Talk:Main Page

Facelifting the main page

Does anyone have any objections to replacing the main page with a facelift? Please respond either here or on the talk page with any suggestions or improvements needed before going live. Thank you! WinterRose 13:40, 14 October 2012 (EDT)

The current layout of the main page replacement as seen here is more or less in the final stage. I've received positive comments from half a dozen people in-game and some suggestions that resulted in modifications, so this version is the result of all that. Does anyone have any further suggestions on how to make it more appealing to new players? WinterRose 04:58, 15 October 2012 (EDT)

Signing your entries in talk pages

I'm not sure where the best place to put this is, but I want to remind everybody to sign their entries in talk pages, two dashes followed by 4 tildes '--~~~~' or just click the button that is second from the right on the top of the edit box. --Mel 10:15, 12 Jan 2006 (EST)

Also, when you're replying to something on a talk page, feel free to use this fancy feature (watch start of line)

It works really well! just add one colon (:) at the start of the lines more than the previous reply had! --Llanor 17:30, 5 February 2007 (CST)

Spam or Bot Accounts

i guess it's just something to live with.. but it seems there's another bout of bot account creation.. sorry if there's somewhere else i should post regarding this. --3nki 00:22, 10 October 2011 (CDT)

There are only so many 2-letter names they can register. Does registering require an email check? That might slow it down. WinterRose 07:21, 10 October 2011 (CDT)

all these apparently random letter and number mixed names lately are most likely spam bots, it seems to me, or bots of some kind. not sure what their goal is. --3nki 20:28, 12 January 2012 (CST)

Most likely they want to boost the pagerank of their crappy website by linking to it from here. We've all but disabled external links though, so they don't get very far. I'm not too concerned about them creating accounts, but let me know if they ever cause any more serious mischief. Waite 09:56, 13 January 2012 (EST)

Style sheets

I do a lot of style sheet and web programming for my work and I've thought of making a general style sheet for the wiki. My idea is (something like this anyway) that we inventory what we need, what kind of titles and headlines and various types of elements, tables and so on, for all the pages on the AV wiki. Then we make a stylesheet that incorporates all the commonalties on a base level (like font type, base size, site wide stuff) and also has a set of classes for people to reference as needed in specific situations. That way we have something everyone uses for consistency. If we want to change it we can, but it will be consistent. Of course we'd add to it as we go.. what does everyone think? There must be a way to include a reference to this style sheet in every page of the wiki automatically. --3nki 02:03, 20 October 2011 (CDT)

There sure is. In the parlance of MediaWiki, these are called skins. You can actually use a different skin without affecting anyone else: go to "my preferences" (in the upper right) and then Appearances. I'm reluctant to drastically change the appearance of our wiki (mostly because I don't want to deal with the complaints) but if you come up with something nice I'm willing to have an open mind. Waite 08:50, 20 October 2011 (CDT)

interesting - trying out skins now. there's one called MySkin so i guess there's a way to edit that somewhere.--3nki 19:35, 20 October 2011 (CDT)

Creating new pages

(Sorry if you don't like that I deleted all the discussion from before on this subject, but you were talking nonsense.) In the Search box, type the exact title you wish to use for your wiki page and press 'Go'. If this page doesn't exist yet, the option 'Create This Page' will be clearly visible after you've pressed 'Go'. Click that. Wow, it's that simple. --Llanor 17:17, 5 February 2007 (CST)

Naming Convention

• (If this is covered somewhere else please let me know where.)

What is the naming convention? Every word for titles (items, rooms, mobs, etc.) has its first letter capitalized, right? Even connectors like A, I, If, Or, Of, etc. "Mega's Spark In A Bottle", not "Mega's Spark in a Bottle"... or the in-game way it's spelled, "mega's Spark in a Bottle". --3nki 22:25, 27 September 2011 (CDT)

Contributing has a section about naming. --Ylem 23:12, 27 September 2011 (CDT)

Contact Information

It may be helpful to provide some means of contacting those folks in charge of this site.

If you really want to contact a user of this wiki, just edit their talk page.

