Benutzer:Stéphane Lo Presti/News/January 2013-December 2015

I want your opinion on an idea (and wiki "at risk" period on July 8th) - July 1st, 2015

Hi everyone,

Someone floated an idea past me and I'd like to know what wiki editors think about it. The current community of editors is doing an amazing job at updating content on the wiki but could use some help from players that are not regular editors, or who don't really want to do the jump to becoming editors.

We want to encourage more people to contribute to the wiki without having them having to necessarily be "part of" the wiki. So the idea would be to tell players that they can "dump" information that they see missing in articles on the talkpage on that article. Editors could then use this as material to update the article if it's relevant and/or accurate. We have no idea whether this is something that players would do but before we get there, the most important factor is to be sure that the community of wiki editors is ok with such a systerm.

Tell me what you think on my talkpage.

Last but not least, we'll be doing some configuration changes on the wiki on Wednesday July 8th at 10AM Pacific Time. We're tweaking caching mechanisms to see whether we can improve the situation and avoid the downtime issues we had last week (the update notes overloaded the wiki servers). This should be a fairly transparent maintenance but it's possible that people will be seeing incorrect information during this process.

Thanks everyone for your hard work here :)

Wiki maintenance on Tuesday April 14 at 10 AM Pacific - April 13, 2015

Hi everyone,

On Tuesday April 14 at 10 AM Pacific Time, we’ll be performing maintenance on the wiki servers. This maintenance is expected to last about 90 minutes and the wikis will not be available during that period of time. The goal of that maintenance is to update the software of the wiki infrastructure. We'll be deploying MediaWiki 1.24.2 and Semantic MediaWiki 2.1, and updating a few extensions.

If you do see issues after the maintenance, please report them on the Guild Wars 2 social media channels (Twitter, Facebook and Google+). You can contact me before and after the maintenance via my talkpage. Note that the Guild Wars 2 forums will also not be available during that maintenance.

Let me know if you have questions or comments, thanks.

Upcoming maintenance of the wikis on October 1st - September 23, 2014

Hi everyone,

We're finally ready to deploy the MediaWiki software version 1.23.2 and Semantic MediaWiki version 2.0! This will happen on Wednesday 1st at 10AM Pacific Time (5PM UTC, 6PM in Great Britain, 7PM in France and Germany). The maintenance is expected to last up to 90 minutes and the wiki will be unavailable during its duration.

Thanks again and again for making this wiki the greatest German source of GW2 information and the best community! --Stephane Lo Presti talk 20:10, 23. Sep. 2014 (CEST)

Quick update - September 10, 2014

Hi everyone,

I've got some fresh news for the wiki community. Feel free to discuss these on the relevant sections of my talkpage.

Software upgrade

We've been working for a while now on preparing to upgrade the wiki software. This has been a long and tenuous path because we're putting in place a process to test and bring these kinds of upgrades on a regular basis. But we're at the end of it!

We'll be upgrading the MediaWiki software to version 1.23.2 and Semantic MediaWiki to version 2.0. This will bring tons of little improvements with the tools that some of you use and fix a few SMW bugs. I'll post again here when we have confirmed the date of the maintenance.

Wiki Editors: an interesting number

As you may know, the Special:Statistics page will tell you how many editors have been active during the last 30 days. We ran a query on the wiki database to see if we could find that number for a longer period and it turns out that we could. So over the last 13 weeks, there's been a total of 91 active editors. Since we usually get around 40 to 50 for a 30-day period (the DE wiki is close to a high number right now), it looks like there's a potential to increase the editor population by engaging them more.

I'll also share this very interesting article from the Wikimedia blog about sixty ways to help new editors: https://blog.wikimedia.org/2014/09/04/sixty-ways-to-help-new-editors/ There are probably a lot of good ideas to reuse!

TP widget

We publicly release the new GW2 Commerce API 2 days ago and poke on the English wiki was quick in creating a widget to use it on the wiki: en:Widget:TP_prices!

Feel free to reuse that widget on the DE wiki!

