotes, Commands, etc. to be reachable from that category page. There is much more relevant content in " Game Guides for example.

"Obviously" one "solution" here is to add or otherwise "re-arrange" categories so that one Category or the other is "complete."

Personally, I am of the opinion that any link from the main page should point to a text article elaborating on the "name," rather than to a category page (especially a "naked" category page -- i.e. no explanatory text).

Should there be an article (text page) called "Gameplay" -- probably. And it probably should contain an "index" to those other topics found in the Gameplay section of the main-page. And the odds are also good that it should merge with the contents of "Game Guides.

Of course, another tack is to rename that section on the Main Page to be "Game Guides" instead of "Game Play" ... and repeat the above discussion.

Wm Magill - Valamar - OTG/OTC - talk 13:29, 21 May 2013 (EDT)
This was a temporary fix until I had time to go back and work on Category:Gameplay, Category:Game Terms, and Game Guides.
If you notice, the Category:Game Terms category is also on the main page (twice actually since the Glossary page right next to it is just a redirect to Category:Game Terms) instead of the Game Terms wikified page (I did not do that. Someone else did and partially why I considered it okay to go ahead and add the Gameplay Category as a temp fix).
While the Gameplay category has no descriptive text, there are several wikified pages in it that I felt are important for players to be able to find immediately and are not in the Game Terms category or linked to on the Game Guides page.
Ultimately, you are correct that the category should be removed from the main page, but not until the Game Guides page has been updated and fleshed out. Game Guides is currently way too sparse and VERY outdated.
Also the Game Terms wikified page should be compared with the category page to make sure it suitably presents the contents of that category in an organized fashion. That wikified page should then replace the Game Terms Category and Glossary links on the Main page.
In the end, I think a Gameplay wikified page should replace the Game Guides page as a master heading in that section of the main page with the Game Guides page as a link under it. Personally, I consider guides pages to be tutorials for specific aspects of the game system while gameplay pages are more general mechanics (this is how it works) pages.
So as mentioned originally, adding the category to the main page is just a temp fix until I (or someone else) has time for a more involved update of the relevant pages and categories.
- Shardis (talk) 14:10, 21 May 2013 (EDT)

Deleting unused parameters

I noticed that you have been deleting unused parameters from many items and the like. This is not a good idea.

It leads to unpredictable results. It is confusing when someone comes along after you trying to "fix" some issue with the item and is referring to the Boilerplate documentation.

Missing parameters interfere especially with the working of "bots" attempting to make global changes.

Templates have been developed over time and are in-fact complex and are intended to cover "all possibilities." So while the "extra" parameters seem superfluous and visually detracting, they are needed for some case.

  • Please rollback those deletions.
Wm Magill - Valamar - OTG/OTC - talk 12:13, 23 May 2013 (EDT)
Not a problem. While updating pages I had seen many Item boilerplate pages that had the bare minimum of parameters (created or edited that way by admins) and figured removing unused parameters for easier editing was the accepted norm. This was especially true for quest item pages. Only really see it with Item boilerplate since most items only use a small fraction of the parameters. It would be great if the code that processes Items could distinguish between broad categories so did not have as much unused parameters. The New Item page would ideally have some checkboxes for item type at the point where you are also typing in the new item name, so that when it goes to the next page, it already customizes the boilerplate somewhat.
- Shardis (talk) 01:34, 24 May 2013 (EDT)

Deleting items was a "trend" some time ago, before the use of bots became "common." It has since been discouraged. But there are many pages which have not been "repopulated."

The "Boilerplate problem" is actually a portion of the overall "documentation" problem. In fact, the "template/doc" page should document the template and be transcluded into the boilerplate, but the Boilerplate has frequently been updated independently. Again the "techniques" for template usage have changed over time. Several of us over time have attempted to tackle the "documentation problem," but seem to always get side-tracked by everything from Real-life to "more interesting" editing on the Wiki. See: User:Magill/ToDo for some insight into the scope of the documentation issue.

