User talk:Robert Horning

This page was last modified on --

Welcome
''' Welcome! '''

Hello,, and welcome to the RuneScape Wiki! In case you need help with your future contributions here are some pages that will help you out! Feel free to ask any questions on my. If you're looking for something to do, feel free to check out the Community Portal. If you have any troubles, you could look at a help page or you could ask on the local forums. I hope you enjoy editing here and being a RuneScape wiki editor!
 * About the RuneScape Wiki
 * Editing help
 * Help pages
 * Style guide
 * Adding userboxes to your user page
 * Signature help


 * Please sign your name on talk pages by using four tildes ( ~ ) or use the "sign" button ([[Image:Button sig.PNG]]) above the edit box. This will automatically produce your name and the date. And remember, have fun editing!

-- 19:07, 24 November 2007 (UTC)

Exchange Watch
Brill idea, it will allow me to keep track of my most favourite resource, runes, i buy alot of runes on the exchange as I'm 93 magic atm going for 99 so this is brilliant for me. 12:45, 30 November 2007 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the support. This is going to be a HUGE project to get everything up and going, but I think it will be worth it.  Some parts are going to be much more active than others (like runes), but I think on the whole it will be worth it.  --Robert Horning 12:48, 30 November 2007 (UTC)

Exchange pages
Um...What are you doing? JalYt-Xil-Vimescarrot 18:57, 30 November 2007 (UTC)


 * Please see Grand Exchange Market Watch/Runecrafting to see how they are being used. I have a few thoughts about how they might be incorporated into item pages as well, but the purpose is to allow one editing point for data such as what the current Grand Exchange Price of the item is, but allow them to be displayed in multiple places.  Such as listing the tiaras under runecrafting and crafting pages at the same time.
 * I'm using "Exchange" as a psuedo namespace to transclude the content onto the Market Watch pages. If the Wikidata extensions were in place here, I'd use that instead, but MediaWiki software just isn't up to the task without transclusions being used in the fashion I'm using here.  --Robert Horning 19:18, 30 November 2007 (UTC)
 * I won't pretend I have a clue what you just said. But can't you just use the Template: namespace? Using Exchange: keeps it all in the mainspace. Which is wrong...obviously. By the way, why don't you come on the IRC? There's a few people there... JalYt-Xil-Vimescarrot  19:29, 30 November 2007 (UTC)
 * Why not IRC? I hate using the **** software.  OK, not quite so harshly, but it just isn't my cup of tea to get on IRC channels.... and it is (for me) a time waster of phenomenal proportions.
 * As far as why not simply using templates.... I guess it is a personal preference. It would be comparatively trivial to rename the pages into the template namespace, but I was hoping to keep from flooding the "Template" namespace with so many pages that you would miss out on what really are templates.  Yes, I know I can do "Template:Exchange/" as the prefix to the page names instead of using "Exchange:".  There are some advantages in terms of how you set up the Robot.txt file for this Wiki (something Wikia or the computer equipment supervisors will do...not an admin function) to have a seperate namespace for stuff like this, but that is getting pretty deep into Wiki administration.  Quite literally every item page is going to be duplicated as a template in some fashion or another like this, so it would be easier to scan for different kinds of problems with some of the Wiki administration tools going this route.
 * I'm willing to do the page moves if you think it is necessary, but I'd like to get a second opinion on that before I make the change. Especially if it all has to be undone sometime later when it will be even harder to accomplish.  That is why this is just a test page to see if there are any complaints/concerns about how I'm setting this up, and it is understandable that what I'm doing here is pushing the envelope in terms of what MediaWiki software can accomplish.  There will be quite a bit more that I will be putting into this project if I get a green light to continue, so I want to resolve your concerns here.  --Robert Horning 00:59, 1 December 2007 (UTC)
 * You know we only get to make two extra namespaces? We've used one already, so if you get someone to make the Exchange: namespace, that's it, we've used them all. Forget it...I'll leave you and your scary project alone. JalYt-Xil-Vimescarrot  09:28, 1 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Hm... I hadn't read this before... I suppose I'll stop adding stuff to this GE market watch until a final decision is taken about this. 09:32, 1 December 2007 (UTC)
 * That is a real problem. Here is a volunteer who wants to join in here and help out, but is getting pounded on by a long-time user.  I simply don't understand why this isn't done in a much more public forum than on the user talk page of a brand new (relatively speaking) user to this project that nobody is paying attention to.  If this is a problem, bring the issue up on the thread about the exchange list than to keep flaming me here.  --Robert Horning 12:16, 1 December 2007 (UTC)
 * It's not flaming, and this page is a public as any other. JalYt-Xil-Vimescarrot  20:40, 1 December 2007 (UTC)