Pictures of Weapon

I've worked with some members of the DE wiki to bring something that was asked a few times: pictures of the Guild Wars 2 weapons! It's an ongoing project that will also be extended to armors:

• Shields
• Hammer
• Rifles
• Torches
• Longbows
• Shortbows

Thanks to these 2 amazing wiki editors!

Thanks everyone for continuing to make this wiki the awesome site and community that it is! --Stephane Lo Presti talk 20:00, 10. Sep. 2014 (CEST)

Wiki maintenance on Thursday May 29 at 12PM Pacific - May 27, 2014

Hallo,

am Donnerstag, den 29. Mai um 21:00 Uhr MESZ (12:00 PDT), werden wir Wartungsarbeiten am Wiki-Server durchführen. Die Wartungsarbeiten werden ungefähr 6 Stunden andauern. In dieser Zeit werden die Wikis nicht verfügbar sein. Das Ziel dieser Wartungsarbeiten ist es, die Software zu aktualisieren und die Hardware für Teile der Wiki-Infrastruktur zu rekonfigurieren. Auch wenn wir in der Vergangenheit bereits „stille“ (ohne Einfluss auf die Nutzbarkeit der Wiki) Upgrades an Teilen der Infrastruktur durchgeführt haben, ist das dieses Mal leider nicht möglich. Wir müssen daher die Wiki vom Netz nehmen, um diese Anpassungen durchzuführen. Die Gründe für diese Reihe von Upgrades an der Infrastruktur sind zum einen, dass wir sicherstellen möchten, dass sie auf einem aktuellen technischen Stand ist, und zum anderen, um uns die Möglichkeit zu geben, gewisse Software-Aktualisierungen für die MediaWiki und die Semantic MediaWiki durchzuführen.

Wenn ihr Probleme nach den Wartungsarbeiten bemerken solltet, zögert nicht, sie uns über die Social-Media-Kanäle von Guild Wars 2 (Twitter, Facebook and Google+) zu melden. Da ich nach diesen Wartungsarbeiten nicht über talkpage für euch erreichbar sein werde, werden alle gemeldeten Probleme von jemand anderem an unsere Techniker weitergeleitet werden. Bitte beachtet, dass das Guild Wars 2 Forum während der Wartungsarbeiten ebenfalls nicht verfügbar ist.

Lasst mich wissen, wenn ihr irgendwelche Fragen oder Kommentare dazu habt. Danke.

Wartungsarbeiten verschoben - May 14, 2014

Hallo alle zusammen,

Aufgrund von zeitlichen und resourcentechnischen Engpässen, haben wir uns entschlossen die für heute Abend angesetzten Wartungsarbeiten zu verschieben. Wir werden euch über den neuen Termin in Kenntnis setzen, sobald wir nähere Details dazu haben.

Vielen Dank für euer Verständnis.

Wiki maintenance on Wednesday May 14 at 12PM Pacific - May 12, 2014

Hallo,

am Mittwoch, den 14. Mai um 21:00 Uhr MESZ (12:00 PDT), werden wir Wartungsarbeiten am Wiki-Server durchführen. Die Wartungsarbeiten werden ungefähr 6 Stunden andauern. In dieser Zeit werden die Wikis nicht verfügbar sein. Das Ziel dieser Wartungsarbeiten ist es, die Software zu aktualisieren und die Hardware für Teile der Wiki-Infrastruktur zu rekonfigurieren. Auch wenn wir in der Vergangenheit bereits „stille“ (ohne Einfluss auf die Nutzbarkeit der Wiki) Upgrades an Teilen der Infrastruktur durchgeführt haben, ist das dieses Mal leider nicht möglich. Wir müssen daher die Wiki vom Netz nehmen, um diese Anpassungen durchzuführen. Die Gründe für diese Reihe von Upgrades an der Infrastruktur sind zum einen, dass wir sicherstellen möchten, dass sie auf einem aktuellen technischen Stand ist, und zum anderen, um uns die Möglichkeit zu geben, gewisse Software-Aktualisierungen für die MediaWiki und die Semantic MediaWiki durchzuführen.

