| abstract | - As I went through the skills as per the discussion in GuildWiki_talk:Peer_review there were some common problems with the skill articles.
* Ranges weren't bold (all fixed [user:Ollj|Ollj])
* Ranges only had two periods (all fixed [user:Ollj|Ollj])
* Misformatted acquisition section
* Irregularity with bolding the article name (all fixed (no more boldnesses) [user:Ollj|Ollj])
* Irregularity with denoting exhaustion, penetration, and elite status (working on it [user:Ollj|Ollj])
* Missing "(Elite)" in the template for elites (?) (working on it [user:Ollj|Ollj])
* Missing elite skills category for elites (working on it [user:Ollj|Ollj])
* Fractions not using sup and sub
* Missing no attribute category for some skills (all fixed [user:Ollj|Ollj]) The first two are easy, no debate there I presume. The next I give an example of what I think is a good way (and somewhat common way, from looking at most of the skill articles) of listing the three ways to acquire skills in [GuildWiki talk:Style & Formatting/Skills/Everything Example]. For bolding the article name, in the main style page, it's suggested you bold the article name only the first time it's used. For denoting the various things, I suggest what's in the example but I don't think it was ever discussed. For the last point, I don't think it was ever discussed but I like it. Please mess with the example as you see fit before we start taking things out of peer review. --Fyren 03:42, 9 Jul 2005 (EST) Good work Fyren! I like it a lot :) It's a good way to be able to talk about the format of articles! Points of interest:
* Article names should always be linked rather than bolded, even if they are referencing their own article. MediaWiki recognises the link and renders it as bolded text. This was decided upon some time ago (I was unwaware that MediaWiki did this at first, until Tanaric pointed it out) as the content produced is more useful when referenced from elsewhere, i.e. if an article is {{included}} elsewhere, the link will not be rendered as bold and will point back to the included article, which is desirable! :)
* Although I disagree with it, is included in the Skills category, meaning any page that contains the skill box is automatically included in the skills category. While this is a labour saver it means that a few example pages are included in :/
* I don't agree with the use of the "spells" category, or of "enchantment spell" or whatever other categories are used to group skills by their type. Firstly, all instances of these category names are singular, whereas other category names on the site are typically plural, (save for the "contains xxx" categories, although thats reasonable) so I vote the category names are changed if they must be kept. Secondly I think they are pretty useless. I'm always wanting to find out what kind of skills I have and what I need by looking through the categories and I've never used this method of browsing. If a number of people do then obviously this is just me :)
* Probably not the right place to say this but Elite redirects to Elite Skill and is pretty pointless... :/ 07:18, 9 Jul 2005 (EST)
*
* "Skill" means all skills of the type "skill". "Skills" means all 456 skills together. The "skills category" must be plural, its different from the "skill category" that only lists "skills" of the type "skill". everything else should be singular. [User:Ollj|Ollj] My point about the bold/linking was sometimes it's not linked at all and sometimes it's always linked. I think categories for skill types can be useful, but I guess they should be singular. (I also suggested that 'contains whatever' should be 'yields ' so things don't complain piles of dust, as was complained.) If you wanted to make a build around ether renewal, you might look through all the enchantments to see which profession you want to choose to pair of E. The elite link is just there to mark in the template that the skill is elite. Is there a better way to do this? --Fyren 11:26, 9 Jul 2005 (EST) Yeah, I was just over-clarifying really Fyren :) I'm prone to doing that, hehe. Well if you think they are useful then I'll concede that skill type categories are ok. But I still think we should refer to [[Category:Enchantments]] just like we do to [[Category:Skills]] and [[Category:Locations]] etc. I like the elite link as it is, although it shouldn't redirect :) 21:17, 9 Jul 2005 (EST) I agree with you in principle, but there is a practical problem with Skills. Bear with me here. There are skills and Skills. "skills" represent the general idea of things you put on your skill bar. "Skills" are skills that begin with the in-game text "Skill.". If we go with pluralized categories, then Category:Skills will conflict with Category:skills. See what I mean? >>"skills" gone to "category skills" "Skills" gone to category "Skill" [User:Ollj|Ollj] I think we should make categories based only on sortable criteria in-game. Thus, Enchantments would be valid, since you can sort your skill list by type and get an enchantments header. However, does a "skills" header ever appear? If not, the category is not useful, and the point is moot. —Tanaric 15:24, 13 Jul 2005 (EST) Theres skills that target skills, so category is usefull. [User:Ollj|Ollj] Just checked, and Charm Animal, Comfort Animal and Troll Unguent are "Skills". This puts us in a difficult position, since it means we cannot look for these skills through their type like we can with skills that are enchantments or spells etc. Unless we can come up with a different way of referencing something. I would not like to see [[Category:Skills]] changed, because it would be a lot of hard work, and more importantly because it is a category of skills, and any other name would be confusing. Any suggestions are welcome (although I suggest we perhaps start a new section for this discussion to avoid confusion) 22:51, 13 Jul 2005 (EST) Lots of skills are of type "Skill". Expertise specifically triggers off of Skills not Spells. Also, many of the interrupts will specify Spell or "action". A Skill would not be interrupted by a Spell interrupt. This is why I have been putting the Skills into [[Category:SkillType]]. Every skill has an official type. It is the the first sentence of the in-game skill description. (Which we put in {{Skill_type_entry}}, but omit from ==Description== for brevity.) This Everything Example is very handy. There are a few changes I would like to make. I will modify the example page so everyone can see what I mean.
