Talk: Community Portal

Talk page.

Article and Category naming conventions

We've decided to capitalize all words in article and category titles (for aesthetic purposes) as well as to use plural forms wherever it makes sense GeoGalvanic (talk) 20:20, 19 May 2018 (UTC)

I'd like it if as many discussions as possible could happen, at least partially, here on the wiki.

Announcing the result of a debate that was never posted here in the first place is kind of weird.

Probably not 'necessary' right now, but it's best practice imo. — sarno | TALK | 20:23, 19 May 2018 (UTC)

I agree. I'm trying to put up at least a little bit of what we're talking about for now. Discord is easier atm because it's faster paced and we're still trying to figure out what we want for styling/formating and other conventions. As the Wiki grows, it'll be much harder to keep up with conversations, especially if they're taken out of the pages that are being discussed. I included the tidbit here because I figured we'd need to eventually pull information like this once we get around to creating a Project:Manual of Style. --GeoGalvanic (talk) 06:39, 20 May 2018 (UTC)

Wiki Outline

I've posted this out of wiki before, but here's a rough outline for the content that I think we should be looking to put up here.

• Character Creation
  • Classes
    • Base Classes
    • Master Classes
  • Skills (list)
    • Skill Trees
  • Passives (list)
    • Passive Grid
  • Iconic Gear
• Items --Geo
  • Equipment -Geo
    • Equipment Types
      • Equipment Item Pages
  • Crafting
    • Shards
    • Affixes
  • Cosmetics
  • Gold/Currency
  • Pets
• Character Stats
  • Damage Calculations
    • Damage Types
  • Defense Calculations
    • Defense Types
  • Health
    • Potion
  • Mana
  • Movement Speed
  • Attributes
  • Mininons
• Lore
  • World of Eterra
    • Map
    • Cities/Locations @
  • Timelines
• 6 Gods
• The Void
• NPCs
• Enemies
  • Enemy Modifies
  • Aggro Mechanics
  • Bosses
• Game Modes
  • PvE
    • Difficulty
    • Arena
    • Monolith of Fate
    • Epoch’s Call
    • Gates of Memorium
    • Lost Memories
    • Offline Mode
  • PvP
• Trading
  • Bazaar
  • Friends
• Titles
• Game Settings
• System Requirements
• Game Versions
  • Patchnotes
• Developers?
• Merchandise
• Official Community Resources
  • Events

--GeoGalvanic (talk | testspace) 16:40, 20 May 2018 (UTC)

Some quick thoughts;

Maybe reduce the indentation of Offline Mode by one?

System Requirements are not necessarily set in stone. Examples of stuff which could changes are which versions of MacOS & Linux we support. MacOS 10.12 came out like two years ago, and we're looking to release in 2020. By the time Last Epoch is officially released, Sierra will be... old. But obviously we can't have the requirement be something which doesn't exist yet, either.

If the contents of a prospective Developers page is specified, I can ask the team about who's interested in being listed and what they're comfortable sharing. Please understand that - for visible developers - receiving different kinds of abuse, incl. death threats, is a daily occurrence. There may be some people involved who'd prefer not to be included. Not everyone is on our Meet The Team page.

Other than what I've commented on above, I think the list is looking solid. — sarno | TALK | 21:02, 20 May 2018 (UTC)

Yeah, that makes sense, there could be LAN PvP after all ;)

Wiki can handle changing system reqs pretty well I think, you can just edit the page whenever there is a new Game Version that has different system reqs.

That's exactly why I had a ? next to developers. I was going to pose the question once I had an idea of what I thought could go into those pages. I definitely think it should be 100% voluntary if the devs want to be included in the wiki or not. --GeoGalvanic (talk | testspace) 04:03, 21 May 2018 (UTC)

Yeah, I was thinking more along the lines of a note on the article until release.

{{Disclaimer|This game is still a work in progress and system requirements may change over time}} — sarno | TALK | 11:13, 21 May 2018 (UTC)

Oooh, that's a good idea. Could even link it to a specific game version as well, so people know if it's up to date or not. --GeoGalvanic (talk | testspace) 12:00, 21 May 2018 (UTC)

In regards to developer pages maybe we could do something akin to the Official Guild Wars Wiki, where they just list all of the developers on the wiki. And then the developers could fill out whatever information they wanted on their user page? see here -some noob who doesn't sign their comments at 00:48, 24 May 2018 (UTC)

Yeah, I can certainly raise it internally. I don't think there'll be much appetite for this kind of thing until we have a way to link Last Epoch and KickStarter accounts in place. — sarno | TALK | 10:17, 24 May 2018 (UTC)

Should links be capitalized?

