Wowpedia talk:Guild pages policy/Archive02

Change to the Policy: Naming
This proposal is to make a change to Guild pages policy.

See also a slightly different version (though written in a better way than mine) down below this page: Additional Options


 * Update: Changed See Also in Were you looking for...?

Current Version
We should change:

The guild pages should be the complete name of the guild, i.e. The Mighty Guild


 * * If the guild name conflicts with another article that article has priority, the guild page can be disambiguated by adding guild or the server name in parenthesis. i.e. The Mighty Guild (guild) or The Mighty Guild (Doomhammer).
 * * If the guild name conflicts with another guild article then the articles should both contain the guild name followed by the server in parenthesis. A disambiguation page can be created.
 * * If there is already a disambiguation page (because the guild name conflicts with articles that are already being disambiguated, then the guild can be added to the disambiguation page.

To:

Option 1
The guild pages should be the complete name of the guild followed by the server in parenthesis  i.e. The Mighty Guild (Doomhammer)


 * * There should be a disambiguation page at the page of the guildname, i.e. The Mighty Guild should become a disambiguation page. Guilds with the same name, but on a different server, can then be added to this page.
 * * If the disambiguation page collides with another article, the article gets priority and the disambiguation should be written at the top of the article in the form of: Were you looking for the guild The Mighty Guild (Doomhammer)?

Reasoning

At the moment, it's just too vague. The rules must be slightly stricter. With the current policy, we are just creating more work for us, as I will show in the following example:


 * Storm has been brought up in a previous discussion. Those guilds have been changed now and the page is now a disambiguation page, with the server in parenthesis behind it. Imagine that this disambiguation wasn't done, then we would most probably be facing a problem, seeing that the BC brings quite a lot of "Storm"s.

This small example already proves that it is important to change the proposal. However, another problem has risen aswell, the current vague rule is creating a gigantic Chaos. A chaos which will keep players away from using the Wiki. A good example of this is the following:


 * As some might know, I have been working on Server:Shattered_Hand_Europe. I have asked many players to add their guild to the list. Many of them also wanted to work on their guildpage on the wiki. Sadly enough, there have been 2 guilds who have gotten a problem, Skull Squadron and Grand Crusader. Skull Squadron has the problem of colliding with another guild (a Guild on Blackhand_US). Grand Crusader collides with a small fact of lore, not big, but lore nonetheless.  Consequences are that both are reluctant to start working on their guild page, which means in a smaller player flow for the wiki.

Confusion should be avoided at all costs. We, the mass editers, are used to the wiki. Many new persons aren't. Imagine if one of those actually has superior scripting and writing abilities. If he gets addicted to the wiki, it would be a great add to WoWwiki. Also, we want the wiki to attract persons to look things up, but if they can't create their guilds on it, they will be reluctant to check up other things aswell. This alone is a reason to make clearer and stricter rules regarding the naming of certain pages, both userpages as Guildpages. Today we are handling guildpages!

Notes: This change can still get a few small changes, concerning what happens if it collides with another real article. To me it looked as if putting a "See also" on the bottom was the best choice.

Option 2
Guild page name

The title of an article on a World of Warcraft guild should always be the complete name of the guild followed by the realm and two letter location abbreviation in parentheses (e.g., The Mighty Guild (Doomhammer US)).

Disambiguation pages

Use the rules below to determine when and how disambiguation pages for guild articles should be created. As always, wherever a disambiguation page is created, it should be linked at the top of all articles it lists. As well, guilds with similar names should link to each other. For example, on The Mighty Guild (Doomhammer US), include "''Were you looking for Mighty Guild (Shadowsong EU)?"

No conflict with non-guild article

If the guild name (without the realm and location information, e.g. The Mighty Guild) does not conflict with the name of an existing, non-guild article, then it may be either:
 * made into a disambiguation page for all guilds sharing that name, or,
 * if there is only one guild of that name, redirected to that guild's article.

