Wowpedia talk:Village pump/Archive30

Lootbox vs. Itembox
I am very new here, and I hope I am asking this in the right place... I have recently been adding a few quest and item pages, and had lootbox entries (in the Rewards section) changed to itembox. Is there a preference for one over the other, or a specific situation that each template is intended for? Going by the template discussion pages, it seems that the itembox was intended for entries about recipes, to show the reagents, while the lootbox is intended for boss drops. Many of the quests I have seen use lootbox, but some newer quests use itembox. Which should I use for quests? -- Wige (talk) 21:06, 12 December 2008 (UTC)


 * I believe we're leaning towards Itembox, cause it makes it look more like the in-game verison... or cause it can be used to display an amount if consumables are the reward, whereas lootbox can not. 21:21, 12 December 2008 (UTC)


 * Itembox for crafting pages and quest rewards, Lootbox for loot from bosses. Mainly because quest rewards can be multiple, whereas instance drops are most often not (except for Badge of Justice, Emblem of Heroism etc). 22:28, 12 December 2008 (UTC)

Recent polls on mainpage, incorrect link
And here I thought I'd get a quick and easy edit, but since it's a Main page, I don't get the glory. :p

On the Portal:Main page, in the polls box, where it discusses the results of the "Who would you most want to defeat?" poll, it incorrectly links to the "Favorite TBC patch" poll instead of the "Boss kill" one.

-- Lywellyn (talk / cont) 12:12, 13 December 2008 (UTC)


 * Gourra has fixed :) 16:21, 13 December 2008 (UTC)

Blog articles and more...
I am hoping to launch a new feature on WoWWiki in the near future, called "blog articles", which I've been helping out with for the past few weeks. Now I know some people's initial reaction to hearing the word "blog" is not always positive, but there is reason behind this madness :) We feel this will help community building, and give users more of an outlet for their own creativity, and can help move personal content away from the main namespace.

These are not typical blog posts - they mostly work like normal articles, except they have a different way of utilizing comments (posted below the article), and are "personal" areas of the wiki. That is to say, only the poster (and admins) can edit a user's blog posts. Additionally, blog posts can be categorized in the normal way, but blog related items will appear in a different section, after "normal" articles.

Naturally, the content of those pages come under the policies of that wiki. For example, the most obvious policies are that blog posts must be on-topic, free from abusive rants, and not spammed. On WoWWiki specifically, I would expect it to be used for game opinions, fan fiction, character stories and administration-related topics. This is not to suggest moving the primary focus of WoWWiki away from the factual content in any way, just to give users a little more freedom.

This is not the entirety of the feature - there's a few other things you can do with it. You can find out more about all the new features on Help:Blog article on Wikia Help, and you can see some example posts on Star Wars Fanon, Wikia Gaming and Wikia Entertainment. I don't profess to be an amazing creative writer, but I've had a shot at a WotLK review, just to show off what kinds of things you can do.

I would love for us to test it: if it doesn't work out for us, fair enough. However I think we should try it out, and whatever feedback we get, we can use it to improve the extension for the future.

Thanks for your time, 16:51, 13 December 2008 (UTC)


 * As I'm very anti-fanfic, RP etc. on WoWWiki this is still a no for me; we've had problems with RP and fanfic before and I'm glad that it's gone. I can see that it's been successful on fanfic and general Wikia wikis, but since WoWWiki has both general information and (to an extent) fanfic, I don't see it having the same impact.
 * Another thing I'd like to see then, if this goes through, is the ability to choose what namespaces to be in the RecentChanges; I've seen that the blog uses four namespaces: "Blog", "Blog talk", "User blog" and "User blog talk". I'm all for seeing if this works, and if it's getting out of hand with policies and so on, then I don't see it staying. 17:02, 13 December 2008 (UTC)


 * Thanks, and I do understand what you say - I certainly don't want it to 'taint' the main articles. Regarding recent changes: yeah, I'd love to see that too (even narrowed by watchlist, I still don't want to see everything all the time). We are looking at improving the recent changes list, but I don't have a timescale atm - rather depends on when we can slot it into our schedule. 17:51, 13 December 2008 (UTC)

I've started on some rules at User:Kirkburn/Dev9. What do you think? 18:22, 15 December 2008 (UTC)
 * I think blogs = DO NOT WANT. -- 18:28, 15 December 2008 (UTC)


 * I'm not really convinced that WoWWiki needs this feature. Perhaps a vote would be useful to determine how much interest or opposition there is to it?
 * If it was to go ahead, borrowing some of the rules in the Blizzard Forums Code of Conduct might be a good idea, particularly regarding harassment, naming and shaming, and not calling for nerfs. Given the popularity of this site, I don't think we want to end up being a clearing house for incendiary posts which are unwelcome on the Blizz forums.
 * -- 18:55, 15 December 2008 (UTC)


 * I may be blind, but how should a blog author advertise their blog? It seems like this might just end up filling up the database with personal crap that almost no one will ever see. Is WoWWiki gonna get a forum feature? I prefer that.
 * I will put more thought into this, but this is my initial reaction. --[[Image:gengar orange 22x22.png]] Fandyllic  (talk &middot; contr) 2:15 PM PST 15 Dec 2008


 * I think this extension is poorly conceived; an alternative that I would rather see would be to encourage people to start their own blogs, and then the RSS related functions improved. So much so as to be able to embed the blogs in RecentChanges, for example. There are already blogsites out there, and I don't think we should be encouraging people to attempt to use wikiblog, as wikiblog is limited in its function. --Sky (t · c · w) 23:22, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

The extension is also active on w:c:warcraftfanon, though it is fairly quiet there. The method for collating posts is via the blog list extension, which you can see part of in action here. Blog posts and comments both appear on the recent changes list.

I do understand the potential for abuse, especially on a site of our size (and I don't want to burden our admins with more work) so we could do something like limiting blog posts to those who have made X edits, or something similar. If it is made clear to users that it is not a replacement Wordpress or Blogger, and that abuse will mean their toys are taken away, it would hopefully run like other parts of the site. Users could already use their user pages for that kind of abuse, but they generally don't.

Please remember, this wasn't designed specifically for WoWWiki (so don't be surprised that it's not perfectly designed for us), but we want to try it out in a wide variety of situations to see what can be improved. There's been a fair bit of interest from other wikis, so we're not relying on WoWWiki for success - but it would be nice :) (Note: I do think there's a larger amount of fan fiction writers amongst our audience (and passing editors) than amongst the dedicated editors who will comment here - which is fairly natural)

Regarding forums: I'm still working on that, though I'm unsure what direction we should take with it. There's a couple of options, but probably the easiest one is to go with wiki forums as seen on other Wikia wikis - see for example. 17:57, 16 December 2008 (UTC)


 * We don't want it. -- 18:57, 16 December 2008 (UTC)


 * pcj, I'd like a discussion please. That's not helpful. 19:32, 16 December 2008 (UTC)


 * You're trying to force blogs down our throat; that's not helpful. No one from WoWWiki has been positive about this concept except you. A vote has been proposed, try that.  Otherwise, just forget it. --


 * What I would like is to know what the community would like from a blog-style extension, and why they would or would not like it. Yes, you don't like it - however, you have not elaborated in any way, which doesn't help me. I know what people's reactions are to seeing the word "blog", but that means little - I'd love to see people looking at it and maybe trying it out and giving opinions based on that. It is not a replica of standard blogs.
 * I get that the most prolific editors are not creative/fiction writers: this isn't aimed specifically at you. It's aimed at the more passing author who might be enticed to stick around longer if they felt there was more of a community presence, and they could express themselves more than with edit summaries and discussion page posts. 20:06, 16 December 2008 (UTC)
 * There should be nothing for me to elaborate. I do not think extending beyond the wiki metaphor is best for WoWWiki.  Blogs are best kept off-site. -- 20:14, 16 December 2008 (UTC)


 * After looking at the links provided, I feel more or less the same as I did on Wowpedia talk:Domain name. I do not see the difference between the blogs and current talk pages, besides the layout, the focus on fan fiction (a bad thing), and the editing security. If the counter for that is that blogs could be about general topics that would not fit on a talk page, I counter that with the Village Pump. We have the limited editing more or less now: it is called politeness.-- 23:05, 16 December 2008 (UTC)


 * I still feel like I'm missing something... what void are these filling? I think a vote would be good, and a better explanation (or maybe an example blog) so I could understand why this might be a good addition to the site. With my limited concept of the idea, it just feels like a solution looking for a problem. -Howbizr (talk) 01:48, 17 December 2008 (UTC)


 * I agree completely with Sandwichman2448. I don't think this wiki needs a blog extension. My understanding is that this is mostly used as a place to gather factual information about all things Warcraft, not to create your own content. It seems to me that talk pages and user pages work perfectly well and a blog extension would not add any utility. -- 03:18, 17 December 2008 (UTC)


 * Not that I think WoWWiki needs the blog extension, but I think Kirkburn may be thinking of how WoWWiki could serve a wider audience of people interested in commenting on all things Warcraft. I do think it would add an outlet for active WoWWikians to express themselves in a more public way than talk pages and such.
 * Although I've been a proponent in the past of WoWWiki as a wiki for collecting and disseminating info about World of Warcraft primarily, it has really become something bigger. I do think, if we were to add the blog extension (seems unlikely at this point, but if we do), we should restrict it to our most active members who have really done alot to make WoWWiki better. Just opening it up to any bozo who has an account to relate their experiences or express their opinions would not be helpful.
 * We could also make an exception for folks who want to serve a semi-journalistic purpose in their blogs. I think it would have been a great thing to have members who attend Warcraft related events blog about their experience to share with others. A prime example is when we give out BlizzCon tickets to contest winners or beta keys. Having someone blog about those experiences I think would be valuable and a good extension to WoWWiki. --[[Image:gengar orange 22x22.png]] Fandyllic  (talk &middot; contr) 2:08 PM PST 17 Dec 2008
 * Yup, that sounds much like the direction I would want to take with it. Naturally different wikis want different things out of the extension, and it would be great to accommodate that - I look into whether an edit count limit is easily added (obviously atm it's holidays so development has slowed :) 16:14, 24 December 2008 (UTC)

Can low level's tank?