If I'm reading a sentence, I personally prefer equipment to Equipment.

Names are different, but boots shouldn't be capitalized mid-sentence, imo. Thoughts? — sarno | TALK | 16:24, 28 May 2018 (UTC)

I was going to ask the same question. I've used both, but mostly because with capitalized titles it's more cumbersome to make the longer ones lower case. E.g [[Unique Body Armors|unique body armors]]. The first approach is to make links grammatically correct as reading them in a sentence. The second approach would be to consider links as links to titles of articles (which in any world other than wikimedia it would be capitalized) --GeoGalvanic (talk | testspace) 21:15, 28 May 2018 (UTC)

Tags on skill pages

Should these be abbreviated as they are in-game?

I think so. Typically I'm in favour of wikis mirroring the game where possible, and there's also space constraints. — sarno | TALK | 18:39, 28 May 2018 (UTC)

Certainly doable, however with the way the templates are currently set up it would have to be done by using page redirects. I'm typically trying to use as few indirect links as possible, but this may be one of the use cases where it is acceptable --GeoGalvanic (talk | testspace) 21:15, 28 May 2018 (UTC)

Necromancer skills

Please don't create pages for these before the June release. :) — sarno | TALK | 19:59, 29 May 2018 (UTC)

Restricted releases and the wiki

How should we handle content exclusive to the paid alpha and beta tests?

While those are ongoing, is content only found in the last pre-alpha demo considered outdated?

Or are both game versions considered to simultaneously be the 'current' version of the game? — sarno | TALK | 13:50, 4 June 2018 (UTC)

Hmmm... A good question. I personally think it would be best to keep the wiki content updated with the latest game version whilst keeping a link to the latest public release page which includes the differences between the public release and current release. --GeoGalvanic (talk | testspace) 22:41, 4 June 2018 (UTC)

The Admin Noticeboard and how it is used

I would like to discuss the way that the Admin Noticeboard is used on this wiki.

The intention is to discuss desirable behaviour and setting precedents on how changes are made on the wiki. I say 'discuss' because I am open to people taking a different stance on this than I have, and I'm similarly open to having my mind changed. I come here primarily as a member of the community - and it is important to me that all opinions are seen as welcomed, valued, and equal. This is not intended to be a rant, nor to put a spotlight on any individual contributor.

Recently a change was made to the Hydradark.css page. For those not aware, the .CSS pages basically govern how the wiki appears for most users. Where buttons are, what colours are used - that kind of thing. This change, and the preceding request for it, were both made in good faith. The Last Epoch logo at the top of every page links to the main page when clicked on, and sometimes when a contributor went to click on a button, the transparent background of the image would be clicked on and lead to the main page being loaded instead of the button being used. This occasionally happened to me - I recognise the frustration it caused, and I value the time and effort of the two contributors who sought to resolve it.

However it also resulted in those same buttons being moved - here is their current position, and here is their previous position. To the best of my knowledge, this change was not mentioned anywhere. I have been completely unable to find any notice in advance that they would be moved, nor can I find any discussion on whether this is a change that people were in favour of. Much more than where a handful of buttons are located, this bothers me. The lack of discussion, the lack of input being sought - a single contributor leading to the appearance of the wiki changing for everyone is something I am opposed to. While I recognise that this wiki is in its early stages and its community is a small one, this still runs contrary to the very principal of wikis.

The timeline, as far as I am aware, looks something like this (all times are UTC);

• The change was originally suggested at 17:34 on the 7th of June.
• At 17:25 I was pinged in a Discord message linking me to the suggestion.
• At 18:04 I asked on the private developer Discord if one of our artists could create a square 160x160 logo for the wiki - the intention being to replace the large Last Epoch logo in the center of the page with a smaller wiki-exclusive logo for the top-left corner. I liked the idea of the wiki getting its own logo, and I considered this a clean way of resolving the problem if an appropriate image could be procured.
• At 19:33 I created User:Sarno/hydradark.css to test .CSS changes.
• Just over a day later, Hydradark.css was updated with the proposed solution.