Some custom insertion buttons

See all those edit buttons above the edit box? It would be nice if some of those pertained to the Avatar Wiki. For example, it's monotonous to code a bunch of mob/object/area emplates for however many pages you have to do, so some buttons could add those templates, appropriately hyperlinked, into the editbox for us to use. Giving us one-click access to template code would also help standardize the page layouts. If you're interested, the appropriate code lies in EditPage.php (all the way at the bottom). --Neyne 20:59, 1 March 2006 (EST)

Navigation Panel

We can change what links appear in that navigation panel on the left side of the screen. Suggestions? I don't want to make it too cluttered, so just a few choice links that would be more useful than "donations" or "random page" Waite 10:59, 11 May 2007 (CDT)

Category label in pages

i've noticed some items have "Category:" in front of their name and others of similar status or type do not. for example, classes ("Category:Psionicists") have it while most races do not. looking at my "view and edit watchlist" page i noticed because it puts Firedrakes in the "Main" list, whereas pages like Imps, Psionicists, and Transfigured Forest show up under the "Category" list.

just wondering what the details are; is there an in-progress movement to move towards or away from using "Category:" with the names? or some such... --3nki 19:12, 3 August 2011 (CDT)

A long while ago, someone went a bit nutty with categories and now it would take so much work to untangle it that it probably isn't worth the effort. Your best bet to make it easier to search is to create redirect pages that point to the appropriate category. Look at the area pages to see the syntax. (I did all those before, including Transforest as you noticed, and I have no burning desire ever to do it again. *shudder carpaltunnel*)

But to answer your question, I would love to move away from using categories for things like areas and classes, but not particularly in favor of refactoring the existing pages. --Neyne 21:42, 3 August 2011 (CDT)

speaking of categories... it would be nice if there was a page to see all mobs that stomp. the current page Stomps doesn't list the actual mobs just describes the trait. as do similar Mob Types pages like Sniping Mobs or something. and i tried but it won't let me flag a mob that is a stomper with that category (like the Death Knight General). i'm trying to get it to show up there like Mobs In Necromancer's Tower does at the bottom of his page. then eventually we could use that tag for other stomper mob pages and build up a list. would be nice if all the Mob Types showed which mobs were flaged for each actually, but i guess that would be a pain to do ;) --3nki 23:44, 3 August 2011 (CDT)

On each page on the left you will see a "What links here" link. Click on that to see all the pages that references that page. So you will get all the mobs that link to the Stomping page. However, that is a toolbox way of handling the issue. If you feel a need - fill it. --Ylem 06:42, 4 August 2011 (CDT)

Early on, we decided to use a lot of categories for any page that seems like it would logically "contain" other pages. The main motivation behind this is that categories give you lists for free. Instead of manually keeping a page like Gear In Wamphyri Aerie up-to-date the wiki does it for us. I also tried to get the wiki to search for categories by default, but this doesn't seem to be working anymore (if it ever did). I'll see what I can do to fix this. One possibility is to use a Google search plugin instead of MediaWiki's built-in search.

Re: list of stomping mobs. This is the exactly the type of situation that categories were made for. It's pretty easy to set up, just add [[Category:Stomping Mobs]] or so to every such mob.

Uploading XML or TXT files

We're running into a problem with CMud scripts exported as XML files. Apparently, the Wiki is reading certain characters as their ASCII code, rather than the character required by CMud to import the XML file for later use.

Is there anyway we could enable uploading of XML or TXT files so we can then link them to the correct script pages? --Shalineth 16:57, 30 September 2011 (CDT)

I just enabled uploading of .xml and .txt files. Let me know if this doesn't solve the problem. Waite 21:31, 30 September 2011 (CDT)

A way to solve this if you have to turn uploads off is -

< pre > < nowiki > code with your &lt in here < /nowiki > < /pre > (had to put spaces in the <> show it properly delete them to get it to work :/ )

EG:

look a &lt and a &gt :)

--Rhodry 10:55, 1 October 2011 (CDT)