Conflict with non-guild article

If the guild name is the same as the name of an existing, non-guild article, then: If a disambiguation article does not exist, create one at Articlename (disambiguation). Include links to the original article and any guilds of that name (e.g. create Conviction (disambiguation), with links to Conviction, Conviction (Steamwheedle Cartel US) and Conviction (Suramar US).)
 * If a disambiguation article already exists, add the guild page links to that article (e.g. add the link to The Sundering (Cenarius US) to the disambiguation page Sundering.)

Near conflicts

If a guild's name is slightly different from, but likely to be confused with, a non-guild article, redirect Guildname to the non-guild article, and create a disambiguation page at Articlename (disambiguation). For example if the guild name is "The Brotherhood of the Horse", which could easily be confused with the article Brotherhood of the Horse:
 * 1) Make the page at The Brotherhood of the Horse a redirect to Brotherhood of the Horse.
 * 2) Create a disambiguation page at Brotherhood of the Horse (disambiguation) linking to Brotherhood of the Horse and The Brotherhood of the Horse (Cenarion Circle US).

Reasoning

This is generally similar to the above version, but incorporates some changes based on the discussion below. Primarily, it requires the location ("EU/US" etc.) to always follow the realm name. This will provide greater consistency, and make guild article names easy to determine without having to check whether there is a US and European version of the realm. It also includes clarification on how to handle a couple of potential situations would could arise.

Option 3
All guild articles will be moved to the Guild namespace. From then on, all guilds will be created and maintained in the Guild namespace. Although all guild articles will still be in Category:Guilds, a guild article banner will no longer be required at the top of each guild page. All articles will be followed by their server name and country code in parentheses. Example:. If only one guild exists with that name, it can make  a redirect to its own page. If more than one guild exists, the clean version will be made into a disambiguation page with a list of all those guild articles. 09:27, 9 March 2007 (EST)

Option 2:

 * 1) Yes  - 

Option 3:

 * Before voting, please discuss sub-options.

No:

 * Before voting, please discuss sub-options.

Comments

 * Not sure about the last bit. Rather than 'See Also' links, I would prefer this style:
 * Were you looking for the article on the expansion World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade?
 * -- Kirkburn  (talk) 11:10, 28 December 2006 (EST)
 * That actually does sound better >.> allow me to quickly edit it --Patrigan - Talk - SH (EU) 11:24, 28 December 2006 (EST)
 * I honestly dislike the the idea of using a server name as the initial disambiguation. I would rather use a constant such as it's region, (EU) and (US) etc. If it needs further disabiguation after that, then just append the server too (EU)(Shattered Hand). It's more than likely not going to be a server conflict, but a region conflict anyways. Region is a fixed variable to disambiguate by, where as the server could be changed by the guild transfering, meaning you'd have to go back and edit article titles for the sake of a conflict across regions. I'll vote yes if i see that change, otherwise it's a no. -- Zeal ( talk  -  contr  - web) 12:52, 28 December 2006 (EST)
 * I would to prefer to have region and server in the disambiguation of a guild. It makes it alot easier, since people from all arround the world use wowwiki, not just people from US. I like the suggestion, but to vote yes, I would like Zeal's addition. Linkan 11:18, 11 January 2007 (EST)
 * Linkan, even my proposal has that part of Zeal's proposal already... Don't vote no so fast, read first! Zeal's addition is about something completely else XD --Patrigan - Talk - SH (EU) 13:52, 11 January 2007 (EST)