 * I'd just like to say that the "Exchange:" namespace is nonexistant, so your "Exchange: " pages are actually in the mainspace, which kind of defeats the purpose of the namespace addition.
 * Also, you appear to be putting templates in these pages. That means they should be going in the already-existant "Template:" namespace. I love the idea of this, but you're going about it the wrong way. Oddlyoko talk 19:24, 4 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Also: urk! You're definitely going about it the wrong way. Why are you using templates like this on Grand Exchange Market Watch/Runecrafting? Just make a table and update prices from the page itself. Not only is it _far_ cleaner, it also cleans up Recent Changes considerably when you're updating prices. Oddlyoko talk 19:27, 4 December 2007 (UTC)
 * You are really missing the point of what I'm trying to do. I'm game for renaming all of the "Exchange:" pages to "Template:Exchange/", and that is something I can perform myself (just a simple page move...doesn't require admin privileges) if it is deemed necessary.  BTW, in spite of what Vimescarrot is saying here, MediaWiki will allow up to 256 different namespaces (or 128 namespaces + talk pages), not just 2 additional ones.  If there is a limit of just 2 additional namespaces per project, that is something being imposed on the project by Wikia as policy, and the not a limitation of MediaWiki software.  I'm willing to work with you on this, but it isn't nearly as bad as you are making it out to be.
 * As for "You're definitely going about it the wrong way".... why is one way "wrong" and another way "right" on this? You are really missing what I'm trying to accomplish here, and it isn't just creating a table of prices (although that is part of it).  I'm sorry if this messes up "Recent Changes", so perhaps I need to move this whole project to another wiki entirely?  Seriously.  I'm not understanding what the real problem is here.  I'm hoping to make something here that is highly beneficial to the whole project, and there is more in store including market indexes (like the Dow Jones average) and auto-updating of the item pages themselves with the current exchange price.  I also want to allow multiple methods of viewing the prices, based on skills and perhaps some other specialized lists, and eventually a "huge" list of everything at once (if you really want to see it for some reason).
 * If you don't like this list, would you please voice your objections on this thread of the Forums so somebody other than just myself will be able to see this?
 * Again, if there is a real reason why you are objecting to this, let me know. It is still in what I can call an experimental stage.  That I'm not doing this the way that you would be making something like this is not what I consider to be a reasonable argument.  I would also like to see a discussion happening somewhere other than my user talk page if you really intend to make this a discussion about its place on this wiki.  That is why I'm begging you to take this to the forum thread where at least these issues can be hashed out, and I don't have to keep defending myself over and over again.  And that I know this isn't just a couple of over zealous admins.  I'm certainly going to bring up your objections on the forum thread.  --Robert Horning 20:12, 4 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Official Wiki business isn't done on the forums. Why do you insist on, yet again, saying that only you can see your talk page? JalYt-Xil-Vimescarrot  20:40, 4 December 2007 (UTC)
 * I'll admit maybe Vimes and I are being a little harsh, but I have never seen you here before, and suddenly you appear with this huge project? Let me make myself clear: I love this project, it has great potential, and I'd love to help with it. This is our way of helping.
 * Also, you are correct. MediaWiki can sustain many, many namespaces. However, we are hosted by wikia.com, and they only allow us three extra namespaces. We have created the "Updates:" namespace already, limiting us to two. Regardless of how many MediaWiki can support, we are limited to those two.
 * And finally, as Vimes says, anyone can see this page . It is not like some e-mail inbox, or private messages page. An edit is an edit, and it makes no difference whether it's a User talk: page or an Updates: page. Anyone can see your talk page and the contents. Oddlyoko talk 22:18, 4 December 2007 (UTC)
 * My objection to the both of you going off like you are is that other admins (I know there are several admins on this project) aren't necessarily aware of what you are suggesting here. I'm willing to cooperate with you, but I'd like to let you know I've a very experience MediaWiki users.  In fact, I've been an administrator on Wikibooks for nearly three years, and I've been offered (I turned it down) the opportunity to be an admin on Wikipedia.  My user page on Wikibooks is wikibooks:User:Robert Horning, and in fact some of what I'm putting into the Grand Exchange Market Watch is based upon much of the experience I gained from helping to organize Wikibooks.  I was also one of the co-founders of Wikiversity, and one of the major driving forces that got through the red tape of the Wikimedia Foundation to get it approved as a Wikimedia sister project.  That certainly wasn't an easy task to accomplish at all.