For someone advocating community discussion, I failed to contribute to that myself. I responded to neither the ping on Discord, nor here on the wiki. While I was quick to see and begin acting on the solution, I did not do so in a transparent fashion - and I can understand that it may have looked as if I either ignored, or didn't see, the proposal. The delay in me publicly responding was caused by me wanting to know whether one of the artists at Eleventh Hour Games would be willing to create such a logo for us - I did not want to suggest something if it was never going to happen. Furthermore, I assumed that the change might be discussed over the course of a week or so. I didn't anticipate a need to be particularly prompt in responding, and I generally try to avoid "hi, nothing to say atm" style responses. I recognise that acknowledging the ping on Discord is the least that I could have done, and it was discourteous for me not to do so. I apologise for that.

That said, I have to state a preference for such changes in future to take the form of posts on the Admin Noticeboard linking to discussions here on the Community Portal talk page. The Admin Noticeboard isn't the most ideal place to discuss potential skin changes, and when suggestions are posted there they can be acted on quickly with limited (if any) conversation. I neither believe that this is a big deal, nor that anyone had less than the best of intentions. However I still think we can do better in future, hence me posting about it. I apologise if my natural wordiness gives the impression of frustration. — sarno | TALK | 10:40, 10 June 2018 (UTC)

Hmmm... the images that you provide are strange to me, because for me the positions of the buttons were always how they are now (and not changing their position was something I took into consideration, despite the fact that I felt that the buttons would indeed be slightly better in the image where you said the buttons were before). Moving the header back down a bit is a relatively simple matter (change height: 90px -> 110px). To add some additional context to the timeline, one of the other gamepedia wiki managers (Mr Pie 5) noticed the header issue and reported it to wagnike2 on the Gamepedia slack, at which point I mentioned I had noticed the issue as well and had prepared a potential solution on our Admin Noticeboard. This means the header issue would have potentially been addressed by Gamepedia staff whether or not I had ever posted anything on the admin noticeboard.

I 100% believe that it's better to have a slightly less aesthetically pleasing layout that can be tweaked and edited further later, than having something with broken functionality. The ability for changes to be made rapidly is one the best features to allowing a wiki to grow quickly.

In fact wikipedia has a policy which dictates specifically that in wikipedia:wikipedia:BOLD, revert, discuss cycle. In short, edits can be made, if someone doesn't like the edit they can either A. revert the edit or B. make their own edit to fix it. If the contributors at that point cannot agree, then a discussion can be opened to determine consensus on the matter. In the specific case here, it's entirely possible that after seeing the edit to fix the header issue created an undesirable aesthetic, one could simply make or request another edit to realign the navigation buttons, or if they felt the change was unwarranted could request to have it reverted. At that point I could either see the new edit, agree with and everyones happy, or disagree at which point I would open up a conversation to seek out a consensus on the proposed edits.

Requiring prolonged conversation before making/proposing edits can prohibitively bog down the progress of a wiki and discourage new editors from contributing.

I see no reason why the Admin Noticeboard should not be used to discuss edits that would require an administrator (that's what it's there for), however leghty topics can certainly be exported or discussed in the Village Pump or Projects. --GeoGalvanic (talk | testspace) 14:31, 10 June 2018 (UTC)

I mostly agree with what you've said. I just don't agree that changes to .CSS pages should be considered the same as other edits. If a discussion was had prior to every edit, wikis wouldn't be a workable platform. Yet I do feel that proposing changes to .CSS pages and letting other users weigh in on (and test) them in advance would be a nice courtesy. — sarno | TALK | 14:46, 10 June 2018 (UTC)

I would be inclined to agree if edits to the CSS were made adjust styling of the site, however edits to site CSS should only be made in general when there is A. Something is broken or B. A new extension or feature requires CSS to fit in with the rest of site, which should both be handled promptly IMHO. In general stylistic changes shouldn't be made to the CSS as it is highly subjective and users are able to add their own CSS to change anything they disagree with (E.g. I find it difficult to read content with the transparency of the content box on top of the background, so I've added that change to my own CSS, as many people probably like the design as it is.) --GeoGalvanic (talk | testspace) 15:44, 10 June 2018 (UTC)