 * Well, there are at this moment a lot of guilds with the same name on the Europe servers. If we then realise that there are quite a lot more american servers... I think you know where I'm getting at. Thus, in my honest oppinion, it seems better to use both and just apply a move when a guild moves (or worse when a guild splits over 2 servers as we have had for a short while...), usually when a guild migrates, it becomes a completely new guild, so even the guildname would change then. Keep that in mind. --Patrigan - Talk - SH (EU) 14:35, 28 December 2006 (EST)
 * I think this new policy proposal needs to be expanded to cover as many variations as we can think of for guilds. Here is a list of the variants I can think of:
 * Guild name, unique, no WoW item/name/term conflict
 * Guild name conflicts with a WoW item/name/term
 * Guild name exists on US and EU realm
 * Guild name exists on multiple realms
 * Guild name has an article, but is otherwise the same as another guild name (i.e. The Mighty Guild vs. Mighty Guild)
 * -- Fandyllic (talk · contr) 11:57 AM PST 1 Jan 2007


 * Yes, that is why the best option is to actually use anything in the like of: guildname (server)(Regioncode). Keep in mind that this will require changes to nearly every servername aswell. It is in fact better to use the regioncode (US / EU / CH / KR). If you then make the servernames like Shattered_Hand_EU and Shattered_Hand_US then you have covered servername and regioncode in the same. This way of writing is already one of the most common ways in nearly every transregional webpage. (example: http://www.warcraftrealms.com, they add EU in front of every europe server.) Remember that in my honest oppinion we also MUST add US to the american, to make ZERO distinction between the 2. Many europeans take offense to the fact that EU gets the EU tag but the americans don't, even when their realm came AFTER the europe realm. This is ofcourse a whole other discussion, but a discussion nonetheless.


 * Back on topic, if we just add the server + regioncode in some way to the guildpages, we will NEVER have to bother with this problem EVER again. People might dislike disambiging every single guildpage, but allowing some not to do it and some to do it, then we're just creating more work for us. I get the arguement "yes, 5seconds of moving work" but that is 5 seconds that can be prevented if we treat EVERY guild equal. There will never be a need for more than realm and region, because that is as far blizzard allows guildnaming. There can not be 2 guilds on 1 realm with the same name (not even crossfaction).


 * Lastly, this is also a very practical solution, considering it also adds 1 of the most important facets of a guild to their pagelink: Their realm and region. This way, you can always be 100% sure that you are looking to the right guild. This might seem silly, but sometimes it can be hard to find a certain guild. Also for creation it is very practical. No testing wether the article itself already exists is needed, no testing wether there are other guilds with the same name is needed. Every GL (or another member) knows exactly: "I need to create guildname_(servername_regioncode) this already takes a way a big trouble for creators (and prevents the ignorant for editing an existing article and reforming it to their guildpage >.>) With this I have added a loot of extra arguements for this idea.        --Patrigan  - Talk - SH (EU) 19:38, 1 January 2007 (EST)


 * I don't think the same. The only option to solve disambiguation problems with "normal" articles is having a pseudo namespace "Guild:" like "Server:". Then you can create clean disambiguation pages only for guilds if you need to. Also, being one of those closely watching new guild pages, I can tell you that only one of 100 authors of guild pages ever read the policy before hitting the save page button, and often fail to even provide server and faction information.
 * So I don't really think there will be many guild pages named the right way and from the NP-Patrol point of view - what would you do if a new guild page is created, lacking any information except maybe a link to their homepage? how would you move the page to a "Guildname (Server Region)" compliant page name?
 * Otherwise you can solve many problems by changing the policy to allow guild page names with server name in parentheses from the start even if there's no need for disambiguation (because currently it is not allowed IMO), but not force it. -watchout 16:04, 3 January 2007 (EST)


 * I would suggest changing to a yes Watchout, as Guild: and other such psuedo namespaces are already starting to creep in (as you should know) and are currently under proposal along with a similar disambiguation policy for all namespaces by myself. -- Zeal ( talk  -  contr  - web) 03:50, 6 January 2007 (EST)


 * your proposal doesn't affect my opinion on this proposal. -watchout 06:35, 6 January 2007 (EST)