Wenn ihr Probleme nach den Wartungsarbeiten bemerken solltet, zögert nicht, sie uns über die Social-Media-Kanäle von Guild Wars 2 (Twitter, Facebook and Google+) zu melden. Da ich nach diesen Wartungsarbeiten nicht über talkpage für euch erreichbar sein werde, werden alle gemeldeten Probleme von jemand anderem an unsere Techniker weitergeleitet werden. Bitte beachtet, dass das Guild Wars 2 Forum während der Wartungsarbeiten ebenfalls nicht verfügbar ist.

Lasst mich wissen, wenn ihr irgendwelche Fragen oder Kommentare dazu habt. Danke.

Update about our work on the availability issues and ability for the GW2 wikis to use NPC audio - March 13, 2014

Hi,

I've got a quick update on the availability issues I posted about yesterday. We're not so sure now that image upload is a probable cause, because the issue occured when there was no image upload. For reference, the issues we've seen on our graphs occured on the following occasions (for about 10 minutes except today):

• Tuesday 11 March at around 12:30PM (Pacific Time)
• Tuesday 11 March at around 1:30PM (Pacific Time)
• Wednesday 12 March at around 8:30AM (Pacific Time)
• Wednesday 12 March at around 9:30AM (Pacific Time)
• Wednesday 12 March at around 1PM (Pacific Time)
• Wednesday 12 March at around 1:45PM (Pacific Time)
• Wednesday 12 March at around 3PM (Pacific Time)
• Thursday 13 March at around 7:30AM (Pacific Time)

We're going to make a quick configuration change on a part of the wiki backend to see if it alleviates this problem. This change will happen today at 4PM (Pacific Time) and should only affect people using the wikis for a very brief time. If you do see issues, please report them to us on our social medias Twitter, Facebook or Google+.

I also got a good news for all the GW2 wikis. Following a request from the French wiki, we can announce that all the GW2 wikis can now use audio from the NPC dialogues directly on the wiki (they shouldn't contain any music though). Here's an example:

fr:Journal_de_Scarlet_Bruyère#Lire

We'll probably be installing an extension to facilitate this at some point in the future (we'll look into that once Semantic MediaWiki and MediaWiki are updated).

Thanks.

Update about our work and availability issues - March 12, 2014

Hi everyone,

To break a bit the pattern of silence, I'd like to let everyone know the work we're doing behind the scenes to make our wikis better. This is mainly infrastructure and backend work at this point, so barely visible to most editors and not impacting players "directly". The goal is to improve reliability, resilience and management of our wikis and their infrastructure.

First we've built better test environments that allow us to streamline update and management. And the first application of this is that we're in the final stages of testing a user table split for the GW and GW2 English wikis (which currently use the same user table stored on the GW database). This will decouple user account creation for these 2 wikis (non-English wikis will not be affected), but should not change anything for players who already have an account on those wikis apart from the fact that they'll technically have 2 accounts (one on each wiki) that are almost exactly the same. I'll post more information and an announcement about when the maintenance for this will happen at a later time.

Once we've used and finalized this update flow, we'll be able to push updates in a more manageable (and hopefully frequent) way. Once the database split has been done on the live wikis, we'll be focusing on 2 things: fixing a reliability issue (see below), and upgrading first the Semantic MediaWiki software (to a much newer version) and then the MediaWiki software.

Last, but not the least, we've seen over the last few days the 5 wikis becoming unavailable for rather short periods of time. Although we’re currently not seeing a pattern from the data we’re seeing, we’ll be investigating what’s causing this. We’ve once seen this happen as there was a long sequence of “frequent” (2 per minute maybe?) uploads of pictures on the German wiki. It may not be the direct cause but we’re not sure that we can easily/quickly determine the actual cause. In the meantime, it’d be super useful if the wikis could investigate whether an AbuseFilter rule can be created to limit the rate of upload of pictures. If this is done, please let me know so that I can circulate it around to all wikis and that our engineer’s investigation.