I've recently been working on "fixing" quests, but keep getting sidetracked as I try to document the Quests and etc. in Wildermore. Sigh... simply not enough time.

Templates themselves are another whole kettle of fish... personally I have little experience with them. Others have much more experience. "I think" the template that comes closest to your comment is what was done with Recipes... if in the reverse. The recipe template picks up the Item template, if I remember correctly, to generate the page. Which is also a way of saying -- the Item template itself has "just grow'd"... over time, to accommodate different situations.

Wm Magill - Valamar - OTG/OTC - talk 11:52, 26 May 2013 (EDT)

Removing unused parameters is not a problem for my bot, which is based on the pywikipedia bot.
I prefer to see unnecessary parameters removed from simple items. A couple of examples are trophies and quest items. I use a standard boilerplate for each of those item types that only includes the parameters that are applicable to those types of items.
I should point out, as well, that the standard boilerplate you get when you hit the Create new item link does not include all possible parameters, as that would be even more confusing than the current boilerplate. We might get more new editors helping out if we had specific boilerplates for new weapons or new armour, with some kind of notice that if you can't match the tooltip using this boilerplate, please try the full boilerplate. For the vast majority of new items, we do not use a large percentage of the parameters. Those unused parameters are just noise.
And of course, those unused parameters have to be parsed every time the template is executed, which obviously slows down page rendering.
I am going to continue to create trophy and quest item pages using a minimal set of parameters. I will not discourage anyone from removing completely non-applicable parameters, and I see no problem with removing other unused parameters. Always bearing in mind that the item tooltip must match the in-game tooltip as closely as possible.
- RingTailCat (talk) 16:21, 26 May 2013 (EDT)
I like Magill's passing comment of having a base Item template that has the bare minimum of parameters and then have templates for various broad categories of items that add their own parameters to the base template as needed. That is the essence of object-oriented polymorphism.
The same concept could be applied to the template/doc since one thing I have experienced a lot personally is scrolling up and down excessively on the Create article pages to move between the editting box and the notes higher up. We could have a base template/doc. The sub-category docs could transclude that doc and then add additional notes as needed for the additional parameters.
Another thought is implementing portions of the doc as collapsible tables that default to collapsed and can be opened up if the player needs to reference that section. The "clean" copy of boilerplates is a good candidate for being collapsed - most times folks need the commented version, not the clean one; in fact, the only time the clean copy is needed is for experienced editors that dont need to use the Create Article pages anymore.
- Shardis (talk) 05:17, 27 May 2013 (EDT)

I guess that RTC is the only "Botter" left... :) I haven't seen any of the others around for several months now.

14:36, 27 May 2013 (EDT)

Dunle/anding Earring

First off (since I haven't been to your talk page before) I want to congratulate you on the great editing and updating you've been doing here. Keep up the good work!

With regards to this page specifically: Item:Loop of the Dunlending Archer, are you sure about the spelling correction? Everywhere else the word is spelled Dunlending, referring to the people group. I notice both of those pages date back to 2012, so it's not immediately apparent to me which is right. It certainly wouldn't be the first time Turbine has created a spelling inconsistency, I just want to check before deleting one or the other of them. -- Elinnea (talk) 21:39, 25 June 2013 (EDT)

Since I don't have a character in-game at the appropriate level, I can't confirm the name. I was going off gut and which page seemed to have the more complete info (which usually also indicates more accurate). Having checked some other sites since then, it turns out "Dunlending" is actually the correct spelling. So need to flip the pages as eventually delete the "Dunlanding" one.
-Shardis (talk) 09:16, 26 June 2013 (EDT)

Changes with tooltip template and Skills

Please see: Template_talk:Skill#Change_to_be_tooltip

Wm Magill - Valamar - OTG/OTC - talk 13:47, 30 June 2013 (EDT)
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