 * I understand that you are trying to communicate with me, one user, and aren't totally sure about what it is that I'm doing here because it is very cutting edge in terms of using MediaWiki tools. That I've already stumped the dev team at Wikipedia (well, the MediaWiki dev team about the date issue) is at least a sign that I've gone beyond the normal new user issues.  All I'm asking here is to be a bit patient.  I am not totally up on all of the Wikia policies, as I haven't really done any major projects with Wikia (although my user login with Wikia dates back nearly three years as well).  Yes, this is a huge project, but I want you to know I'll see it through.  Besides, I think I've done most of the hard parts and the rest is simply the grind of putting all of the item information together.
 * Just note here that I both love Runescape and working with Wikis. There is a tremendous potential that can be gained from the approach I'm doing, and I'm asking you to bear with me a little bit here.  Assume good faith here, and let me show you something that will make this project absolutely rock!  The full potential of the approach that I'm doing right now isn't quite so apparent yet, and all I'm asking is for a bit of breathing room.  It is all easily undone/deleted and isn't harming the rest of this project either.  And I'm well aware of the scope of this project in terms of trying to be about Runescape, and trying to do something that I think even Jagex would be interested in looking at in terms of watching user fan sites.  I promise you both that when this is done, the other fan sites will be copying some of the things I'm going to put into these price lists and templates that I'm putting into here... including some of the old time fansites like Tip.it and RuneHQ.  They will also be scratching their heads to figure out how in the heck we got MediaWiki to pull this off without direct access to the MySQL database...seriously.  --Robert Horning 03:47, 5 December 2007 (UTC)
 * You know, that whole two paragraphs could have been condensed into nine words. Anyway, I think the problem basically lies in the fact that you've started this huge project without really consulting anyone (a little discussion with the community would have been a good idea, especially considering the magnitude of the effort involved - and no, the forums don't count, because both the forums and the IRC are seperate from the wiki to some degree, and no big decisions are made there) and before you're actually capable of doing so (you should have requested an Exchange: namespace first, or just used the Template: one, and you said yourself one of the things you're using has stumped...someone...who was very important, I'm sure.) Also, I have a question. Surely using Template: would be better, since you get templates automatically when you do ? With a namespace outside of Template:, you have to actually put the namespace within the curly bracket things. JalYt-Xil-Vimescarrot  10:44, 5 December 2007 (UTC)
 * If using the normal template namespace, the individual exchange items could be grouped as Template:ExchangeItem/name, which would keep them together (just like signatures). This helps when reviewing complete list of templates for rogue templates. 11:52, 5 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Well, excuse my rudeness here on this, but where the hell is the forum that I should have consulted anybody on before I started this project? Where is the community discussion forum for this project?  Who is it that I need to seek "permission" before I start?  What exactly are your roles here that I need to seek your "approval" on this matter first?  As I tried to say a couple of times earlier, I went to what I thought was this project's community forum (at least there is the "forum" word on the sidebar...and I don't see any other community discussion pages), I started a thread about this topic...and got some positive feedback before I started.  And then I made an experimental page to show an idea on what I wanted to do, and sought feedback on the idea.  What else should I have done to get your "approval" before I started?  The rest of what you two are complaining about here is that I'm just doing things a little different than you've seen before and it isn't how you would do this.  Most people care about the results and if the thing works at all, but you are complaining about the process.  Please help answer these questions.  --Robert Horning 12:29, 5 December 2007 (UTC)
 * I was not complaining about the process, I was just suggesting that if it went under the the templates namespace, then it would be good if they were grouped together (like the signatures). 16:18, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