I also forgot to give an update on the Wiki Weekly Statistics. I’ve stopped doing it due to a high workload and I still have to investigate an alternative route for (semi-)automatically creating this report. If this resource was needed for some rather important work on the wikis, please let me know and I’ll try to go back to posting these reports.

As usual, feel free to drop a line on my talkpage if you have questions, comments or anything to discuss! Thanks.

Wiki (minor) update on Thursday November 7 at 10 AM Pacific Time - November 4, 2013

Hi everyone,

We're going to push an (minor but important) upgrade to the backend software on Thursday November 7 at 10 AM Pacific Time. We'll be installing a new extension (called RecentChangesLogFilter et created by English GW2 Wiki bureaucrat poke) that will add a new option to Spezial:Letzte_Änderungen to hide the account creation log (on by default).

There should not be any downtime, apart possibly from a few intermittent errors (usually returning 502 or 503 errors). If you experience any problem with the wikis, please let us know via Twitter, Facebook or the Guild Wars 2 forums.

Thanks.

Wiki update on Thursday October 24 at 10 AM Pacific Time - October 21, 2013

Hi everyone,

We're going to push an upgrade to the MediaWiki software on Thursday October 24 at 10 AM Pacific Time. We'll also update a few extensions (Semantic MediaWiki, AbuseFilter) and some software configuration (user groups, other general settings to make them consistent across all 4 GW2 wikis).

There should not be any downtime, apart possibly from a few intermittent errors (usually returning 502 or 503 errors). If you experience any problem with the wikis, please let us know via Twitter, Facebook or the Guild Wars 2 forums.

Thanks.

Additional statistic - October 3, 2013

Hi everyone,

In addition to this week's statistics (see this page), I'd like to share another statistics that could be of interest to you (I'm not planning to update this as this seems like a number that you don't want to see changing too often):

screen resolution (over the last month, percentage relative to the total number)

1. 1920x1080 38.7
2. 1680x1050 12.5
3. 1280x1024 9
4. 1366x768 7.7
5. 1600x900 5.9
6. 1440x900 3.6
7. 1920x1200 3.3
8. 1536x864 2.2
9. 1280x800 1.4
10. 320x480 1.3

Upcoming Preview Play Day - September 23, 2013

Hi everyone,

We've got a Preview Play Day coming up later this week. If a representative of the wiki was selected, could he or she get in touch with either me (via the wiki email) or any of the wiki admins. I'd appreciate a reply by Wednesday at the very latest, if possible.

Thank you! --Stephane Lo Presti talk 21:09, 23. Sep. 2013 (CEST)

Wiki technical questions - September 4, 2013

Hi everyone,

I've got an important set of questions to share with the wiki community today. Please hop on my talkpage to share your thoughts and answers!

We're currently working on an upcoming to the wiki software (upgrade to version 1.20.7). We've cleaned a few things on the wiki backend, including configuration files, and want to make sure that we're not changing something incorrectly. So here are a few things, including questions that need to be asnwered by the wiki community:

• Could you please let us know what a good value for the variable $wgLogo and $wgLocalInterwiki should be?
• The variable $wgRightsUrl will be set to http://wiki-de.guildwars2.com/wiki/GW2Wiki:Lizenzhinweise , let us know if this is not the good one
• The variable $wgAutoConfirmCount will be set to 15
• The variable $wgAutoConfirmAge will be set to 1 day
• The variable $wgShowIPinHeader will be set to False
• The variable $wgCaptchaTriggers['create'] will be set to True
• The extensions RenameUser, spamblacklist, Loops, CharacterEscapes, and ImageMap are enabled on other GW2 wikis, let us know if we need to enable them on this wiki too
• While we have the version 2.01 of DPL on the English GW2 wiki, this wiki still uses an older DPL2 version;
• We're going to switch the captcha system on the English GW2 wiki to QuestyCaptcha (at their request) as the account creation spam is continuing to be an issue; if this is something that this wiki would like to do, you'll have to let us know as soon as possible and provide a configuration file for the extension (see for more details);

It's also the time to ask us for any subsequent configuration change! We need the answer to these questions as soon as possible, so that we can then test the changes and push these updates to the live wikis. Thanks for your help!

