Talk:Main Page

Signing your entries in talk pages

I'm not sure where the best place to put this is, but I want to remind everybody to sign their entries in talk pages, two dashes followed by 4 tildes '- - ~ ~ ~ ~' (only without the spaces) or just click the button that is second from the right on the top of the edit box. --Mel 10:15, 12 Jan 2006 (EST)

Top Mud Sites

Is there a requirement to link to top mud sites main page? If not why are we doing it? We don't link anything other than outland.org that prominantly other avatar related sites are on a differnt page, we don't even really have a precedent linking non-avatar sites except in user pages. Although I encourge the sentiment of having people vote for Avatar, I don't agree with displaying it so promenintly. But in a fit of moderator modesty I'm asking people to discuss it and not just making a change myself! --Mel 21:27, 11 Jan 2006 (EST)

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I like the idea of having a link users can click on to vote for Avatar right on the main page. Here's my main reasons:

• voting is important: it gets new people to try our mud
• people fail to vote not because they hate avatar, but because they forget.
• The official avatar website links to us right off their main page, so it's nice of us return the favor.

The outland.org layout probably doesn't do the best job of reminding people to vote. The vote button is off to the side, and you have to scroll down a ways to see it. Plus, who goes to outland.org all that frequently anyways? I know the only reason I go there is to see how quickly the AvatarWiki is climbing the "Top Web Links" :). Our site, on the other hand, gets a lot of repeat visits because it has a lot of useful information. So if every time someone visits the wiki they have a small chance of being reminded to vote, and we make it easy for them to do so, then I think we're doing something positive. That being said, I don't think that we need to link to the front page of TopMudSites. Who bothers to go there anyways, other than when they're voting? Just people who are looking for a new mud to try, I guess. I doubt many of the people who come to our site are looking to find a new mud to play. --Waite 12:46, 12 Jan 2006 (EST)

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Can we leave the voting link and get rid of the link to their main page?--Mel 14:33, 12 Jan 2006 (EST)

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I just figured that, if someone was curious about what Top Mud Sites was, then they could click the link and take a look for themselves. I didn't imagine that this might be a problem but I can see some merit to what you're saying here. I'm with Waite here on leaving the voting link, at least, for sake of convenience. I'd have no complaints about removing this link to their main page. In fact, since I added it, perhaps I'll go ahead and (tentatively) remove it. If anyone wants it back, then, well, there's still plenty of room here for debate. --Dave Garber 15:30, 12 Jan 2006 (EST)

Creating new pages

Another way to create a new page is to just directly go to the URL. See in the address bar of your browser where it says ?title=Talk:Main_Page just replace the 'Talk:Main_Page' with the page you want to create. So the complete new link would be http://avatar.melanarchy.info/index.php?title=My_New_Page_Name to create a new page 'My New Page Name' for a new category put Category:New_Category_Name I think you see where this is going.

The reason why there isn't a way to create new pages other than what Waite said (linking to them and then following the link) is because if you don't link the page from any exisiting pages nobody will be able to get to it. The page becomes what the wiki calls an "orphaned" page. You can see the orphaned pages by following the link from the Special Pages section of the tollbox. Orphaned pages don't do anything helpful and are not really a part ot the wiki.

What does all this mean Mel?

I don't believe anybody should ever be using the method I described above to create new pages. Figure out what page is going to bring people to your new page, make a link, follow that link, add to the page, categorize the page. That should be the work progression that everybody follows when making a new page.

--Mel 22:40, 3 May 2005 (EDT)

Contact Information

It may be helpful to provide some means of contacting those folks in charge of this site.

Also, I recently posted a table of quick ways to increase one's gold supply, which I and others have found handy. I titled this article Treasure-Hunting and put it under the Miscellaneous category. I was wondering if perhaps there was a better name for it, a more appropriate place to put it, a better way to organize its content, or a better way to integrate it with the rest of the site. Or if it's just dandy like it is. Anyway...

Well contacting Waite or I is a perfectly reasonable idea, but don't worry so much about what you think is right and what you think is wrong. This is a Wiki, the very idea is that everybody participates, and if somebody thinks something should be moved, they move it. I think you chose the perfect location for the page, and I think it's great. --Mel 17:51, 5 May 2005 (EDT)

If you really want to contact a user of this wiki, just edit their talk page.

Mass Confusion

I don't mean to put a damper on the momentum that I see this website generating, but with that momentum come some problems. As an example, take a look at the category Lowmort 1-10 gear. I've just spent some time working on updating that category, but there are still some glaring problems. Muddy boots don't provide +1 dexterity, they provide -1 dexterity, making them useless. Neither those boots nor the goblin boots of fleeing are very good for use at this level. Fur-lined boots are much better and provide a small amount of bonus armor. Yes, I know, I could just add it, but let me continue. The golden unicorn horn (in the offhand slot) is a weapon, and unless you have dual, which nobody gets before level 10, using a weapon in your offhand is pretty useless. A shield would be more useful there. Any shield. For the held slot, the orb of knowledge is missing. Most true newbies (no alts, no spells, not perfect gear) won't be able to get a red eyed jewel until at least level 15 or so, therefore the orb of knowledge is still a good item to list. As for the other gear listed at the bottom there, blue lizard tongues no longer exist and buck skin gloves are listed twice. Then there is a matter of all the items not yet listed which would be useful (the other 'enchanted' weapons besides longswords, the idiot crown, and the pixie crossbow, for instance) or even the items that would be nice to have for the sake of completeness, and the fact that almost every page has different formatting. It's just not feasible for everyone to try to organize things as they see fit without any thought to future organization. It's one thing to say 'if you don't like something, fix it, but things are getting to be a real mess.