Organizing quest pages

I've increasingly noticed a lot of players asking about quests for their level, and I realized that none of the quests on the wiki are organized by level range. Solution: create and populate categories for quests in the same level ranges as areas and gear, which is easy, if a bit demanding on my carpals. But in addition to that, do we want to restructure the quest pages altogether to separate the quest descriptions from their solutions? I was thinking of just separating them into different sections on the page, but maybe they could be separated by putting the descriptions on the "Category:Quests in Wherever" page, and the solutions in the individual quest pages. (I think it would be too much page bloat to create entirely new pages for quest solutions.) Thoughts? --Neyne 10:47, 11 October 2011 (CDT)

I would split descriptions and solutions personally as not everyone wants to see the solution straight away, although personal opinion for me would be to also include the reward in the description. --Rhodry 11:06, 11 October 2011 (CDT)

Okay, how does this look to you: Category:Quests In Walking Woods Following that model, all "Category:Quests in Wherever" page will contain the descriptions/setups to each of the quests in that area, and be in the "Lowmort X-X/Hero Quests" category (and more than one of those categories if necessary). Think that covers everything?--Neyne 10:51, 13 October 2011 (CDT)

Hmmm too bad we don't have a spoiler tag tho google says there is one via an installable extension. That way we could have descriptions and solutions on the same page. I personally would have Quests in walking woods category left as it used to be. then in the quest for lowmorts 11-20 category have something like this.

Walking Woods Plague Quest.

The area is overrun with undead, and the dying Captain Balgaar needs help.

Level Range - Solo 20s, Grouped 15-19.
Level Limits - None.
Starting Point - Captain Balgaar in the Walking Woods.
Difficulty - Medium.
Prize - Stonehall Hammer.
Solution - Walking Woods Plague Quest

Another quest goes here.

Formatted up of course with spoiler tags you could have solution changed to more info and hide the solution on that page in spoiler tags. The reason being people are going to want to find this info easily rather than having to go to each "Such And Such Quest" or "Quests In" page to find out --Rhodry 18:54, 13 October 2011 (CDT)

Well, that could be a pain to maintain, since the "Lowmort X-X Quests" categories would be LONG once they're all filled up with content. But it would be doable, as long as we figure out a decent way to sort them all (perhaps group them by reward type, i.e. Insignia/Gear/Weapon/Gold&Gems/XP etc.)

Also, if the "Quests in Wherever" categories are going to remain empty, I would suggest nixing them entirely and sticking quest pages directly in their area categories. Currently, all they do is stick another mouse click between you and the page you really want to see, and the vast majority of them only contain one quest.

In either case, I think we should plan on not having access to a spoilers tag. If we get one, that'll be icing on the delicious quest cake. --Neyne 20:55, 13 October 2011 (CDT)

<spoiler text="Who da man?">Waite</spoiler>

Heh Thanks Waite :)

The "quests in wherever" should probably stay as some areas have multiple quests across various levels. The way of organising them on the "Lowmort X-X Quests" pages is up for discussion could use a table I just listed the info I would personally would want to know if I was going to look at that page --Rhodry 21:15, 13 October 2011 (CDT)

Hmm - I think spoiler text should be used <spoiler text="first of all for this">Helpful hints and non specific tips.</spoiler>and then <spoiler text="secondly for this">Actually how to do the quest.</spoiler>bearing in mind of course that some quests have been requested not to have ANY spoilers posted about them, either indefintely, or for a certain period.--Shadowtop 06:22, 14 October 2011 (CDT)

I agree with Rhodry's suggestion here. I think "Lowmort X-X Quests" (and above) should have a sortable table with some choice information for each quest.

• Suggested level (maybe a range)
• Area
• Brief description
• Reward

Missing anything? Waite 10:12, 14 October 2011 (CDT)

Category:Lowmort 11-20 Quests what do you think? Off the top of my head, reward types should probably include Weapon, Gear, Insignia, Gold, Healies (potions/pills/staves/wands/scrolls), and Spellcasting (non-healing potions, etc).--Neyne 12:08, 14 October 2011 (CDT)