Preview Play Day on August 29 - August 16, 2013

Hi,

There'll very probably be a Preview Play Day on August 29, although it's possible that it'll fall through since we're still sorting out a few important details. I'll let you know more if possible but wanted you to know as early as possible so that a representative can be chosen. As usual, let me know if you have questions.

Thanks.

P.S. and EDIT: I incorrectly said "September 29" instead of "August 29", sorry about that

Adding a "Buy GW2" link on the wiki - August 13, 2013

Hi everyone,

We've been discussing within the Community Team the possibility of adding a "buy" button/link on the wiki. This could take various forms but I'm currently thinking of simply adding a (colored?) text link on the left navbar so that it's not very intrusive. I'd like to ask the wiki community's opinion about this, if possible by the end of this week. Join me on my talkpage for a discussion about this!

EDIT: this link could also be a "Try GW2" whenever we'll be running Free trials, as this may be more inline with nature of wikis.

Thank you.

No Preview Play Day next week - August 6, 2013

Hi,

I wanted to let you know that there won't be a Preview Play Day next week. I'll keep you informed of the status of the next one (in 3 weeks).

Thanks.

Weekly popular pages- August 5, 2013

Hi everyone,

I'm going to try to make this a regular post to keep you updated about the top10 articles viewed on the wiki last week:

1. Hauptseite
2. Liste_der_Rüstungssets
3. Mystische_Schmiede/Rezepte
4. Liste_der_Waffensets
5. Spielupdate
6. Mörderische_Politik
7. Erfolg
8. Gabe_des_Schicksals
9. Legendäre_Waffe
10. Gabe_der_Meisterschaft

Next play day - July 26, 2013

Hi everyone,

I now have more details about next week's play day (sorry for the short notice): this time (and the next), we won't give sites free access to the content. We'll only give a preview of the new content in the form of a short presentation that will probably be on Friday, should lasts around 1h30 and the wiki representative will be able to watch it again. It's just a heads-up for the project and I'll send more information to the wiki representative. So as soon as you've selected one, let me know here and I'll contact them at the beginning of next week.

Thank you!

Popular pages - July 23, 2013

Hi everyone,

It's something that's been requested for a while and I haven't yet found the time to make that work. One thing we're pretty sure is that the Special:PopularPages is not doing the job, as the numbers are incorrect (due to the caching mechanisms rendering them useless) compared to the Google Analytics numbers. I've compared the numbers a few times in English and the differences can be pretty big. While I'm still working on a way to bring this back to the wiki community, I'd like to share some information about the top8 most accessed pages. For the last week they were, from most accessed to least accessed:

Hauptseite , Liste_der_Rüstungssets, Mystische_Schmiede/Rezepte, Erfolg, Basar_der_Vier_Winde, Lenkdrache, Mörderische_Politik, Spielupdate, Liste_der_Waffensets, Erfolg/Explorator

Wiki representative to the next playday - June 28, 2013

Hi everyone,

We're going to organize our next GW2 playday (see previous entry on this wiki journal for more details) next week and the wiki community is invited! If the wiki community already has a member selected for this, please have him get in touch with me as soon as possible (ideally at the very beginning of next week) so that we can then discuss the next steps.

You can let me know your comments or questions on my talkpage. Thanks a lot for your help!

Opportunity for the wiki - June 18, 2013

Hi everyone,

I’d like to share with the German wiki community an invitation to join an ArenaNet exclusive fansite “preview play day” to get into Guild Wars 2 and play upcoming, unreleased content. Our target is to start this straight away at the end of this week (this is not a physical meeting). So if the wiki community can organize itself quickly enough, we can add you to the list. If not, that opportunity may be extended to a future “preview play day”.