Defense of the use of the "Exchange" psuedo namespace
I'll try to say this clearly, but completely. I may be a bit verbose on my replies, but that is because I'm trying to explain my thought process too.

I am not a new user that has to be taught about templating and how to create a template in the first place. I'm well aware of the strengths and weakness of templates, and have years of experience in trying to manage users, particularly new users who have a tendency to make a whole lot of mistakes.

I want to start on the primary objection that the "Exchange" pages are templates, and should be in the template namespace. Since it is so easy to move them to the template namespace, I don't understand why this is even an argument at all, or why I am getting pounded on this. All I asked for was a second opinion by somebody with a clue to review what I was doing and to understand why I'm setting this up in this way.

I'm setting this up as templates/transcluded text mainly as a way to "edit once/update everywhere". This is being lost completely by the counter arguments, and unless I am missing something from the years of MediaWiki editing (and other wiki editing) there is no other way to accomplish this goal. Please, for the love of God/Science/your favorite pet, if you know of a better way to accomplish this specific goal up making it simple for a new wiki user to update the price of an item that is simultaneously displayed on multiple pages.... let me know right now before I get any further into this project. Please! The only real way I know how to accomplish this goal is to make use of templates in some fashion as I'm doing so here. I'm open to new ideas, but apparently the admins who are pounding on me aren't.

As for what namespace to put all this information.... that is certainly something worthy of discussion. At the moment I created a new "psuedonamespace", which is really a proposed namespace option. I get it that the Wikia developers are highly reluctant to grant new namespaces to a project, as this is something that is sometimes abused and can be difficult to scale back. I'm also saying that the limits that are being imposed here are artificial and this is not a technical issue, but a political one. If the justification for creating a new namespace can be given, the technical aspects are relatively easy to work out afterward.

Again, to make things clear, and as I've repeated myself several times already I'll do it again. Moving these "templates" to the "Template:" namespace is trivial to accomplish and I'm willing to make the move. Any users (except for brand-new users who just created a new account yesterday) can move the pages around from any name to any other name, including moving them to other namespaces. At least with the current permission set as copied from Wikipedia that Wikia is using. I'll also make it clear here that I won't engage in an edit war over this, and if you really think I'm out of my mind, you can move them to the Template namespace and be done with it. Just hear me out for the rest of this.

I'm worried here that I'm proposing to create a huge number of pages using this templating format. There are about eight thousand items that can be traded between players (more or less, I haven't done a full census on that yet), and I'm proposing at least one page per item. If I put all of these items in the Template namespace, it is simply going to overwhelm nearly every administrator tool that is used to watch over the current list of items in the Template namespace. The "Allpages" listing is going to be essentially these item templates, and a minor little bit of fluff thrown in for good measure... mainly the rest of the templates used for the rest of the project. When you do a Recent Changes list of the Template namespace, that will suddenly become a nearly useless option as 90%+ of all of the edits in that namespace will be for these price changes and updates. Ditto for any log entries or any other administration tool that can distinguish between namespaces.

I'd also like to point out that this is being used in a slightly different fashion than is also typical for a template. Most templates are specialized and hand-crafted tools used to help with simplifying the process of displaying content, or making editorial markups expressing concerns about what has been written. What I'm doing here with these exchange prices is a mass-produced series of template-like pages that are all nearly identical except for some data points. As a matter of fact, I'm using some genuine templates within all of this to help with the formatting of the data, and those are still in the Template namespace. I hope those templates in particular are watched carefully as they shouldn't be toyed with by new users unless they really understand how to manipulate templates and are trying to make a positive contribution to the project.

One other thing to consider is that nearly any change to one of the more "typical" templates should be highly suspect and examined closely. These are usually things that if changed can have a tremendous impact across the whole of the project. I am deliberately organizing the pricing information in such a way that it will be very difficult to have that sort of impact across the project... if all you are doing is just updating the price. All you will change is the price information for the one item, and that will be of little consequence and easy to "roll back". In addition, changes to these price pages should be nearly ignored from admins doing a recent changes patrol as genuine vandalism will be incredibly easy to spot on the market pages themselves. Price manipulation may be a minor problem, but that is also easy to spot and fix.

I believe that putting this into a separate namespace will actually make it easier, not harder, to administer this content and watch for vandalism. For not just these items, but for the project as a whole. I'm also not holding out that this must be the only way to accomplish this particular goal of allowing transcluded text to appear in articles or the market watch page, and I'm open to moving these pages into the Template namespace. Just be well aware of what you are going to lose by making this move, and I predict that the time will come where they will be moved back to an alternate namespace in the future. As you gain more experience with these things, you will see the wisdom of what I'm trying to accomplish here.