 * I strongly disagree with the Guild: namespace, since it simply creates more convoluted linking, things like Guild:Guildname (Server XY), which ends up being redundant. Namespaces are meant for hard separation from the wiki, and guilds are linked too often in server articles to partition them off too harshly. Secondly, although many new editors do not read up on the rules, that's no reason not to make them clearer. New editors are more likely to understand the rules when they're hard and fast. Ambiguous guild pages can certainly be dealt with trivially on a case-by-case basis. 05:06, 6 January 2007 (EST)


 * Servers are already in a Server: pseudo-namespace... If something's linked from there its already outside the normal wiki. So if you don't want to separate guild pages from server pages, you'd have to move them to Server: namespace ... Also I see no redundancy in Guild:Name [(Server)] -watchout 05:42, 6 January 2007 (EST)


 * The redundancy is in semantics. If something is followed by a server name, it has to be a guild. It can't be anything else. As an editor, I don't look forward to having to pipe and type manually every guild link I make to make it look nice. I'll put my comments about the Guild: namespace below. 12:38, 6 January 2007 (EST)


 * Just no. Because you can't know what a server name is so easily - The Argent Dawn, Cenarion Circle,.. etc. Example: I call my guild on the server Cenarion Circle "Rayne", so my guild's page is now Rayne (Cenarion Circle) - well I won't guess thats a guild's page, but naming it Guild:Rayne (Cenarion Circle) makes it clear. But actually this is not about redundancy but about content separation since guild are very abstract structures to the game itself. Moving them to a separate namespace takes only minor effort (can be done easily with a bot and any newcomer won't have much to "learn") and has great (positive) effect on disambiguation problems. While this idea won't. Many of the guild stubs you just couldn't move because you don't know their servers and you absolutely can't do this automatically with a bot. Have fun with moving about 1k guild pages by hand. -watchout 11:42, 8 January 2007 (EST)


 * Should be pretty easy to come up with reasonable solutions for all those situations. Here are some simple rules to follow: All guilds are followed by their server and region code in parentheses. In cases without a conflict, Guildname always serves as the list of guilds. When only one guild exists in the list, Guildname is a redirect. In the case of a conflict, Guildname (disambig) serves at the list of guilds and a tag noting this is placed at the top of the conflicting article. When only one guild exists with the conflicted article, the tag at the top of the article links to the guild page. ~


 * These rules produce the following solutions to the situations outlined by Fandyllic:
 * Guild name, unique, no WoW item/name/term conflict -- Main article: Guildname (Server XY). Guildname is a redirect to Guildname (Server XY).
 * Guild name, unique, conflicts with a WoW item/name/term -- Main article: Guildname (Server XY). Were you looking for Guildname (Server XY) placed at the top of the WoW term article.
 * Guild name, non-unique, conflicts with a WoW item/name/term -- Were you looking for the guildGuildname (disambig) placed at the top of the WoW term article. Guildname (disambig) contains a list of all guilds with that name.
 * Guild name exists on US and EU realm, no conflict with WoW article -- Same as above, except Guildname serves as the disambig for Guildname (Server EU) and Guildname (Server US).
 * Guild name exists on US and EU realm, conflict with WoW article -- Same as Guild name, non-unique, conflicts with a WoW item/name/term.
 * Guild name exists on multiple realms -- Main article: Guildname (Server XY). Same as above.
 * Guild name has an article, but is otherwise the same as another guild name (i.e. The Mighty Guild vs. Mighty Guild) -- In the case of two guilds, X and Y, with similar names, put Were you looking for X? at the top of Y and put Were you looking for Y? at the top of X.
 * 04:55, 6 January 2007 (EST)