 * ''Moved to Warcraft Pump.

Northrend gems new format
We want to know what people think about the new format for northrend gems (and my "future plans"). Please add your comments in the old format talk page: Talk:Northrend_gems_by_color

(Right now the old format is Northrend gems by color and the new one is Northrend gems by quality.)

(Also, can someone rerevert the redirect at Northrend gems? I don't want to be accusated of edit warring. I need a third person to consider the legitimity of what I ask. Also note, this redirect is temporary.) (Someone did it.) [Edit by Xhamon (talk) 21:10, 15 December 2008 (UTC)]

-- Xhamon (talk) 21:59, 14 December 2008 (UTC)


 * The colors don't match up well, so I think there are probably better ways to do it. Perhaps removal of the colors with the quality colors in the header instead. Otherwise, there's no reason you can't do both, though I'd list both on the same page rather than two separate pages. --Sky (t · c · w) 23:18, 15 December 2008 (UTC)


 * Having the quality color on every stat link (yeah, I know it's for the tooltip) is overwhelming especially for the uncommon gems. Otherwise, I'm not against it. All the stat links don't have to be given quality color, because we know what quality they will be by what table they are in and the base gems in the header row at the top. --[[Image:gengar orange 22x22.png]] Fandyllic  (talk &middot; contr) 9:55 AM PST 16 Dec 2008

Message from Wikia Community Team
Hello.

All wikis will be "read-only" from 9am - 10am UTC Tuesday morning (that's 1:00am Pacific, 4:00am Eastern). During this time, editing will be disabled while we do some routine maintenance, but you will still be able to access the site.

This message is only being sent to wiki admins, so please pass this information along to other members of your communities as needed.

Thanks, Wikia Community Team This message will expire on 14:13, 16 December 2008.

I got this on my talk page. At least they didn't pick 9am - 10am Pacific. When the WoW realms are undergoing maintenance and I can't play, guess where I often come? -- Fandyllic  (talk · contr) 4:14 PM PST 15 Dec 2008
 * Bed? -- 00:28, 16 December 2008 (UTC)


 * WoWWiki and then bed. Rolandius [[Image:Paladin.gif|25px]] ( talk -  contr ) 03:18, 16 December 2008 (UTC)


 * --[[Image:gengar orange 22x22.png]] Fandyllic  (talk &middot; contr) 9:51 AM PST 16 Dec 2008

Just to mention, the maintenance went without a problem, and only lasted 20 minutes in the end :) We do try and pick off-peak times to do it, and WoW maintenance certainly do figure in those calculations :P 20:08, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

Citation Guide!
Wowpedia:Citation has been updated into a detailed guide containing information on how to use most, if not all, citation forms on the WoWWiki! Users who are not already familiar with citation methods should check it out!

Please do not take everything on it too literally, as it is a guideline.-- 22:40, 16 December 2008 (UTC)


 * Great job SWM! The only thing I would quibble with is the suggestion to put  or Reflist under , since a Notes section also may contain info that has   items in it and that would be confusing. --[[Image:gengar orange 22x22.png]]  Fandyllic  (talk &middot; contr) 2:31 PM PST 17 Dec 2008


 * Actually, there's a way to handle that that was built into a who-knows-how-recent version of the extension. The short of it is you can assign "groups" to refs, so if you want to have notes, you can. Ie, . I think, but do not know, if this works with the "name" function of ref, though you could try that out. For fuller documentation, see here and here. --Sky (t · c · w) 21:48, 17 December 2008 (UTC)


 * I thought it was  and that it was called with just  .  22:12, 17 December 2008 (UTC)


 * That suggestion is left over from the version that existed before my overhaul. I will fix it.-- 22:31, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

Icon claimers
I can barely make out what this icon (Image:IconSmall FrostDwarf Male.gif) is of. Varghedin made a better version and should be used. As to Whitedragon254's comment on Varghedin's talk page, I'm getting tired of those using the official name for icons and won't allow it to be improved cause its "theirs".

So lets get an official opinion of the community, Who thinks Varghedin's icon should be used and who thinks Whitedragon254's should be used? 20:47, 18 December 2008 (UTC)


 * I agree the old icon should go. Could we stick with Varghedin's version for now, but if someone wants to make a correction (like making the beard a color other than blue, if that's incorrect), please use it as a starting point? I'd much rather an icon that's slightly wrong than completely cryptic.


 * We're comparing Varghedin's to Whitedragon's right? -Howbizr (talk) 22:01, 18 December 2008 (UTC)


 * Yes. 22:16, 18 December 2008 (UTC)


 * Here are the icons side by side, as I'm struggling to compare when having to flip between pages, and I'm sure others will have the same issue.
 * http://images3.wikia.nocookie.net/wowwiki/images/archive/1/1b/20081218200854!IconSmall_Frost_Dwarf_Male.gif - Varghedin's 20081218200854
 * http://images3.wikia.nocookie.net/wowwiki/images/archive/1/1b/20081218200904!IconSmall_Frost_Dwarf_Male.gif - Whitedragon's 20081218200904
 * I've got to say that Varghedin's looks better to me. As to whether it's completely accurate, I don't really know.  If it's not accurate, a colour variation on it rather than Whitedragon's would be my preference.  This is, of course, a rather tricky issue, as colours can appear significantly different between different systems and displays.  With small icons in particular, it's more difficult than the layman might think to produce something which is going to look reasonable on the majority of systems.
 * As for not allowing updates, I think articles in the main namespace must always take precedence over articles in the User namespace. If an image uses a generic or official name, then it should be the best available version, and not constrained because someone wishes to use a particular version on a User page.  As I've just demonstrated above, it's quite possible to use historical versions within pages, or if desired, the historical version could be made available as "Image: _ .gif", or something similar to that.  While people should not deliberately break images on User pages, I think the main responsibility lies with the owner of the User page to update their page accordingly, not the person trying to improve the main namespace to avoid the breakage.
 * -- 22:31, 18 December 2008 (UTC)


 * As they would say in court, Whitedragon254 has no standing. The current Image:IconSmall_Frost_Dwarf_Male.gif image (http://images3.wikia.nocookie.net/wowwiki/images/archive/1/1b/20081218200904!IconSmall_Frost_Dwarf_Male.gif) is unrecognizable. Please upload Varghedin's. If Whitedragon complains, send him to me. If Whitedragon254 wants to use a particular image on his user page(s), that's fine, but doesn't give any right to dictate how it appears on pages in the main namespace.
 * If Whitedragon254 makes a better image then it can be considered as a replacement. --[[Image:gengar orange 22x22.png]] Fandyllic  (talk &middot; contr) 5:05 PM PST 18 Dec 2008
 * Reverted it but image isn't updating...oddly. -- 00:34, 19 December 2008 (UTC)


 * So as not to overlook Whitedragon's last version that has since been overwritten, http://images3.wikia.nocookie.net/wowwiki/images/archive/1/1b/20081219003747!IconSmall_Frost_Dwarf_Male.gif is better, but I would still vote for Varghedin's, but I would again encourage you to propose an improvement on that version if you feel the beard (or other details) need improvement. -Howbizr (talk) 20:59, 19 December 2008 (UTC)
 * And PCJ the revert took. -Howbizr (talk) 21:00, 19 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Last note, I made a home for icons that could probably use some love. Category:Icons to clean up -Howbizr (talk) 21:35, 19 December 2008 (UTC)
 * How about this one: Image:18px-Frost dwarf.gif? I made it to be more recognizable as a dwarf, but also more like what I think Whitedragon254 is going for. --[[Image:gengar orange 22x22.png]] Fandyllic  (talk &middot; contr) 4:03 PM PST 19 Dec 2008


 * Looks good to me. 23:06, 19 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Go for it. It's less "ghostly" yet still "dwarfish" -Howbizr (talk) 20:33, 20 December 2008 (UTC)


 * Varghedin made [[Image:IconSmall_Frost_Dwarf_Male.gif]] and I'm fine with it. Not sure about [[Image:IconSmall_Frost_Dwarf_Female.gif]], but I guess it's okay. --[[Image:gengar orange 22x22.png]] Fandyllic  (talk &middot; contr) 2:07 PM PST 22 Dec 2008


 * we dont know what frost dwarven women look like yet, noone has seen one yet. and yeah the reason why i didnt like the one he's using is because it looks like a dwarf spirit. thats all. the new icon i like better. still the female icon i think we shouldnt use yet.-- 04:32, 2 January 2009 (UTC)

Admin move request for Druid of the fang/Fang
Could an admin please move Druid of the fang over its redirect at Druid of the Fang. I believe that these should properly be capitalised as the proper name of a recognised organisation in the plural, and an effective title in the singular, similar to Knight of the Garter. I've already boldly moved the similar pages, but this one has a history on the redirect page, so requires admin assistance. Thanks in advance. -- 14:47, 20 December 2008 (UTC)