This is an opportunity that would require the wiki community to mobilize and organize itself so that one named member of the wiki community is “elected” to represent the community. This responsibility cannot be shared for a particular “preview play day”, but I imagine that we’ll be able to change the representative for future “preview play days”. That person should be trusted to act for the good of the wiki community and make sure that the information contained in this preview ends up in wiki articles that are available when (and not before) the release webpage is published. I’ll be in touch with the elected editor to make sure they are aware of the timing and knows and understands the guidelines to which they will have to strictly adhere to.

Now the ball is in the wiki community’s court and I’d like to hear from you as soon as possible. Please this topic on my talkpage to discuss the topic and ask me questions. Thanks a lot for your help and I hope that we can have a wiki editor onboard the “preview play day” program!

Maintenance of all the wikis on Wednesday May 8th - April 26, 2013

Hi everyone,

We're close to final tests completion regarding the upgrading of the wikis to MediaWiki version 1.20.4. This upgrade is planned for Wednesday May 8 from 9 AM (Pacific Time, GMT -7) until 5 PM. The English wikis (GW and GW2) will not be available from 9AM till 10AM and they'll be in read-only mode for the whole duration of the maintenance. The non-English GW2 wikis (German, French, Spanish) will be in read-only mode for the whole duration of the maintenance.

I'd also like to explain why the schedule slipped several times: first, I was just too busy with other Community Management tasks; then, once our plan was set in action, we hit a few technical issues that delayed us (this is when I posted my last update about the upgrade); and then we discovered that MediaWiki was going to release version 1.20.4, which happened on Monday April 15th. I'd also like to add that this whole process that we've gone through behind the scenes includes setting up new processes and technical elements, with the goal of allowing us to better manage future upgrades.

If you have any question or comment, feel free to jump on my talkpage.

Thanks.

Backend work on Thursday 11th April - April 9, 2013

Hi,

We're going to perform some work on the server backend of the wikis this Thursday April 11, between 9AM (Pacific Time) and 6PM. If you notice any unusual behavior, please let us know either on my talkpage or via the Guild Wars 2 Twitter. This work is done to help us prepare for the upgrade of the wiki software to the latest version and I'll be giving more information about this once we've finalized our plans.

Thanks.

Information about Flame and Frost: the Destruction - March 26, 2013

Hi everyone,

We just published a guide to the new Living World content that will very probably help the wiki community create page stubs and go through the content. Warning: it's full of spoilers ;) https://forum-de.guildwars2.com/forum/livingworld/flameandfrost/Guide-Flamme-und-Frost-Die-Zerst-rung

Enjoy!

Further update on the News, information and questions - March 25, 2013

Hi everyone,

I don't have much to add to my last update apart from announcing that we will not make it the initial estimate of March for the upgrade to MediaWiki version 1.20. We're trying to be more careful than usual with this build (in addition to setting new processes on our end on how to handle things like upgrades) and testing is taking more time. The upgrade is currently planned for mid-April but this date may change depending on test results and further adjustments. We're currently planning for a day of maintenance (may be less for the German wiki) as this is a massive operation (similarly to what we did in October 2012).

If you have questions, please let me know on my talk page (or the relevant discussion page based on my previous updates). Thanks!

Update on the News, information and questions - March 11, 2013

Hi everyone,

I'd like to provide a quick update on the big post I wrote a month ago:

• Update of the wikis to MediaWiki 1.20: We’re in the final stages of testing this. If we don’t find any major issue, we think we’ll be able to deploy this in the coming weeks. I’ll provide a more detailed update as soon as I know the date and details.
• Quality of articles: I’ve seen very little comment about this. Please let me know what you think about it. This is an important topic and it’ll be open for as long as necessary.
• Attract (and retain) editors: there’s only been a brief exchange on the English wiki. Similarly to the previous point, t his is an important topic and it’ll be open for as long as necessary.
• Masthead redesign: the offer still stands. Note: the Spanish wiki is trying a new cool version of their page using the GW2 website masthead, which you can see implemented in the Vector skin.
• Youtube and the wikis: from the look at the discussion on the English wiki, I don’t think that there’s a clear consensus. I was curious if this would attract positive comments but it has not, so I’m ‘’’pretty much closing the topic’’’ to focus on the other topics.
• Fansite list: no traction here but it’s not a priority.
• New wiki for the pictures: no traction on this, apart from the concerns over various issues expressed on my talkpage here. Not a priority.
• Page counters: I haven’t had the time to work on this yet and will write an update about it whenever I’m done with it.
• Default skin: I only got 2 pieces of feedback from 2 wiki editors here, in favor of this. Would people be opposed to changing the default skin?
• Global changelog page: I’m proposing that we (ArenaNet) use the Guild_Wars_2_Wiki:Changelog page. Let me know my talk page if you have comments or suggestions.
• WikiChat: no traction, so I won’t be having one at least until next month.