 * I really don't understand the last point, those 2 are different and not related with eachother in any way. Keep them that way. However, those outlines are nearly exactly what I wrote as a policy change. I do feel that Articles and Guildpages should be divided, now that we can add new real Namespaces, we should be able to do so and add Guild: Namespace. It simplifies naming and it doesn't strengthen the rules. Using a namespace allows for a disambig page completely seperated from an article (thus removing precious article space and keeping the article nice to look at.) I do not understand why people are so ultimately against a strengthening of the rule with forcing everyone to just write 2 diambigs on their guildpage, only 2 because thta is as far Blizzard allows is to do it. Disambig rules have been brought up, but tbh, the wiki does not have to be the same exactly everywhere. I'll be happy to get what I typed above, it's easy to understand for everyone and in the end also does what Montag showed in his above post. A Guild: Namespace would be a perfect extra to keep communtiy seperated from blizzard. --Patrigan - Talk - SH (EU) 06:52, 6 January 2007 (EST)


 * Namespaces should be used very, very sparingly. They should never do the job that categories do. They're basically used to create a wiki within a wiki, and the contents are often meta-data for the wiki, completely separate, or simply a matter of practicality: every server in the game is named after a game term, so it would be infeasible to keep them in the global namespace. Keep in mind that if every guild is followed by its server name, we know the article is a guild just by looking at it. Guilds are also already organized and listed in Category:Guilds. So the identification and organization aspects of a namespace are already taken care of without having one. ~


 * Basically, I caution the use of namespaces. It's like building a wall, which you shouldn't do lightly. 12:38, 6 January 2007 (EST)


 * I share Montag's general dislike of adding in additional namespaces; I don't even think it's necessary for realm article names (discussion of which is inextricable from guild article names if our standards for each are to make sense together.)
 * If we put guild articles under names like Circle of the Moon (Earthen Ring EU), then the most natural place to look for the related realm page is Earthen Ring EU. Since such a large number of realms need the US/EU suffix anyway, why not just add it to all of them and do away with "Server:"?--Aeleas 13:56, 6 January 2007 (EST)


 * I could agree without the namespaces, hence why I didn't add it in the original proposal. Server: I feel is still needed. (though Realm: would fit better) but that's not what this is about. However, we should discuss what exactly Namespaces are and what their purpose is, because everyone seems to think differently about it. But a discussion for another day! --Patrigan - Talk - SH (EU) 06:09, 7 January 2007 (EST)


 * You forget This is not Wikipedia. Mediawiki was developed for encylopedia wiki's in mind. WoWWiki is not one of those, and WoWWiki is dealing with a single portal, warcraft. So the intended use for namespaces is lost straight away. Encylopedias deal with termingology and explanation, not data and it's display (and subsequent redisplay). Why do you think all the wiki projects run seperate wiki's, not the same one with differing namespaces hm? that was never their intended use. Portals were. With that lost, there is no need to use them in the intended way.
 * Guild: has nothing to do with settling disambiguation, though it certainly does help it in a predictable and correct way. Namespaces should be used to give a user the ability to know what to expect from articles and all articles of that type, it creates a consistancy and familiarity across the wiki specific to that type of article. A realm page is never going to have the same content and data as a guild page, so why should they remain in the same namespace and create confusion? why should anything other than encylopedic information (terminology with explantion) be without a namespace?
 * To watchout, my proposal wasn't meant to influence, but the existance of Guild: as it's likelyhood to continue was. I try out my own proposal further in terms of disambiguation, but i'm starting to feel less and less of a need for them when used with namespaces and categories. I'm still against the proposed fixed ambiguation, even more so without namespaces (faaar too much work, unpredictable and further complicated compared to the opposite approach montag is so against and thinking takes too much work).
 * It's a discussion and descission needed asap if i'm alone in my view of namespaces. -- Zeal ( talk  -  contr  - web) 06:21, 7 January 2007 (EST)