 * Pcj fixed this. --[[Image:gengar orange 22x22.png]] Fandyllic  (talk &middot; contr) 2:15 PM PST 22 Dec 2008

Redirects in the Template namespace
I was having a browse of the Template namespace and noticed that we've got quite a few redirects lying around from moves, and at least a few of them are still being transcluded by articles. Should we work towards deprecating these (i.e. updating the articles which point to the redirect so that they point directly to the template)? I'd be happy to do the heavy lifting which can be largely automated via pywikipediabot (via a bot account - I think this could be large enough to merit it). Obviously there are some that clearly exist to be a convenient shorthand, e.g. Template:Sd -> Template:Speedydelete, and I'm certainly not suggesting that they should be deprecated, just the obvious cases where a template has been renamed, e.g. Template:ClassFooter -> Template:Classfooter. What do folks think? I certainly won't go ahead with this unless it's clearly desired by others. -- 18:19, 20 December 2008 (UTC)
 * I'd prefer dead or deprecated code was fixed, but I'm not an admin. -Howbizr (talk) 20:35, 20 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Does anyone think this is a bad idea, or that it shouldn't be done? Howbizr neatly summed up my motivation for this (thanks ).  It's not a hugely significant issue, but I view the Template namespace essentially as a codebase, and it's untidy to me to have old versions of functions (the redirects, in this case) just lying around, with relative randomness over whether the old or new name is used, when it's within our reach to fully deprecate most of them in a semi-automated fashion.  -- 19:49, 22 December 2008 (UTC)
 * I think we should do it on a case by case basis. There are some widely used acronym redirects that seem to have taken over like ood and sd. I don't like the acronym versions, but people are lazy. --[[Image:gengar orange 22x22.png]] Fandyllic  (talk &middot; contr) 2:18 PM PST 22 Dec 2008
 * I have mixed feelings about the shorthand/acronym/convenience template redirects, but then again, I often use them, and they are well known, so I'll gladly view them more as a #define type macro rather than legacy junk. I can see that they are a different issue.
 * The only ones I'm suggesting deprecating are the obvious ones where someone has tweaked the name to comply with policy, e.g. "OneTwo" -> "Onetwo", "OneTwo" -> "One two", etc. There's also a second case that's just jumped out at me on having another look - the server templates that have been moved out of the Template namespace to be local - it seems a bit nonsensical to move them to another namespace, but then keep the redirect, rather defeating the purpose of the move (assuming the idea was to clean up the Template namespace).  -- 00:20, 23 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Ok, since there's some support for this, and no obvious objections to the principle, I'm going to go ahead with this for the ones which are clearly just adjusting the names to conform with policy. I will not be touching the ones which are clearly shorthand/acryonyms.  It will take a little while, and I'll be doing them one redirect at a time.  -- 03:37, 27 December 2008 (UTC)

Indentation break. Ok, MurphBot has been busy, and many instances of transcluded redirects have been updated. The deprecated redirects have been tagged for speedy deletion and now appear in Category:Miscellany for speedy deletion explained. If anyone thinks a particular redirect is useful and should remain, please feel free to revert the sd to the previous redirect. I hope none of them should be too controversial and that it's generally seen as a good thing to clean out the namespace (Template: is a special case from other namespaces, as it shouldn't be referenced by off-site pages). If any of the changes have gone against the direction someone was trying to move in, just let me know, and I'll gladly bot the change in the desired direction. -- 01:30, 28 December 2008 (UTC)


 * This is now more or less complete. The vast majority of the obvious candidates have had their usage deprecated and the former redirects tagged for deletion.  Some of the remaining cases could probably still be deprecated.  Are there any particular ones that people would like to see changed?  Here's a convenient list of the remaining redirects and where they point:
 * User:MurphBot/ListRedirects/Template
 * User:MurphBot/ListRedirects/Template talk
 * -- 01:09, 5 January 2009 (UTC)

Pet Problems?

 * ''Moved to Warcraft Pump.

More dungeon icons
I was looking at Wowpedia:List_of_small_icons and notice that it was missing the new Wotlk instances. Does anyone know if they exist, or can be imported into WoWWiki? -- 01:36, 21 December 2008 (UTC)
 * All of those were hand-made. Though it seems someone has made a couple for wotlk... see Category:Instance icon images for now, until the icon page is updated. 08:43, 21 December 2008 (UTC)
 * I was going to say they were probably not handmade, but taken from the WoW Raid Calendar, which notably has not been updated since the  expansion. -Howbizr (talk) 09:26, 21 December 2008 (UTC)
 * I would like to add that the Raid calendar hasn't been updated since 2.3, as Sunwell Plateau is missing. The ones on Category:Instance icon images look handmade, whereas Wowpedia:List_of_small_icons have some from the Raid calendar and some that are handmade.  I suppose anything will do at the moment.  Thanks.  -- 13:04, 21 December 2008 (UTC)
 * So thats where they came from ... I never visited that page before. I thought someone decided to make them all.... but technically they were all handmade, just so happens bliz employees made them =P 20:52, 22 December 2008 (UTC)

Drop Cap Initials
I created T:Initial|Letter, in particular for lore articles. I hope people like the concept (although I think the Blizz art could use some cropping)... I tried it out for size on the dragon article. -Howbizr (talk) 09:29, 21 December 2008 (UTC)


 * For the love of god, no. If you want to see fancy images like that on lore sites, see somewhere else. 14:22, 21 December 2008 (UTC)


 * -Howbizr (talk) 17:46, 21 December 2008 (UTC)

PlaySoundFile page?
I had an idea for a page, but Im not experienced enough with wikis to do it. I actually started to create this, but thought twice of it. Plus, I didnt know if it would fly with the higher ups here.

Anyway, the idea was to get a categorized listing of all the PlaySoundFile and Music commands for the game.I did a quick search for it, and found absolutely nothing. To find an I know its a lot to handle, so maybe the more popular/important files would be listed first. Like, instead of listing the moans for Wretched Zombie, list boss quotes.

If not this, maybe add the command to the pages of each page that it would fall under?

Ayalafatalis (talk) 18:39, 21 December 2008 (UTC)
 * There was an extensive listing, but it was a huge page and not easily navigable/editable/maintainable, so I deleted it. If this idea proceeds, please split it up/reduce it somehow. -- 21:23, 22 December 2008 (UTC)

Proposal to adopt WoW as the category prefix
I have posted a proposal and vote on the category prefix issue that was never really fully resolved, in the hope that after a fairly long cooling off period we can have a non-emotional and objective vote on it. Followup discussion is probably best held on that page, if required. -- 06:35, 22 December 2008 (UTC)

500 club?
So, I noticed recently that I have over 500 contribs, and would covet a, but what qualifies a person as notible? I sort of tend to do minor edits and brush-up work, not fancy templates and so on. I'd likely have to pretty up my user page too. :) 18:12, 23 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Go ahead. -- 18:15, 23 December 2008 (UTC)
 * The standard is not clearly defined, but I tend not to give out the badge if most of a user's contributions are in user/guild/server-specific pages or talk pages. BTW Decibal, you don't appear have 500 contribs by my count. How are you figuring it out? --[[Image:gengar orange 22x22.png]] Fandyllic  (talk &middot; contr) 1:12 PM PST 23 Dec 2008
 * I'm dumb, and noticed the results per page counter allowed 500 now. Turns out, I have more then 200, not 500. My apologies. 20:23, 23 December 2008 (UTC)
 * I use this URL as my starting point to give out club badges. --[[Image:gengar orange 22x22.png]] Fandyllic  (talk &middot; contr) 1:13 PM PST 23 Dec 2008
 * Nooga's contributions are an example of not qualifying for the 500 club. No offense intended to Nooga, but the badge is for contributing at large. --[[Image:gengar orange 22x22.png]] Fandyllic  (talk &middot; contr) 1:18 PM PST 23 Dec 2008

Speedydelete abuse
Please do not use sd or speedydelete without an explanation. -- Fandyllic  (talk · contr) 4:17 PM PST 23 Dec 2008

Boilerplates, templates, parameters, and includeonly
I've just changed Help:Achievement articles/Preload, so that it should require slightly less editing after being subst into a new article. This was in response to finding a few instances where achievementbox was being used without the required parameters (now fixed and standardised by MurphBot). The key to getting parameters into the target of the subst is the usage of  (tag intentionally empty) to prevent the parser from interpreting particular parts of the wikitext. The subst process removes the includeonly sections, leaving the desired wikitext in the target. Unless there are any objections, I intend to do the same thing to the other boilerplates, but I thought I'd run it by the pump first, just in case anyone can see any problems with it, or has any suggestions for further improvement. -- 23:51, 23 December 2008 (UTC)


 * I support the effort, and would encourage him again to update the other boilerplates. -Howbizr (talk) 17:27, 24 December 2008 (UTC)


 * Also sounds good to me. I'm always impressed by wikicode that gets a good desirable result based on knowing the guts of how parsers and such work. I am sort of surprised that  works though. --[[Image:gengar orange 22x22.png]]  Fandyllic  (talk &middot; contr) 2:06 PM PST 24 Dec 2008