When I first saw this page go up, I thought it was a really awesome idea. I still think it's a great idea, but I think it could use some more moderation. To compare this to what was formerly Aejase, here there is the potential for far more information, but the information there was more accurate and far better organized. This also has the potential to be well organized, but the implementors need to step in and moderate what's being written in here. At the very least, it would be great if all if the information was checked for accuracy and formatted the same way. Perhaps there could be a page at the top of each category entitled 'template.' This way, a default format can be set for areas, gear pages, mob pages, and whatever else is going to be stored here. Don't get me wrong, I don't mean to flame this site, it makes great strides toward storing information about Avatar in an organized, collected, secure and open manner. I just don't want to see it become abandoned because people get frustrated by some of the innacurate entries and poorly organized categories that exist.

-Ilthik, July 19th 2005

Hi Ilthik (and the rest),

Thanks for taking it upon yourself to help clean up the level 1-10 gear category. In general some of the categories are still a mess from when we initially populated them with lists of gear. I intend the "lowmort ??-?? gear" categories to contain misc. gear that would be useful for a variety of characters. Stuff like healing potions, orb of faerie magic, etc. Other gear can go into more specialized categories (hit, tank, mana). Lowmort 1-10 gear is a bit different from the rest, because characters don't really wear specialized gear that low. Instead everyone runs around in a mix of hit, tank, and level gear. As far as some of your specific suggestions, I'll tackle them in list form:

muddy boots: good catch. I've never got this piece before, so I had no clue.

goblin boots of fleeing: while it might not have the same ac boost as the fur-lined boots (which I've also never got before), I would argue that they're still useful to newbies. The +move modifier can be useful to newbs who like to run around and explore, and because they're a higher level they have better base ac than the mudschool gear.

golden unicorn horn as offhand: you have a good point that lowbies don't get dual, so offhanding a weapon isn't horribly useful. However, this weapon gives +2 hr & +2 dr, so it will help a newbie hit harder and more often with their main wield. Your point that a shield could be more useful is valid. It would probably be a good idea to write up a discussion of these points in the golden unicorn horn page, along with a link to a nice lowbie shield.

orb of knowledge: definitely deserves a page. should also be linked to from red-eyed jewel so the less adventurous newbs know they can settle for something easier to get. However, I would like to think that with the info that this site provides, a true newb would be able to slay the dracolich before level 15.

blue lizard tongues no longer exist: this is a recent development. fortunately I've already created categories for grandfathered gear, so all you need to do is switch what category this piece is in.

buck skin gloves listed twice: someone goofed, but easy enough to fix

missing gear/inaccurate entries: I'll admit there's more work to be done on this category, and just about every other category. Maybe I'm just being optimistic, but I feel that inaccuracies in the wiki will be ironed out as more people come to use our system and more people become comfortable making changes. I'm definitely willing to do my part. Also, keep in mind that aejase wasn't always perfect. Even before half of the gear it listed became gfed, there were some odd entries that no one could fix. How many times did you see a newbie asking how to get benlad's axe? At least with this site, you don't have to wait around for the moderator to make changes.

organization/layout/format: Mediawiki does have support for making page templates. I never bothered because I figured as long as all the right info is present, who cares how it looks? But maybe I was wrong. I'll look into how templates work when I get out of work today, and try to make a few templates like you suggested: one for gear, mobs, area, etc.

Again, I appreciate your concerns and suggestions, along with the work you've already done. Most, if not all, of the problems you pointed out are pretty easy to fix. If we all keep working on this wiki together, it will only get better and better.
-Waite

Waite,

That's a good point about the moderators slowing down the process and Aejase being out of date. I remember just before it went down that last time that Khazaad was really behind on entries. My biggest concern was that more people contributing would create a bigger mess as everyone tried to add their own format to the list. I just see the format becoming an issue as this site grows and people are looking to add things, but don't necessarily know how to write down all the information that they have. While the information is still there, it may become a jungle to navigate. For example, imagine looking at a piece of code or an html document without any line breaks versus one that has been done neatly and carefully.

I guess I'll take the liberty of starting up a format page to collect the different formats for areas and items. Please add to it as I'm sure I'll miss something. I'm not sure how you'd like to go about organizing the categories yet so I'll let you play with that.
-Ilthik

Waste Disposal

While adding content, I and others have managed to gradually generate all sorts of categories and pages that ought to be deleted, either because their titles were improperly capitalized or spelled or because their information was transferred elsewhere or was organized differently or whatnot. If I recall correctly, every category here except for Miscellaneous and every page here except for the Main Page can (and, I'd say, should) be deleted. This can only be done by a Sysop; otherwise, I'd take care of it myself rather than mentioning it here. Anyway, thanks much! --Dave Garber 23:42, 19 Jan 2006 (EST)

I started, there are a lot to delete, I'll do more later --Mel 16:19, 20 Jan 2006 (EST)

Many thanks, Mel! It might be good to check these two links regularly, perhaps monthly. Also, once again, I re- a few new maps that I had created after making minor changes to them. Please feel free to delete all but the one newest version of each of these maps so that you don't have bunches of useless 20-70kb .GIF files cluttering up your server. Once again, I'd delete them myself if I could but your WIKI tells me that only SysOps can do this. Anyway, thanks again! --Dave Garber 01:58, 25 Jan 2006 (EST)