As far as opening up a conversation with the "community" about if this is something which should even be started or done...I'll ask again, because I'm not getting the answer. Where is the talk page/forum/mailing list/website where I can discuss this? I highly doubt that my little user talk page that was only created a couple of days ago is the community forum that is appropriate to introduce these kind of new ideas. I'm only responding here because it is getting the attention of several other users. I thought I did get support for starting this project before I even created the first page, but apparently I needed the "permission" of more than those who responded on what I thought was a community forum about this project. Before I actually got started, I didn't even hear a single negative comment about doing this. And the only real objection I'm even hearing now is that this is too much work than will ever get accomplished, so it isn't worth even getting started in the first place. --Robert Horning 15:26, 5 December 2007 (UTC)
 * That's a lot of writing. I know that using an Exchange: namespace would make it easier - I have all along, even if I didn't know the ins and outs it's fairly evident - my objection was the fact that you started using it before we even had one. And you've got to admit, trying to use a namespace that doesn't exist hardly suggests knowledge of the subject at hand, does it?
 * Where do you discuss these things? I don't have a clue. The talk page for your project might be a start, I suppose. If I was to do it I'd ask some of the more active editors (via their talkpage or IRC or something) to have the discussion on my talk page. No, really, I would - I don't see the problem with that. In the old days we'd have used the Forum: namespace, but now we can't, because some genius deleted the forums...*grumblegrumble*.
 * Er, it was a lot of reading, so if I forgot to reply to something, just say so...in a short sentence rather than a six-inch paragraph, preferably. JalYt-Xil-Vimescarrot  18:48, 5 December 2007 (UTC)
 * The response to asking for "permission" first and then acting, instead of simply acting and then asking what anybody thought of it is wrapped up in the concept of Being Bold. This isn't a policy (if it was, it certainly wouldn't apply here), but rather a philosophy that if you have an inspiration, act upon it and don't discuss it in committee.  Also, make sure that every action that you do doesn't adversely affect existing content, and that everything you do is also reversible.  Other core principles can also come from wikipedia:User:Jimbo Wales... that I also heartily endorse (you can debate if Jimbo really follows them, but that is another issue entirely).  I just don't understand why this is an issue, and I don't agree that creating a new "namespace" is a problem if it is reversable and through community concensus can be changed.  Again, I'll state it here, I'm open to the idea of moving it to the "Template:" namespace.  I just want to see the reasons why defended and get a second opinion on the subject.
 * If everything had to be done by permission from a group of elites on Wikis like this, nothing new would be developed. I'm trying very hard to learn who the "powers that be" are on this project, and I'm suggesting that I am trying to take this nice and slow, responding to valid criticisms.  Apparently trying to find a common place to discuss project organization is a problem right now, and if you are correct, there is no community forum to discuss any major changes to this project.  Now that is a serious problem.  --Robert Horning 00:12, 6 December 2007 (UTC)
 * You're right there, it is a serious problem. And there's a difference between "permission" and "approval". Oh, and I wasn't aware that getting a new namespace could be reversed. Last time we had this discussion, about getting an Update: namespace (feels like years ago now), I was told that it wasn't. JalYt-Xil-Vimescarrot  07:51, 6 December 2007 (UTC)
 * In going through the MediaWiki documentation, changing namespaces is apparently a bit tougher to "fix" on a large and active project. New namespaces can be "reversed" so far as you can add pages to a new namespace or remove them... but it does take somebody with root access to the wiki server and not something that can be casually done using admin tools.  IMHO this is a huge flaw in the MediaWiki software, but irrelevant to our discussion here.  The technical side is possible, but I do understand why Wikia is reluctant to get involved with creating dozens of new namespaces for the various Wikia projects.
 * As a side note, I didn't realize that the "script" to create the new namespace (if the pages already exist in that to be created namespace) involves moving the pages somewhere else and then moving them back into that namespace. This, for me, is enough to convince me that putting them somewhere other than the "main" namespace may be a good suggestion for now.  I still think there is a valid utility to establish an "Exchange:" namespace once this project is fully set up, but that is a discussion that doesn't have to be resolved immediately, and this project can proceed without a decision on this point.  --Robert Horning 17:24, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

GE Market Watch
First of all, welcome to RSW =). I think that the GE Market Watch you're working on is a good idea to let anyone update the prices easily, and you seem to know a lot about MediaWiki software. Whether or not you leave the item pages as subpages or move them to the template namespace, it would be great if RSW had a feature which most other fansites probably won't have. Good luck with your project, and leave me a message on my talk page if you need any help. 23:04, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

GE Market Watch dates
I've been hunting around trying to find solutions to the REVISIONDAY, etc, problems, and have had no luck so far. Judging by Skill's use of the Sandbox, it looks like he's been trying too.