 * I can't take all the credit - the ideas came from m:Help:Substitution & mw:Manual:Creating pages with preloaded text. I've now revised what I think is best current practice for this trick to be , instead of the XML shorthand for empty tags (the XML coder in me always uses the shorthand, where possible, as I think it looks cleaner).  It turns out that the XML shorthand works just fine with subst, but it doesn't work with preload ( http://www.wowwiki.com/Page_name?action=edit&preload=... ).  The behaviour from our site isn't entirely consistent with the docs - noinclude tags are meant to be preserved with the preload mechanism (but not subst), but our site is stripping them.  (Gourra, that's why I changed your change to noinclude back - it could be a bug in version 1.13.3 - 1.14alpha on meta.wikimedia.org does indeed leave noinclude tags in place when preloading.)
 * Help:Item articles/Preload has now been updated. -- 01:20, 26 December 2008 (UTC)

Spam protection filter being a touch over-zealous
The spam protection filter seems to be a touch over-zealous - it's blocking page updates even when the blacklisted URL is in a part of the page that's unchanged. I encountered this while deprecating Infobox BattlegroupN for Battlegroup. Here are the problem pages and the URLs that seem to be triggering the filter (obvious spaces inserted):


 * Server:Frostwhisper Europe
 * http://swedishsyndicate.bounceme.net


 * Server:Skullcrusher Europe
 * http://www.legioninc.notlong.com


 * Server:Lightning's Blade Europe
 * http: //jackheart.dns2go.com

-- 02:14, 28 December 2008 (UTC)


 * Update - in the 3rd case (Server:Lightning's Blade Europe), the link was giving a "404 Not Found", so I've just removed it. In the first 2 cases, the sites look legitimate at first glance.  -- 02:24, 28 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Fixed. -- 04:28, 28 December 2008 (UTC)

Spell Power Clear Up
I just got back into WoW about a week or two after WotLK was released, I also stopped playing a couple of weeks after Sunwell came out. I have noticed that a big change that was made was that spell power was implicated on gear as opposed to the usual +healing or +damage. So my main question to you all is, if I were to make something like a shaman, had I been specced for restoration would I want more mp5/spell power? And had I been elemental would I want more spell crit/mp5? I have heard from a few people that in WotLK, mp5 is much more important to healers while crit is more important to casters, which hasn't changed since the game came out, however, I was also told that spell power is no longer important in WotLK as +damage or +healing was in the previous versions of the game. So any help would be great, I am just a little confizzled right now about this, thanks!

-- SoWhatNow? (talk) 14:17, 28 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Normally I would have said to read up Shaman tactics, but the reference to Tier 3 makes me think this article is very much out of date. You may have to result to googling.


 * However, I should say my general impression of is that theorycrafting is almost unnecessary, because it simply doesn't matter. Many aspects of the game are "easy mode," gear being one of them, comparatively to the difficulty with choosing gear in . As long as you stick to gear your fellow players are calling "shaman resto gear" (AKA caster mail with no hit rating), you'll probably do just fine, even through Naxx25. -Howbizr (talk) 16:07, 29 December 2008 (UTC)


 * One last thought is simply mimic Blizz's idea for your class, and stack stats similarly to tier 7 resto gear. -Howbizr (talk) 16:09, 29 December 2008 (UTC)

Domain name
Good morning! As many of you already know, Wikia are planning to move WoWWiki onto the wikia.com domain in the near future. I now have a date for when this is planned: Jan 7th. The main issue is what address do we move to (wow.wikia, wowwiki.wikia or warcraft.wikia), for which I think a vote is appropriate. Note, as a result of the move, few should notice a difference, as the old address will always continue to work - it will just redirect. You can read more about the domain move at Wowpedia:Domain name. Thanks! 16:21, 29 December 2008 (UTC)


 * According to Moving your wiki to Wikia While exceptions can be made for very large wikis, most Wikia sites can be found on a subdomain of wikia.com. Neither of the 2 listed "advantages" of moving to wikia.com are in any way relevant to WoWWiki.  So, since it's very obvious that we are a "very large wiki" (that page lists WoWWiki as an example of a large wiki), why can we not insist on just staying with www.wowwiki.com, if that was the preferred option of the community?  We have a brand, it has considerable status.  Any change of this nature damages the brand.  Additionally, Each Wikia site is managed by the communities that create them - changing the primary domain seems like a management issue to me, and should only be done with a clear consensus support from the community.  -- 17:16, 29 December 2008 (UTC)


 * Yeah, we probably should even look at moving WoWWiki away from Wikia, although the cost for bandwidth from other providers and actually getting the database backup promised by Wikia with all the images may limit the capability to do that. -- 18:34, 29 December 2008 (UTC)


 * Given our official fansite status and the position we hold in the larger WoW community, the most obvious sponsor for an independent WoWWiki would be Blizz themselves, unless we can find one or more benefactors who would be interested in non-intrusively supporting our efforts. Blizz would almost certainly have deep enough pockets and the infrastructure to support us, it's mostly just a question of how we could do such a deal, followed by the logistics.  Without wishing to sound too egotistical, we add tremendous value to the WoW brand, and I'm sure there are at least a few influential folks inside Blizz that either do recognise that, or could come to recognise it.
 * The images need not be a huge issue, if Wikia were to be uncooperative. Extracting a full set of the current images is quite scriptable (revision histories might be harder or just lost, but that would be a small issue in the grand scheme of things).
 * Having said all that, my preferred option right now would be a cooperative Wikia that respects community consensus and does not force unnecessary, unacceptable and damaging changes on the community.
 * -- 19:24, 29 December 2008 (UTC)


 * Murph, I linked to Wowpedia:Domain name, which should already answer some of your queries. The name of the site will not change, only the URL. Old links will all redirect. No breakage should occur. 18:53, 29 December 2008 (UTC)


 * Unfortunately, Wikia isn't great at following what they say, but the cost burden of WoWWiki is probably pretty large. We should definitely know the real costs of running WoWWiki before making it sound like Wikia isn't putting alot into it.
 * Otherwise, I'm annoyed that the announcement of a date comes less than 2 weeks from said date. --[[Image:gengar orange 22x22.png]] Fandyllic  (talk &middot; contr) 12:02 PM PST 29 Dec 2008


 * I'm more annoyed by the feeling that we don't have an adequate voice to Wikia with our main lead, Kirkburn, actually working for Wikia. -- 19:11, 29 December 2008 (UTC)


 * Fandyllic, I'm 100% with you on the timescale. The concept of this change may well have been raised months ago, but announcing the actual date with only 10 days notice is bordering on cavalier and negligent.  -- 19:28, 29 December 2008 (UTC)


 * I've read that page a large number of times now, over a number of months, and it has never convinced me that the change is necessary, or that it's not detrimental to WoWWiki. It's not really a question of whether someone can configure a web server to do some redirects or not.  A strong and established brand which has been using "www. .com" as its primary domain name for a considerable period of time is damaged by any change which essentially deprecates a key part of that brand (the primary domain name) for something which is fundamentally inferior.
 * The other thing that particularly irks me is that this change should only be made with community consensus - it is a management decision, and Wikia clearly state that the management is done and the policies are set by the community, not by Wikia. Wikia also state that exceptions can be made to their normal subdomain policy for very large wikis.  If our community was to overwhelmingly call for such an exception (which we already have in place today), why can that exception not be continued?
 * I should also say that I continue to respect you as a significant and valued WoWWikian, Kirkburn, my discontent and anger is aimed at Wikia, not at you.
 * -- 19:24, 29 December 2008 (UTC)

If we don't find a different hosting and have to change to a different domain name, I'm out of this. Also seconding what pcj said. 19:31, 29 December 2008 (UTC)


 * [Edit conflict] Well, I'd like to think my voice is adequate, but unfortunately I am not all powerful, and some choices are not in my hands. Regarding the closeness of the date: it's not ideal. I only just got the date, so it's not as if I've been sitting on it :) If it's not enough time I'm sure I can argue a delay, but the choice is only what domain to go to, which shouldn't take too long. As for the cost of running Wowpedia: it's certainly not cheap, and not something simple. (Crucially from IRC is best to answer that kind of question.)
 * The exceptions weren't really done on a 'community' basis, they were the result of imports and wikis that came from elsewhere - Wikia is based on the concept of having the wikis at x.wikia.com, and we're finding out that wikis off the main site are more of a problem than we originally expected. While not wishing to be cliché about the issue, these aren't easy times in the economy. Fortunately online ad buys haven't altered much, but we want to ensure Wikia's security as much as possible, to ensure we don't have any problems continuing to support the wikis. 19:38, 29 December 2008 (UTC)


 * Is there some reason we couldn't do the redirects backward, and have all of the wikia links direct back to wowwiki? Kind of out of the box I know, but just throwing it out there. -Howbizr (talk) 21:03, 29 December 2008 (UTC)


 * If you try any of the suggested links, you should see they all work already :) 21:14, 29 December 2008 (UTC)

In an attempt to illustrate why I think this is a terrible thing and must not be done, I'll deviate from the norm a little, and engage in a moment of reductio ad absurdum, sprinkled with a little sarcasm. This is not my view, it's just an attempt to illustrate to Wikia why the community might hate this change. It is absolutely not intended to provide a compelling or conclusive argument, just to (hopefully) cause some folk inside Wikia to stop and think before making a disasterous and entirely needless mistake. For those that already are convinced that this is an incredibly bad thing, hopefully this will give you a brief interlude of light relief.