As usual, let me know if you have questions or comments my talk page (or the relevant discussion page).

Very brief downtime at 4PM (Pacific Time) - February 22, 2013

A quick note that we're going to restart the wiki servers this afternoon at 4PM (Pacific Time; that's 12AM GMT and 1AM CET). This is to fix a small configuration issue on the servers and should only make the wikis unavailable for a few minutes (hopefully less than one as it's a quick fix). The expected impact is minimal as pages may be unavailable and edits may not be saved during that brief window.

I'm also opening the floor (i.e., my talk page) for suggestions about the best way to relay these issues. Once the Global changelog page, this could be an option. Another one would be to modify the wiki's site notice, but I'm not sure if the community feels it's impinging on its space or if it's too disruptive? (if the German wiki community likes this idea, I may need some help with localizing the messaging :) Let me know your thoughts, opinions and ideas!

P.S.: sorry about the weird shape of my personal page, I haven't had the time to bring it inline with my English personal page but I'll be doing that as soon as I can find the time so as to facilitate communication.

News, information and questions – February 8, 2013

Hi,

I just posted a ver long update for all our wikis on my English wiki journal:

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/User:Stephane_Lo_Presti#News.2C_information_and_questions_.E2.80.93_February_8.2C_2013

I'd like to highlight here that this does apply to the German GW2 wiki, but a lot of these topics are probably irrelevant. For example:

• Quality of articles: this is less important than on the English GW2 wiki, but still important; unfortunately ArenaNet will not be able to edit directly this wiki due to the language barrier (Community Managers may occasionally do);
• Attract (and retain) editors: it is actually more important that we discuss this for this wiki, as the fact you have a smaller community of editors mean that we need to pay particular attention to its needs; feel free to jump to my talkpage to share you views, ideas and questions;
• Masthead redesign: this topic is, in my opinion, more important for this wiki than the English one, due to the visual design that is very different and may contribute to this wiki not being "seen" as official; we have no intention to force any design onto this wiki but it's a topic that has come up a few times over the last few months and I'd like to have a serious discussion about it with the community of this wiki;
• Youtube and the wikis: this is less relevant but could be an opportunity, I'll let the community of this wiki decide the priority on this;
• Fansite list: I don't know if you have such a page but feel free to add GW2 fansites to the English page;
• New wiki for the pictures: it's relevant to this wiki but I'm unsure if language could be an issue (e.g., need to have tags for easily looking for pictures that have a particular language on them);
• Page counters: this is a study we're only running on the English wiki but would apply to this wiki as well, if we can confirm that the counters do work;
• GW2W twitter bot: please contact poke if you're interested to run something similar for this wiki;
• Default skin: this is relevant to this wiki so please let me know what you think!
• Global changelog page: as above, this is relevant;
• WikiChat: this is not relevant to this wiki (as I unfortunately do not speak German);
• GW2 wiki mobile application: the people who developed this will need to clarify, if needed, if this is relevant to this wiki.
• Last but not the least: this is absolutely relevant to this wiki; although our ability to interact with this community is very limited due to the language barrier, the work of all the volunteers here is making a big impact on the German community and I'd like to thank you all on behalf of ArenaNet for that!

Note that if you can understand English and write it at a basic, understandable level (no need to be fluent, but Google Translation is not welcome!), we're looking for Germantesters for our wiki test environments.

Feel free to discuss this directly here on my talkpage (English only please :). Thanks for your work here!