Forum:External links for spells and talents


 * Moved from Wowpedia talk:Village pump. -- 13:00, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

I noticed that alot of our spell and talent articles don't have an external links section. So, if you see an article without an external links section, please add it. You can use the elinks-spell template or the new (in need of optimizing) elinks-spell/ranks template for spells and talents up to 5 ranks (are there abilities with more than 5 ranks?). -- Fandyllic  (talk · contr) 5:51 PM PST 3 Apr 2009
 * Fireball has, uh... 16? So does Frostbolt iirc. -- k _d3 00:55, 4 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Oops, I guess I was thinking about talents. -- Fandyllic  (talk &middot; contr) 9:01 PM PST 3 Apr 2009
 * Okay, added  param to elinks-spell/ranks to bump up rank column headings for more ranks.
 * Example for Fireball:


 * -- Fandyllic  (talk &middot; contr) 10:14 PM PST 3 Apr 2009


 * Jesus christ. Is that template really needed then? To be honest it should be elinks-spell and the ID of the highest spell instead of this... this monstrosity. -- 08:29, 4 April 2009 (UTC)


 * I agree, once you click on the external link you can see the other ranks while there... side note though, rank 1 should probably be the linked one so we don't later on have to go back through the articles to update the id to the next rank upon expansions or even patches that might contain new ranks. 08:35, 4 April 2009 (UTC)


 * What about Elinks-talent? Should we not use it anymore? Reason is this change by Gourra.--Iggey (talk) 14:47, 4 April 2009 (UTC)


 * I'm going with Coobra's trail of thought that only the first rank should be linked through elinks-spell. Anything else just takes up space, to be honest. Not to mention that when talents get increased/reduced ranks, the last one might no longer be the last one. -- 14:59, 4 April 2009 (UTC)


 * Mmm, yeah for simplicity, just link the first rank...of course if we wanted completeness, I could whip up some JS to switch between ranks (using a pull down or something). -- 14:52, 4 April 2009 (UTC)


 * Don't get so excited people. I didn't say you MUST include all the external links, it was just a suggestion. Yes, you should use elinks-talent, if it works for you. The important thing is to start getting external links added for at least the Rank 1 version of a spell or talent. Currently, most of them don't have this. -- Fandyllic  (talk &middot; contr) 10:27 AM PST 4 Apr 2009
 * I 100% agree that for abilities we should just use the best rank, rather than show a link for all of the fireballs (lolz). While not everyone reaches max level, I think that's good enough.


 * But I made Elinks-talent because you don't really know how many ranks someone is using. And 5 is not an overly cumbersome amount to display. -Howbizr (talk) 19:30, 16 April 2009 (UTC)


 * Like I said before, and like others have said, the first rank is only the one necessary: the amount of ranks of the ability or talent is already in the rank table. -- 18:50, 26 May 2009 (UTC)


 * I've been adding only the link to the highest talent rank. It seems that most readers (based on comments) are interested in the highest rank of a talent, and that feels like the highest priority to me. It's true the number of ranks can change (though hopefully the recent talent churn will not continue), but since the rest of the page will also need to change in that case, I think it's reasonable that the elinks can also be updated then if needed. -- Harveydrone 16:01, 27 May 2009 (UTC)


 * ...while if you link the first rank, you never have to update the external link. If the spell ID is removed, for example when the amount of ranks reduced, you'll have to search for the highest rank - again. It's much more convenient to link the first rank. -- 16:05, 27 May 2009 (UTC)


 * Agreed, more convenient for editors, once in a blue moon when the number of ranks change. But less convenient for the everyday reader, who IMO is more interested in the highest rank. But I think this distinction is very minor compared to getting any elink in articles in the first place. -- Harveydrone 15:59, 28 May 2009 (UTC)

Again emphasizing that something is better than nothing (I would never chastise someone for only listing one rank), however I think it's very often the case that people want a middle rank, because they deliberately didn't use all the ranks.

I am of the opinion about editing - do what's best for the reader, not the editor. Obviously there's a limit but I use that as a guideline. The readers pay for the site (by clicking on those ads the editors don't have to see), so we have a responsibility to them when making edits.

So if editors are willing to add multiple ranks for talents, they should. If you're maintaining a talent that has changed, and you as an editor are not willing to paste in 5 numbers and only put in 1, again, we appreciate your edit all the same.

Really, I just feel this is very analagous to citation. That works, and it's useful, but ref web really is better - it just is. I'm happy to have the vanilla citation, but the full citation, editor willing and able, is more thorough and in my opinion, more useful. -Howbizr (talk) 14:39, 1 June 2009 (UTC)


 * I'm not sure where you're getting that the citation template thing is the same - the two are completely different matters. However that doesn't mean that I don't agree with you on the citation part. -- 06:11, 2 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Yeah, citation is not necessarily the same as external links. The external links are linking to more (or possibly exactly the same) information on the same topic, citation is basically telling the reader that's where you got the information in the first place; generally this is only going to be a Blizzard source for WoWWiki. -- 19:33, 2 June 2009 (UTC)