Since the DNS domain name doesn't really matter, as long as the site name and logos can continue the desired branding, and redirects are provided from the well known, respected and established domain, we can just move *.wikia.com across to *.wikia.wowwiki.com, or any reasonable subdomain.wowwiki.com of their choice. Full redirects will be permanently provided from all existing hostnames, and there will be no barriers to adding reasonable new redirects in the future. The existing communities will retain full management and policy control of their individual sites. The end users, and all bar the most advanced editors and admins should not really notice any difference. It's the obvious choice, since www.wowwiki.com represents the largest single set of web traffic per hostname. We'd prefer not to do it, but the salesman has lost his calculator, his copy of Excel has a weird DLL error, and it's just too much hassle for him to add up all the individual sets of numbers (he's got an important golf engagement business meeting to get to). Since it's no big deal, almost nobody will actually notice or care, and we can just go ahead with this on the morning of Jan 6.

-- 22:09, 29 December 2008 (UTC)


 * When is Wikia known to listen when it comes to these things? 22:42, 29 December 2008 (UTC)


 * Well, the track record isn't great, I grant you. Given the unreasonably short timescale thrown at us, and having thought a little more, I decided to escalate the issue a little, and have finally found a use for having a Wikia-wide login.  I've no idea if it will get a timely response, or if it will even help, but I have posted a complaint about the change at wikia:User talk:Gil.  Nothing ventured, nothing gained...  -- 23:18, 29 December 2008 (UTC)

Looking back at Moving_your_wiki_to_Wikia, I find it strange that the main reason why Wikia want to change our domain name to *.wikia.com, despite the fact that Wowwiki is well established, and apparently Wowwiki isn't a "very large wiki". I don't fall for the "page rank" bullshit as Wikia got in that bullshit by themselves by forcing the Monaco theme on wikis. 00:26, 30 December 2008 (UTC)


 * Quoting from that page: There are no limits to the size your wiki can be at Wikia. WoWWiki has more than 65,000 articles about the World of Warcraft game and is freely hosted by Wikia. We hope your wiki will also grow to that size!. If we are not a "very large wiki", by Wikia standards, I don't know who is.  There's also Larger examples include WoWWiki, ...  -- 00:35, 30 December 2008 (UTC)


 * A request: please do not go around pinging various staff members - all are aware of this, and those involved know of this discussion. In addition, this has nothing to do with the skin of the wiki, and we are by no means the only wiki affected by the change. The policy referred to is no longer the situation. Tough times call for tough changes. Of course we are a large wiki - we are the largest wiki on Wikia. However, this change affects all such wikis, large or small.
 * This possibility was raised several months ago (it was announced here, and Wowpedia:Domain name has existed for some time), and the timescale was originally set for December, which was postponed to January. Now I have a definite date in January. Unfortunately it is a little close, but the domain we move to is the only issue needing to be solved within that time. No rebranding is needed, no big announcements, just a choice of which domain we prefer.
 * We have a sales team, but unfortunately we cannot change certain ranking websites that do not combine website listings. This is frustrating for us too, as it makes Wikia appear smaller than it is. This is an issue we have looked at for months. 00:45, 30 December 2008 (UTC)


 * There have been grumblings and discontent about it since it was first mentioned, on Wowpedia talk:Domain name. I doubt I'll be saying anything more to Wikia staff, I think I've made my point as best I can to them.  I'm sorry that I had to do that, but I feel sufficiently strongly about this issue that I was compelled to escalate it, and the extremely short timescale that has been sprung on us left only one option, to escalate it to the highest level immediately.  That is my right as essentially a customer in a business relationship where I feel the supplier is behaving in an abhorrent, unacceptable, unnecessary, inappropriate, and/or damaging manner (unfortunately, all of those apply in this case).  Nothing posted so far has said what level or which people in Wikia were aware of this issue, or driving the change.  It was also unclear if senior staff at Wikia would be aware of the bad feeling that is being generated, and that is something that they absolutely need to know about.  I've done it now, and I won't be bugging them further unless Wikia somehow ups the ante on abusing their position as host of WoWWiki.
 * I do trust you to try to pass feedback on to Wikia, Kirburn, but I'm also acutely aware that you have a conflict of interest in this matter (I'm sure you will do your upmost to represent us, but a conflict of interest cannot be ignored, and we don't know what the culture inside Wikia is like). I have seen how Wikia steamrolled across massive community opposition to the domain change on other wikis, and the damage it caused.  As someone who strongly wishes WoWWiki to prosper, I do not want to look back and think "I wish I'd spoken up".  -- 01:19, 30 December 2008 (UTC)

Hi Murph,

Thanks for your note - I completely agree that WoWWiki, like Wookieepedia has built a large brand and has significant name recognition. Many of the heaviest readers of the site work at Wikia and are addicted to the content and I often worry that they don't work enough because they spend so much time on WoWWiki!

Frankly, these are tough times, with the economy shrinking. We are seeing ad revenues slowly declining as a result for us - as I expect all web sites are. As a result we've been looking for ways to support the costs we incur in hosting all of our sites so that we can continue to provide a high level of service and up-time that our customers expect.

We batted around a number of ideas and have frequently talked with advertisers about what makes them pay more - or less - when they decide where to advertise. Here were a few of the options we discussed as options for replacing the lost revenues from a soft ad market One thing we DID NOT discuss was adding ads for logged-in users. We believe that if a user really doesn't want ads, logging in is a simple way to express that desire and we respect it.
 * Put significantly more ads on the site and increase the size of all the ads (336x300px vs 300x250px as an example for the box ad) to get more ad network $$
 * Interstitial ads - even our own staff reacted very negatively to this idea
 * Put ads in the middle of the content (improves click rates on the ads where we get paid per click from ad networks).
 * Kontera links (green double underline text links on up to 4 words per page that popup small ads when you mouse-over the link)
 * Get more premium advertisers to buy, by serving WoWWiki from the wow.Wikia.com domain. This allows us to sell WoWWiki directly rather than relying on ad networks. WoWWiki.com on its own has not been large enough for us to get advertisers excited about buying ads on it

To be honest, we're not happy about any of these choices and we made a judgment call that the domain move was the least intrusive of the bunch. One of the data points we used was looking at Wookieepedia. This wiki is on a wikia.com URL, and still sees, on a monthly basis, 156,578 people get to the wiki via a search for wookiepedia (mis-spelled), 52,064 search for wookieepedia, and 20,226 search for wookipedia. By contrast, only 36,360 search for star wars wiki, 4,974 for starwars wiki, 3,416 for starwars wikia and 2,484 for starwars wikipedia (strange isn't that). What that shows us is that the site name, not the URL still determines how people think about Wookieepedia and as a result how they would likely think of WoWWiki despite any domain change.

Your point that we didn't discuss it long enough with the community is a good one - I take the blame on that. If you think that some of the other alternatives we considered would be preferable, or you have some ideas of your own, I would encourage you to start that discussion here and let us know when you reach some kind of consensus. Giving you a few weeks to discuss possible options is also a reasonable request. If you reach a consensus on another alternative before January 28, we can circle back to figure out if there is a way that we can make your ideas work. If not, we'll move ahead at that time, hopefully with your support and understanding.

color="Blue">Gil (color="Blue" size="1">talk) 04:59, 30 December 2008 (UTC)


 * Note, for those not familiar, Gil is the Wikia CEO. 13:18, 30 December 2008 (UTC)


 * You're still going to move it from Wowwiki.com, aren't you? 10:43, 30 December 2008 (UTC)


 * The additional delay is appreciated. Unfortunately, all of this should have been considered long, long ago.
 * Such problems aren't solved by letting down your community, though. If Wikia is having problems like you describe, all the domain change will do is push back a few months the date when WoWWiki will be closed.
 * I believe only what I see. And so far all I've seen is poor management, awkward situations and promises holding as long as a couple of months. What I won't believe is the miracle that will somehow keep WoWWiki up much longer. You will not get any new user with the move. The only kind of reaction you can get is hostile. How is that a good long-term solution?
 * But yeah, keep going... 12:27, 30 December 2008 (UTC)


 * Gil, thanks for your time, and the long post giving your point of view and issues, it is appreciated, even although I remain unconvinced that the change is necessary, beneficial, or will actually achieve the result Wikia desires (enhancing the appeal to advertisers).
 * Have Wikia approached Blizzard Entertainment regarding possible sponsorship or support for WoWWiki? We are one of a very small number of official fansites (a status that we have strived long and hard to earn and protect), and a unique resource which adds significant value to their primary product (and a number of additional products).  So, it is highly beneficial to Blizz that WoWWiki's success and status quo continues.  In that regard, either selling wowwiki.com to Blizz (not a windfall sale, it's not worth that much, but enough to adequately compensate Wikia for time and money invested in supporting us), or doing some sort of sponsorship, advertising, or publicity deal with them to properly cover the operational costs of the site.  Blizz now have adverts appearing on their own forums, so they are in the field as both advertiser and publisher.
 * As far as selling to premium advertisers goes, I'm highly sceptical that changing our domain name will make any difference whatsoever. People spending or representing big bucks on advertising are not stupid.  If you can't convince them with "Hello, we are Wikia, and we represent a combined advertising network across 100 different community content web sites, 10 of which are high profile, respected, and long established brands" (using the numbers 10 and 100 arbitrarily - I don't know how many sites you have), I can't see them being convinced by "Hello, we are Wikia, and we represent a single, large, sprawling community site covering over 100 different topics".  The size of the opportunity is exactly the same in both cases, and the big players are very good at accurately evaluating the size of any opportunity.  I obviously don't know what you have tried, or how you have presented it, that's just a guess of the message the possible advertisers might receive.  Once you are talking about a single huge pseudo-combined site and big money, they are going to do some research and see that it's not really 1 massive site, but lots of little sites with a few large ones thrown in, and I think you'd find yourself back at square one.  If advertisers are not interested when you talk to them about the combined overall Wikia opportunity now, they are still not going to be convinced when it's all been squashed under a single domain.
 * Looking at your other options, I'd personally be far less concerned about increasing the number, size, and intrusiveness of ad placement, if it was the only way for us to keep wowwiki.com as our primary domain. Obviously, you can't go too far on that, or you will harm both yourselves and WoWWiki by driving our viewers and contributors away.  Popups, popunders, interstitials, and anything with that level of intrusion are almost universally loathed by viewers, for example.  Zero or minimal ad content for registered users strikes me as a very sensible policy.  I think most of us that strongly oppose the domain change do recognise that it costs real and significant money to run the WoWWiki servers and bandwidth - I don't think anyone is denying that, or that Wikia need to find a way to cover those costs.  In a way, what WoWWiki (and all factual & informational wikis, for that matter) really needs is a modern day Andrew Carnegie to recognise the value of our information and knowledge repository, and bear the costs of making it freely available to the public.
 * So, realistically, are we being given the choice of the following?
 * Change domain
 * Keep our domain, but significantly increase and improve ad placement, including larger and/or mid-content ads (please provide a hide button if they are mid content, so it doesn't become a chore to read large articles).
 * If those are the choices, I'd reluctantly opt for the increased adverts. If we went down that route, an ongoing constructive discussion/dialogue would be essential to tune the presentation of the adverts in such a manner that they do not destroy the usability, content, and appeal of the site.
 * -- 13:22, 30 December 2008 (UTC)