* I think the Acquisition section should be ordered by cost, Quest (free), Capture (half price) and Trainer (full price). We could order by location, but one could argue over the correct ordering of locations since you can skip ahead of the missions.
* Hyperlinking "Signet of Capture" kind of breaks the formatting of Acquisitions. I think it should just be "Capture".
* I'm changing the casting time to 3/4 so we can argue over "3/4", "¾" and "3/4". You're right that there should be an order for acquisition, whatever it might be. I'm not sure how linking the signet breaks formatting, could you explain? And the decided format for fractions was the last of your three, though I guess it doesn't really matter as long as we're consistent. I like the last one the most. --Fyren 10:25, 14 Jul 2005 (EST) "Quest" and "Trainer" aren't linked, so it seems inconsistent to link "Capture". We could link all three I suppose, but I am opposed to that. If we need to explain the meaning of something we should do that in a single article, e.g. Skill Articles Explained and make a link to that at the top of every skill via the {{Skill_begin}} macro. Then we can do a full write-up explaining the terms (like Capture) for all of the skills in one place instead of having to maintain 200+ skill articles. I vote for ¾, as it's semantically correct. —Tanaric 20:09, 14 Jul 2005 (EST) Well I think this kind of thing could be discussed in Skill details since it already exists. Although perhaps this is the wrong place. Help:Skills might be another good option. I'm torn between ¾ and 3/4, while the first is technically correct the second is much easier to edit, and much easier to read if you are just looking at the wiki code. As far as semantics goes I think anyone getting hold of the html of the page would understand 3/4 means ¾, but I'm not entirely convinced which is best. Hehe :) {User:LordBiro/Sig}} 20:15, 14 Jul 2005 (EST) How about we make a set of macros {{Skill_1_4}}, {{Skill_1_2}}, {{Skill_3_4}} and use that. Then they will all look the same, and we can change the formatting in the future if we decide to do it differently. Biro, I agree with your last sentence, but it really doesn't apply. 3/4 is fine, semantically, but 3/4 is not. Fractions are not written in superscript or subscript, but a special format all of their own. Furthermore, maybe I just read too much math, but 3/4 just doesn't look like a fraction to me. Since it's not quite a fraction, it's jarring. At least 3/4 is commonly understood to be fractional form. Alternatively, we could just call it 0.75, and avoid the problem entirely. —Tanaric 22:09, 14 Jul 2005 (EST) You think 3/4 doesn't look like a fraction but ¾ does? Will the latter display properly on all systems? --Fyren 04:22, 15 Jul 2005 (EST) Yes Fyren, I believe that ¾ will display correctly on all browsers, or should do at least. In fact it is 3/4 that is less likely to display properly, as shown in my example using lynx on linux. Tanaric's suggestion of using a template to describe fractions is a good one. We could even use Template:1/4, Template:1/2 and Template:3/4 if everyone is ok with it. I realise that slashes suggest a sub page, so this might not be the best solution, but I don't know of any disadvantage to using a slash in an article title. It's not like creating a namespace, afaik. Someone with more knowledge on this subject could perhaps give some input? If this is not ideal then I think Template:One_quarter, Template:One_half, Template:Three_quarters etc. would be easiest to understand. 07:36, 15 Jul 2005 (EST) Actually, some random unsigned guy talked about Templates. I think it adds needless complication to something that's really not a problem. "3/4" is an HTML kludge that shouldn't even be considered, as the lynx screenshot proves. However, because the syntax for ¾ isn't immediately obvious, I think 3/4 is fair. 