 * I support your view on namespaces u to the point where you say that they lessen the need for Disambiguation. There just are several things that require disambiguation, in order to prevent chaos. We want everything to run smoothly without problems. This includes making it easier for wiki users to do this. Fixed disambiguation on nonstatic things like guilds is required. a guild can disband any day, making it possible that the lowest possible page (without any disambigs) is outdated. New players on another realm see this page, will do the effort of moving it and bam... useless thing done. Doesn't take much time, I agree, but it's still useless. That is if they understand on how to move things, not exactly the easiest of all wiki things. Lack of disambiguation scares people away. It's a nuissance for experienced wiki users, I agree, however, don't forget, our target audience is MORE than 7 million persons, With at least half of them not having a clue on how to work a wiki (leave alone being able to state their oppinion on it in this discussion). Think, that we want to attract more wikipedians. We need to become as User friendly as possible and sadly enough for experienced users like ourselves, this includes making things very clear without any nuissance rules.   Everyone understands adding their server and code to their page link, remember that! --Patrigan  - Talk - SH (EU) 08:50, 7 January 2007 (EST)


 * "Everyone understands adding their server and code to their page link" really? look here -watchout 11:52, 8 January 2007 (EST)


 * Allow me to rephrase :p Everyone who is even slightly serious about the page. Ofc, everyone is exaggerated, but still, we need to keep rules simple, but strict. One thing I like most about the wiki is that there aren't so many rules for people. For guildpages we have a lot of rules, but none of them is very strict (and they tend to be confusing aswell) That's what I meant most with that. A simple but strict rule is followed a lot easier than a set of rules which do not give a perfectly clear result. --Patrigan - Talk - SH (EU) 14:05, 8 January 2007 (EST)


 * Actually many guild pages are like that, I even had one once that had no indication that it was a guild page at all, the text referencing to a non-existent link, and the only way I found out that it was a guild page was through 'What links here' that showed only a server's page. Guild pages are the most problematic, since many newcomers write an article for their guild here - why... I don't know. It took me more than a year of reading wowwiki before I did my first edit. On the other hand it seems to be a problem of the interface - It's so easy to create a page but the policies are really hard to find. Btw. if you created a new page in a separate guild: namespace I think you may be able to display a link to the policy on the top or bottom via the skin ... hmm worth investigating actually, I'll try that out on my MW-Box :-)
 * Um... where did I trail off... Well anyway I don't think too strict rules are good, I think policies should provide a direction and not dictate every action. -watchout 18:29, 8 January 2007 (EST)

I've changed my position. I believe we should have a Guild namespace to separate guilds from the global namespace. Although an inconvenience to editors (lots of typing), I think it's important to keep non-WoW things out of the global namespace, especially since guild articles have the potential to be very volatile. I also think it allows us some flexability for the guilds themselves since they never have to worry about clashing with existing articles and they have their own namespace to expand in. As mentioned by others, the Guild namespace also has the advantage of having clean disambigs (no disambig text following the article title or needed at the top of articles). ~

One caveat: Guilds articles should always, always, always be followed by the server which they live on. This applies to guilds that exist on multiple servers. 20:30, 7 March 2007 (EST)


 * I've created an Option 3 to reflect my views. 09:27, 9 March 2007 (EST)

Additional options
I'd like to add Montag's version to the voting above, to provide a second option. I think the following would accurately describe it:

- Moved to Option 2, above -.

If the above looks good, I'll add it as a second option. It sounds like there is also interest in a "Guild:" option as well, which I would encourage someone also to write up and add, so that all the options are present and the issue can be settled. Perhaps we can add a chart with examples of the names/content each of the three options would generate in various cases.--Aeleas 13:15, 8 January 2007 (EST)


 * I've gone ahead and added that version as option 2 in the voting. As I said above, if anyone has something different in mind, I would urge them to add it now, so that all the options can be compared side by side.  If a new policy is chosen and implemented, it will be a fairly large undertaking, and I don't think many people will be keen to revisit the issue in the near future.--Aeleas 11:49, 11 January 2007 (EST)

A note on Option 2 (but it applies to Option 1 as well), piping works for both style links. So  producesThe Mighty Guild, and   producesThe Mighty Guild also. 10:17, 12 January 2007 (EST)