 * I'd like to comment on option #2. I understand that ad placement is an intricate art, but I think the current layout of the website leaves plenty of real estate for ads, without changing the basic layout. In particular, I'd target the left column beside the main content for ads. To be honest when I browse wowwiki, I'm almost shocked (and thankful) how few ads there are. In particular how I can read a long article and it was as if there wasn't a single ad to be seen, making me wonder how this site stays afloat.


 * Just reaching out to whoever is financially responsible for this website, not necessarily wikia, are Google ads something we've considered as a revenue stream? Again like I was mentioning, there's more than enough room for text ads. I mentioned Google in particular because many people (myself included) support their text based, no flashing, no blinking, context sensitive ad approach. I actually like advertising when it's something I'm interested in - I'm only annoyed if it gets in between me and my browsing, worsened when I have no interest in the ad. But if I am attracted to it on my own time, I don't feel offended, and I think that's a general consensus with consumers.


 * If ads could keep our domain, which keeps some of the largest contributors and admins in the community, then I'm for it. Thanks again for your comments, Gil.-Howbizr (talk) 15:48, 30 December 2008 (UTC)


 * If I remember correctly, Wikia switched from Google ads to the ones we have now because Google ads didn't make enough profit. 17:50, 30 December 2008 (UTC)


 * I'm personally most interested in broaching ground in the area of choice #1: Approaching Blizzard about it, and if not Blizzard, another of the other WoW companies: ZAM (hosts Wowhead and co.) or Curse (the largest two off the top of my head). I'd say we get the number of page hits that would make us attractive to one of the two... --Sky (t · c · w) 17:32, 30 December 2008 (UTC)


 * Hahahahaha 18:53, 30 December 2008 (UTC)


 * I'm sure there was a purpose to you posting... I just fail to grasp it. Since you're leaving anyway, either a) actually comment on what I said, or b) leave now, since all you're doing is dragging down the discussion. --Sky (t · c · w) 19:23, 30 December 2008 (UTC)


 * We have Blizzard's attention, but their money? I like your idea Sky, but I don't have much optimism about it, from a realist standpoint. -Howbizr (talk) 19:37, 30 December 2008 (UTC)


 * Seriously? How in heavens do you expect to sell WW to Blizzard? For that matter, why would any host care about it?
 * There has already been a (failed) Curse deal in the past. Zam? Come on now, why the hell would they buy this?
 * The wiki is a freehost guild/server page, with a bunch of manually-updated (and way outdated) item pages, which serve as tens of thousands of this wiki's pages. There is very few actual content. It's all lore, and... sorry, lore doesn't make big digits of monies. Seriously, I have the utmost respect for the community and everyone knows that - but this won't interest anyone financially.
 * Good luck selling that. 20:21, 30 December 2008 (UTC)


 * How about removing all the "duplicate, still always outdated content", as in - item pages, quest pages (as I've always said it's useless...). The usual suspects of database sites cover that. Invent some voodoo magic that autoredirects. How much traffic could we save with that? WoWWiki's strengths lie elsewhere. Focus on those and get rid of all the bloat. http://images.wikia.com/wowwiki/images/5/5a/TrainerGossipIcon.png Arma gone  (User_talk:Armagone Special:Contributions/Armagone)  01:50, 31 December 2008 (UTC)

Armagone: "get rid of all the bloat." Like your sig, eh? :P However, I'm in agreement with that opinion also, and was also about at the point of telling someone about it. Autodirects? I'm not sure about that, but perhaps something like the current special:BookSources? Ie, an extension which allows people to search the database of their choice through wiki? There is a point in saying that they draw traffic which could probably better directed toward lore and such, though I hesitate when we think of the potential of articles such as Going Down? (it's an ordinary achievement that in my view deserves documentation, to allow for collation of thoughts and such related to it), which would undoubtedly be added to the list of "keep off the wiki"... Returning to what you said Adys, they are legitimate points. Checking in with them first is still an option, however unlikely they are to be seen through to an end. As for ZAM, why not? We get rid of the database portion, and then we suddenly aren't competing with any of the other sites on the network (not that that is a good or bad thing, naturally). From what I can tell just out and about, when people browse to WoWWiki, it sure as hell isn't for the database that they're coming. Lore does sell, for whatever reason (perhaps as we're the only legitimate collation of it, aside from a handful of other sites which don't have the current ability we do to disseminate information of the sort). If that becomes a dealmaker, as in, the extraordinary number of pages which don't see real use need to be removed, we remove them. --Sky (t · c · w) 04:07, 31 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Thank you Adys, for giving me something to think about.


 * I have forked a new section for discussion of the database type content, as I think it's a big subject in its own right, with quite a few potentially controversial aspects. -- 06:10, 31 December 2008 (UTC)


 * I just thought I would add my thoughts in here. WoWWiki is indeed a brand, if not a household name (while not directly selling anything). Murph seems to know what he is talking about. There is defiantly hypocrisy regarding the things implied by Moving_your_wiki_to_Wikia versus their actions. Fandyllic's statistics request was never answered (unless it was on IRC), but the things stated by Gil made it sound like an act of financial desperation. I am sure every group wants a magical rich guy to fund their good efforts, but does anyone really think that will happen? Adys made several good points on the topic of other hosts.


 * Having more than one 'dot something' in the domain, by its very nature, looks stupid. If major editors and admins are threatening (to various degrees) to leave, then I agree that this will mostly kill the wiki. In the spirit of hopful but impractical ideas, why can the name not be moved back if the economy improves before the world as we know it ends?-- 21:02, 30 December 2008 (UTC)


 * Yikes, I take a short break from WoWWiki during the end of the year and a monstrous thread like this appears!
 * Anyway, although I understand the sentiment of not wanting to change the primary domain from wowwiki.com, I'm not has vehemently opposed to it. I think we should ask ourselves the question (and try to answer it): What will be the observable effects of changing the primary domain?
 * I will try to give some answers, but I'd like others to pitch in. After we get a reasonable list, I'd like to discuss how truly harmful these effects would really be.
 * You will see *.wikia.com (* being warcraft, wow, wowwiki, etc.) instead of wowwiki.com in your URL address on your browser.
 * When you try to go to a wowwiki.com/rest of URL link manually it will probably go there, but then the address will change to something starting with *.wikia.com.
 * If you lose DNS access or have a DNS problem, wowwiki.com/rest of URL may not work.
 * Traffic rank sites will no longer give stats based on wowwiki.com alone and instead give *.wikia.com aggregate statistics (which I think is what Wikia really wants).
 * We might see ad links to WoWWiki use the *.wikia.com address rather than the wowwiki.com address.
 * Somehow (although I suspect unlikely), people will start to refer to WoWWiki based on the *.wikia.com address more than they used to as either wowwiki.com or just WoWWiki.
 * So that's my off the top of the head list. Anything heinous that I missed?
 * I'd also like to ask again that Kirkburn or some other Wikia representative start a vote on alternative *.wikia.com domains (warcraft, wow, wowwiki, etc.) which I did earlier and seems to have been forgotten or lost. --[[Image:gengar orange 22x22.png]] Fandyllic  (talk &middot; contr) 2:35 PM PST 5 Jan 2009
 * Please put response to the above at Foreseeable effects of domain change.... --[[Image:gengar orange 22x22.png]] Fandyllic  (talk &middot; contr) 2:38 PM PST 5 Jan 2009

I don't pay enough attention to notice these things, honestly. To me, WoWWiki is little more than another resource site, significantly better than WoWhead, Allakhazam, or Thottbot in some areas. Particularly lore/storyline related stuff, but more mundane features as well. I've done some minor edits from time to time, but I'm basically a lurker.

A few days ago I was browsing around looking at stuff, and came on an Ad smack dab in the middle of an article, http://www.wowwiki.com/Heigan_the_Unclean to be specific. I immediately assumed it was vandalism, so I logged in, jumped into the edit, and tried to find the code. When I find it, it has a comment on it not to remove it and appears to be using a special 'sponsor' tag, with a link to a wowwiki namespace page, which I checked.