'course, I still think 0.75 makes it easier—doesn't quite jibe with the game, but I think mathematical equivalency is okay—and it avoids a damned silly argument about fraction syntax. It should, perhaps, be noted that the game itself uses ¾ to display fractions. —Tanaric 15:42, 22 Jul 2005 (EST) Well forgive me for introducing the "kludge" into our skills formatting. The wiki was still new at that time, and i was fully aware of what i was doing, though i don't remember anyone bothering to suggest anything better back then. "3/4" in no way looks like what it does in the game, ¾ wouldn't necessarily appear properly on a web browser rendering with a different character encoding(or font), and our wiki doesn't have the maths plugin installed(the one wikipedia uses). I was(and still am) quite sure that any web browser since mosaic would know what to do with the super and subscript tags, and it seemed like the best workaround at that time; i scripted something that would automatically generate codes for the skill tables, and i had to decide on an approach that would work best(notice how all the monk skills already have their skill tables; some mistakes here and there, but they got fixed quick). honestly, i don't see how a text-based web browser not being able to render said tags make it any less likely for users to see the "kludge" properly. if we used the wiki-maths to do fractions, it'd generate images that lynx wouldn't be able to display anyway. are we gonna settle for 3/4 just because of one text-based web browser? Nuble 07:41, 29 Jul 2005 (EST) ¾ might not, but ¾(¾) should work for any browser, see the wiki code and the source for the page to see why these are different characters. You made a reasonable decision Nuble, but I think we should settle for ¾, not because it renders nicely in lynx, but because it's correct. Also, what to people think about the use of templates to display fractions? This way if we change our mind in the future it will be a much less painful process to alter. 08:25, 30 Jul 2005 (EST) i was just about to say that if we're to evaluate our pages based on how lynx renders it, might as well use ascii art to replace the skill images since, well, lynx only renders ascii text, but that'd just bring up more unnecessary arguments. anyway, templates will definitely solve a lot of our problems, what's with the different 1/4 and 3/4 and x...y's we have floating around. i say go for it. i'll do my part editing the skill pages as needed later. Nuble 03:02, 1 Aug 2005 (EST) I propose we change the example article, specifically to change "Usage Notes" to simply "Notes", because there might be more to say about a skill than just how and when to use it. Alternatively we could add a new paragraph, although that seems pointless when we already have such a closely related one. Sounds good. I just put "usage notes" in since it was used in a lot of existing skills. --Fyren 20:04, 22 Jul 2005 (EST) Could we move [GuildWiki talk:Style & Formatting/Skills/Everything Example] to [GuildWiki talk:Style and formatting/Skills/Everything Example]? Just that since the case crusade the parent article has changed, and it was initially created underneath this talk page, when really I think it should have been created underneath the Skills formatting article. :) 21:29, 22 Jul 2005 (EST) I have an idea how to simplify inserting the fractions into an article. Just extend the Javascript bar at the top of the edit box to include the Unicode characters: Image:EditHelp.JPG Roland of Gilead 05:03, 5 Aug 2005 (EST) Woah, sorry, forgot about this discussion. Nuble, no offense was meant to you: however, this is a wiki, and it evolves. Part of that evolution is making everything more correct, and that's what I'm trying to achieve here. Anyway, I agree with Roland about adding them to the JScript bar. I add further that the onSubmit replace script (you know, the one that replaces ~~~~ with names and dates) be extended to automatically convert fractions into HTML entities and -- into —. Just a thought; I can think of plenty reasons NOT to as well, but I'll leave those to you to argue against me. :) —Tanaric 05:17, 5 Aug 2005 (EST) Putting the arguments for and against altering the "onSubmit" functionality of MediaWiki to one side for the moment, it will be much easier to implement a change to the JScript bar than to the "onSubmit" function. With this out of the way we could move at least one small step closer to better syntax. 10:28, 5 Aug 2005 (EST)
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