I nearly stopped using WoWWiki right that second when I discovered the highly obnoxious, very intrusive, flow breaking and confusing ad that looked JUST like something a vandal would do was actually put up by WoWWiki's administration team. Only the possibility that they may be removed kept me from deleting my firefox plugin for WoWWiki and never coming back.

Each day those hyper intrusive ads remain, my rage grows. I will never buy anything from an ad that intrusive, be it a pop up, interstitial, or especially a pop-over. If you try to force me to look at it, you just piss me off. The harder you try, the more pissed I get. I'm already boycotting AT&T Wireless and stopped reading Wired magazine almost before I started because of one horribly evil pop-over. I stopped using Allakhazam and will never go back because their ads bogged down the site to an absurd extent. I was gone before the redesign, and even though it's no longer a problem I'm not going back.

WoWWiki is next on the list if this level of intrusiveness and obnoxiousness is going to be the order of the day. I cannot abide people that think that I'm going to buy something from them if they force me to look at their horrible ad. Quite the contrary, I'll make a point of NOT doing so.

Inserting ads directly into articles essentially constitutes administrative vandalism, and I know at least one administrator agrees on that point. I've seen far too many sites that decided they needed to make more on ads and ended up driving off their userbase by being too evil with them. WoWWiki is crossing that line.

At this point, if those ads aren't gone reasonably quickly, I'm going to go, but first I'm going to go through and find each and every company that one of those ads is for, and e-mail them that I am boycotting them permanently for advertising in such an evil fashion. Graptor (talk) 08:24, 18 February 2009 (UTC)


 * First, the ads in the middle of the page doesn't really disrupt the reading - you can simply ignore it and scroll down. However, if there's ads that isn't actually in the article's "code", you should use an ad blocker to get rid off it. 10:17, 18 February 2009 (UTC)


 * That's the trick. I frankly don't give a good gorram about the ads that aren't in the article's code.  The ones that are I find nearly as annoying as an uncloseable, non-autoclosing popover I encountered at one time.  I simply WILL NOT USE WOWWIKI if such ads stay, and will do my best to insure as few other people as possible do.  If the in-article ads go, we're fine.  If not, WoWWiki, and probably Wikia too, both need to go away so we can get a decent replacement. This is not something I can be convinced otherwise about.  They go or I do, and I won't go quietly either. Graptor (talk) 11:00, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

A proposal - that would require you to designate a representative
All,

Let me start by saying thanks for the thoughtful responses. I appreciate the collaborative tone of the discussion and will try very hard to honor our joint goals here.

A few quick factoids, so you have more information for your decisions

Costs Revenues
 * We have reasonably high fixed costs because we have a team of engineers to support mediawiki upgrades, extensions, improvements, etc, a team to support each of 3 co-lo's 24/7 to insure both fast loading time and full backups if one colo fails, LOTS of hardware that creates a monthly expense, community team members who work with the engineers and help support new communities that are launching, etc
 * We did a layoff in October to reduce our fixed costs and that has helped
 * We do make a small profit on each incremental page visited, but we don't have enough visits yet to cover all the fixed costs :-) So anything we can do to create MORE visits, or MORE content is where we focus our time.
 * We are not desperate - we still have money in the bank to cover costs for a long time to come, but in this economic climate, every small company is increasingly focused on getting to break-even faster than originally planned
 * We have tried very hard to get Blizzard's ad agency to buy direct advertising from us. To date, they have not agreed to, but when they bought through a network (gamepro) Wowwiki was not their best performing site because their goal in advertising is to acquire new users and shockingly, many people on wowwiki already own the game :-)  Their best performance was on our music and sports wikis oddly.  In a tough economy ad buyers are less likely to risk buying a new site - when they can spend money with sites they already know - which is why we're focused on selling wikia.com to people who already buy it..
 * We will reach out to Blizzard direct in 2009, but I am not sure if they will bite - if you know anyone there, contacts are always welcome. I would love to get a sponsorship...
 * We have tested text ads within the content and if that's something you're willing to consider, it might look like this: http://www.wikihow.com/Make-French-Toast-Waffles where text ads are in the TIPS section (middle of article) and in the footer of the page.   We would also test box ads on the left and right hand sides of certain sections as another example.  To date our tests with google have had poor results - but hope springs eternal and I am definitely willing to try again.
 * We could test Shopping.com type links to related game products within the content (but those would have a graphical thumbnail)
 * We might also work with you to get more video onto wowwiki via metacafe, 5min, etc - with video ads that only show during the video
 * We could test Kontera links - and gauge community reaction (I am worried it will be poor)
 * We are starting to enable more ads on the left hand side in longer pages and will continue testing that as well.

If not moving the domain is something you as a group decide is important, then I would like to work with you to find reasonable ways to increase our revenues - with wowwiki.com as the domain. I would ask that as a group you should deputize 1-2 people (who are not employed by Wikia to eliminate any perception of bias and not leave Kirkburn in a tough spot) to serve as our advisor. We would then go to this person(s) to get sanity checks on what is reasonable to test as an ad integration and what isn't. Then we would jointly need some time to experiment in good faith as it will probably require a variety of ad execution test before finding the winning combination. If that makes sense, I'm happy to jump off the proverbial bridge, hand-in-hand with you, to find an alternative solution. If that is your preference, let me know who you designate as our advisor before the end of January.

Thanks again for your patience and support

-- color="Blue">Gil (color="Blue" size="1">talk) 05:45, 31 December 2008 (UTC)


 * Gil, thank you for the candour of your response, and for recognising what is an important issue for many of us. I'm very encouraged to see your willingness to work with us on alternative measures to meet both your and our requirements.  -- 06:27, 31 December 2008 (UTC)


 * Please vote on this proposal, to keep the domain or accept the move to the wikia domain. -Howbizr (talk) 18:05, 31 December 2008 (UTC)


 * So, the vote is looking like a near super-majority (58.3% or 7 from a small sample size of 12 with 2 thinking it's okay and 3 neutrals) is against changing the domain from wowwiki.com. Please vote, if you care about the WoWWiki domain (wowwiki.com vs. *.wikia.com, where there should also be a vote for *, but I haven't seen it yet). I'm also the "advisor" so far, but I'm not sure what that role exactly entails yet. --[[Image:gengar orange 22x22.png]] Fandyllic  (talk &middot; contr) 6:55 PM PST 7 Jan 2009


 * The message below is replicated at Status update section of Wowpedia talk:Domain. Please direct any comments there.
 * So, the community decision appears to be keep www.wowwiki.com as the primary domain and for Murph and I to represent the community in deciding alternate means of increasing revenue for Wikia based on other changes to WoWWiki.


 * Currently, I'm trying to set up a meeting with Gil (trying to shoehorn it around my work schedule). Most likely it will be Monday (Jan 19, 2009) in the afternoon (Pacific) at Wikia's San Francisco office. I'm not sure how Murph is going to participate, but we could set up some kind of conference call, Skype or something. --[[Image:gengar orange 22x22.png]] Fandyllic  (talk &middot; contr) 12:58 PM PST 16 Jan 2009


 * The meeting is currently scheduled for Tuesday (Jan 20, 2009) at 3-4 pm Pacific. --[[Image:gengar orange 22x22.png]] Fandyllic  (talk &middot; contr) 2:20 PM PST 17 Jan 2009


 * Info and notes from meeting at Wowpedia:Working with Wikia. --[[Image:gengar orange 22x22.png]] Fandyllic  (talk &middot; contr) 5:18 PM PST 22 Jan 2009

Looking to the future for database type content

 * This section is a continuation of ideas first mentioned in the domain name discussion above.

I think trimming down the content which is best served by one of the popular database sites is an excellent idea. I'm a huge fan of WoWWiki, but the current situation with items, quests, etc strikes me as too much hassle to maintain, and the effort being spent on that could be better directed elsewhere (personally, I mostly use Wowhead for such things). I don't think a wiki is well suited to providing information on such a huge number of database items. Yes, we can improve coverage of items and quests with more and better bots, but is it really worth the effort when there are popular, respected, and highly successful sites that already serve that purpose better than I think we could ever hope to achieve?

Here's what I think could be done with the items, objects, spells, quests, achievements, NPCs, etc. Only directly provide content where we have something specific to add, such as strategies for finding/killing the NPC, good and useful information on how to complete the quest or achievement (including any known bugs and workarounds. Any situation where we could provide additional information beyond that on the DB sites, or reliably present the information in a more useful manner (such as annotated and categorised lists, eg the achievements main articles), would be permitted and encouraged, with the one condition that it has to be maintainable.  All other pages with just the basic content would then be reduced to effectively a simple stub containing the relevant ID(s), e.g. ,  .  The templates could use JavaScript to seamlessly pull in the appropriate content from a database site (e.g. wowhead), so that visitors to the page still get the information in an immediate fashion, but we are effectively just providing the basic name to ID translation. Tooltips would work in a similar fashion, pulling the information from the DB site. All of the traffic for the DB site information would be directly between the client and the DB site, not via the WoWWiki servers, we would just serve the relevant JavaScript and IDs to enable it. For clients which don't do JS for whatever reason, the template would provide a lightweight and simple method of linking to the DB sites. Creating the stub pages would be largely a one-time, scriptable operation, and the number requiring updates for game changes would be vastly reduced (almost eliminated, but there's bound to be a few situations, e.g. a quest ID being replaced when Blizz change the mechanics of it).

Obviously, such a move would need the approval and possibly some cooperation from the DB site. Providing clear attribution for the source of the information would also be essential, e.g. "Item information provided by Wowhead" (link and logo, etc). It should, hopefully, be seen as a win by the database sites - we drive more users in their direction.

Yes, the above idea leaves us with essentially the same number of pages in place, but the lion's share of the traffic and updating effort is removed from WoWWiki. If we were to go ahead with this, the logical (to me) thing would be to split these stub pages off into their own namespaces, both simplifying the management and categorisation (not wiki cats, per se, more a case of seeing where each type of internal and external content resides) of our content. That would leave our main namespace for the content which is well suited to the wiki (instance, profession, class, theorycraft info/guides; and lore). The point of continuing to have a page per DB item, but essentially a stub page in secondary namespaces, is that it both allows easy name to ID translation for contributors to this site, and allows us to seamlessly augment the content from the DB site on the small proportion of DB items that merit it, i.e. the best of both worlds (hopefully). Scripting the creation of such stub pages shouldn't be too difficult a task. Splitting into individual namespaces both solves most naming collisions and gives both internal and external folk an honest and reasonably accurate count and view of our content.

-- 06:05, 31 December 2008 (UTC)


 * TLDR version: More work for pcj to do on JS, probably not a good idea. (Not that I mind the challenge, it's just this particular concept is not well suited for a JS wiki implementation) -- 06:20, 31 December 2008 (UTC)


 * Yup, it's more coding and development needed, and well beyond the usual wiki Template development and parser functions, but there's no need for it to fall entirely on the shoulders of one person. I, for one, would be happy to try to share some of the load with you, and I'm sure there must be other experienced coders within the WoWWiki community, or the wider WoW community.  -- 06:48, 31 December 2008 (UTC)
 * No, it's not going to happen. -- 13:34, 31 December 2008 (UTC)


 * I'm sure I would be able to code it as a Java/JSP webapp, but in the wiki context? I'm really not sure. The other thing is, if we essentially provided a way to view much of the hard work wowhead or another database site provided, but bypassed their advertising, I don't think they'd be very happy with us. Not that the content is copy written to them, but something legally doesn't sit right with me about this idea. -Howbizr (talk) 14:31, 31 December 2008 (UTC)


 * Not that it happens often, but I have to agree with pcj here :P Don't see any real benefits from your solution http://images.wikia.com/wowwiki/images/5/5a/TrainerGossipIcon.png Arma gone  (User_talk:Armagone Special:Contributions/Armagone)  14:32, 31 December 2008 (UTC)


 * I certainly wasn't suggesting that we do such a thing without the approval of the site providing the information. If we make a major change here, we need a medium/long term supportable solution, and that means that all parties that are involved with it have to be ok with the implementation.  The benefits to us from importing the basic item content client side, direct from a database site are that we no longer have to keep that information on the wiki, and try to keep it reasonably up to date.  -- 05:57, 1 January 2009 (UTC)


 * Let's separate the idea from the implementation here. The idea is that we remove a massive amount of bot-generated, database-style content: items, quests, non-notable monsters etc from the wiki. It's not a bad idea -- that content is, as Murph points out "too much hassle to maintain", especially considering that "there are popular, respected, and highly successful sites that already serve that purpose better than [...] we could ever hope to achieve".
 * I think the "we never should've imported game data to the scale that we did" sentiment is fairly common; getting rid of the no-content content would probably be a step forward. There are some borderline cases where the removal of item/quest pages could impair other articles; boss pages tend to list loot, trade skill recipe lists exist. There's a fair bit of decisions to make here; which could probably be put in a proposal and voted on at some point in the future.
 * The suggested implementation (stub pages, templates, JS) is not the only way to do things, and is hardly worth debating before consensus has been established on what it is we actually want to do with the content. pcj's grumpy summary is irrelevant; the question is "Should we remove this content" not "Should we ask pcj to code things". -- foxlit (talk) 16:11, 31 December 2008 (UTC)


 * The problem I see with the JS implementation is XSS. There is no Wowhead or other DB API which allows for this.  And I'm not sure we want to do it anyway. -- 16:31, 31 December 2008 (UTC)


 * Yeah, I realised that after pondering the idea for a while. Going the JS route would require the DB site to implement a suitable API for populating the stubs client side, or the W3C draft [Access Control for Cross-Site Requests] TR to be implemented by browsers (and then the critical mass of users to upgrade to browser versions that support it, so could be a long while).  It's not impossible that one of the DB sites could be persuaded to do it - several provide tooltip JS, and Wowhead (possibly others too, not sure) provide XML access to the item data.  That said, I agree with the earlier sentiment of focusing on what we would like to do, rather than worrying about the technical details of the implementation, in the first instance.  -- 06:12, 1 January 2009 (UTC)

Obviously, we'd disinclude pages such as Thunderfury... I'm not real sure what to do about the rest of the items; if the coding could be sorted out, that would be nice. Or as I suggested about, an extension that is along the lines of Special:BookSources... let the people who use our site choose which item database they get their info from. The issue from there becomes the same as the recipes page information; I know also that we have "dungeon loot" pages with loot links, which would need to be changed in some way... I think it should also be priority to keep as much traffic on our site as possible, as that's what makes our usefulness, Googleability, etc, go up. As you mentioned, there are also the recipes pages, and since about the beginning of BC, people have started making pages such as Wrath healing equipment, which I would guess are more useful than looking at items in a vacuum, which is perhaps the biggest issue with having them secluded on what are essentially stub pages... --Sky (t · c · w) 16:44, 31 December 2008 (UTC)
 * A thought in the direction of "boss pages tend to list loot": I see no reason to remove Template:Tooltip itself, only the majority of pages it's used on. In general, couldn't we simply move the tooltips which are on separate pages to inline with the boss pages (keeping in mind disambigpage=), and then redirect the item names? That preserves the information, but that reduces it from 11 pages per boss to 1 page per boss. We could ditto this behavior for item sets. Where conflicted, I think I'd be more inclined to have the item pages redirect to the set pages, but this is something to work out a little bit further down the road if we continue down it.


 * I'm not convinced that moving the item data inside the boss pages is such a great idea. To me, that just makes it less flexible, and harder to update the data in the future, but doesn't really provide much advantage for the wiki.  If someone thinks the transclusions are using significant resources for normal page views, I might be more convinced, but transcluding blobs of data really should be something that MediaWiki is very good at.  -- 06:26, 1 January 2009 (UTC)


 * I originally wrote this as an answer, but ended up going off-topic. Sorry for that, unindenting.

Wikia nuked the statistics a while ago but... have a look at which pages are the most popular. Grasp the pattern from it. See which ones should be featured/highlighted/easily findable. See which ones should be plainly deleted. Also, there's a .. LOT of deleted pages, most of it being stuff we figured "would be a neat idea" but didn't hold up in the long term. My old spellpage implementation is an example. I don't know what's left from it, but it was a few thousand pages worth and permanently nuking this stuff would alleviate some of the backload. Thirdly, the engineering team needs to observe what is actually causing bottlenecks and what not and fix those, instead of relying on more powerful hardware. Last but not least, I'm not going back on my old rant on the new wikia design. Advertising issues or not, you can change a website layout without making it look bloated etc. You'd be surprised hearing the amount of visitors a neat and clean design can influence. If some real effort is done in a way that can make WoWWiki grow, I'd be up to elaborate some of my ideas on IRC. And a growing wiki means its own community before the visitors and well before advertisers - a wiki without a solid community behind it will not go far. Happy new year from Athens. 19:49, 31 December 2008 (UTC)


 * The only page I feel is kind of bloated is the landing page, but I'm generally not a fan of portals. It's certainly no busier than CNN, Yahoo, or MSNBC, but I think they're equally overloaded with content.


 * There are a few actual articles and categories that have gotten out of control, but I've seen some pretty good attempts to restore order and improve load time on some of the larger "directory" pages (all JC patterns, all achievements, all common items, etc).-Howbizr (talk) 20:25, 31 December 2008 (UTC)


 * There is a lot of stuff that's pretty much a duplicate of sites like wowhead. Item pages are probably the best example. But they do sometimes have additions that you don't see on those other sites, or that you would only see if you scroll through pages and pages of player comments that include stuff like "this is totally a hunter weapon". I wouldn't mind getting rid of the generic pages that have nothing new to offer, and I have no idea what kind of technical work would need to be done to implement this kind of purge. But I wouldn't want to see the original stuff disappear. I like that wowwiki makes useful player comments easy to find. That's just my 2c. -- 17:12, 3 January 2009 (UTC)


 * I certainly wouldn't like to see the database content completely vanish. Our strength on it is that the useful comments are easier to find than on the database site, where the useful information can be hidden amongst page after page of junk.  Our other strength is in providing complete coverage of WoW, and we can't be complete without some coverage of the database content.  Our weakness is out of date and incomplete information, and the hassle to both populate and update it.  What I'd like to see is a best of both worlds approach, where the base information is updated in a more timely fashion, but we can still have useful additions to the base (or even override the base info for the rare circumstances where that would be appropriate).  So, my thinking is not to give up on the database content completely, but to find a more manageable way of dealing with it, where the base content is more reliably kept in sync with Wowhead (or whichever DB site best suits our purposes).  -- 17:39, 3 January 2009 (UTC)

OnLoad Lua problem.

 * Moved to Warcraft pump.