At the moment, the GE prices are still settling down, but once they have settled, how often do you think the pages will need updating? If the "UP" and "DOWN" are relative to the previous values, it might be more useful to do less frequently than daily (e.g. maybe once a week). It depends on whether the interest is in daily fluctuations or trends.

If done weekly, then it might be simpler for someone to just go through checking the prices of all items on each group page at one sitting. These prices could then be updated within the group page itself (rather than lots of embedded templates). The REVISIONDAY, etc, can then be on the group page itself (removing the issue with the page values being used).

Furthermore, as well as adding the last update time at the top of the page (using the REVISIONDAY, etc.), but we could also add conditional expressions to evaluate roughly when the next update is due, and give additional text if the update is overdue (e.g. over two weeks ago).

I know this means that we won't be able to link the prices on individual article pages with the values recorded in the market watch, but I don't think that will be too much of an issue, since once the prices have settled on the GE, the article prices could just be regarded as approximate. 13:10, 5 December 2007 (UTC)


 * Once things get settled down, I expect that the prices would have to be updated weekly, or perhaps even only monthly for a few items. Keep in mind that the prices that will be updated will be for those items that somebody is interested in watching.  If there is little interest in checking the price of the item out, it will likely not be tracked at all.


 * One of my motivations on this was talking to one of the Jagex "J-mods" that was in-game when the Grand Exchange opened up. I wandered around looking at the various kiosks (OK, NPC's) that listed the prices of various items, and I noticed that some key items were missing.  Most notably was a fairly commonly traded item for one of the key Runescape skills:  Lobsters and Swordfish.  In fact, there wasn't a food NPC trader at all...and I asked the J-mod about it.  He didn't apologize, instead he said "look it up in the exchange".  So I guess I'm going to create my own listing of food prices if Jagex doesn't want to do it.  The rest of this is an expansion of the idea to something bigger.


 * One more thing: Don't sweat how often we get these prices updated.  Neither you nor I are being paid to keep this information up to date.  All I'm trying to do here is to make it easier to make a change to a couple of pieces of information if you have some data that is much more current.  If this is a popular feature, volunteers will arrive to keep the prices up to date.  If nobody cares, the prices will get stale.  I have "faith" in the wiki process and empowering readers and users to help out with large tasks like this... and I do think that this is going to be a very popular feature.


 * BTW, you are wrong that we won't be able to link the prices on the individual article pages....just wait! I'm just getting started here and I promise you that when the Market Watch pages get updated, they will also get updated "automagicaly" on the item pages too!  There is a method to my madness here, and I'm going to add all kinds of fun numbers and statistics too, like coins/exp for training and how much raw components cost to make an item.  If you knew the price of a piece of mith plate armor was cheaper than the cost of 5 mith bars, wouldn't that be important...or if it cost more?  We can do arithmetic on these prices and get all kinds of information...and we are also building a history of the prices as well that can be analyzed for trends or other interesting market studies.  Trust me when I am saying that we have just started here!


 * My initial goal is to make it embarrassingly easy to update the prices, and to make it difficult for those who want to volunteer in updating the prices to really screw things up if they aren't familiar with MediaWiki editing. If it makes life harder on the admins due to a huge expansion of the number of pages that are showing up on the recent changes list, that is not a huge concern of mine.  They are all going to be edits that will need to be watched anyway, as it will be a vector for vandals to mess up the project.  From the way I'm putting this all together, however, it will be easy to spot the obvious vandals on these pages even without scanning the recent changes list.  --Robert Horning 14:28, 5 December 2007 (UTC)


 * Actually, I was only saying that having prices linked on article pages would not work if the exchange items were just grouped onto a single page again (to get around the REVISIONDAY, etc, problem. Using templates obviously would allow the data to be shared.


 * Another thought is that we could have simple exchange item templates that just contain the "date", "price" and "oldprice", without the formatting. This would make it easier for people to edit, and they are less likely to miss updating the date.


 * For example, for ExchangeItem:Air rune (or whatever the name) having:


 * The parameter to the template can be used as a selector for the information wanted (e.g. the date, price or old price). There could then be an exchange market row template that takes various parameters, including the name of the item.


 * The "oldprice" field is present so that a common exchange market row template can work out whether the price has gone up/down or is unchanged. It keeps the formatting information seperate from the raw data. It would also allow us to have different symbols (e.g. 3 arrows instead of one arrow) for cases where prices have risen or dropped by more than a certain amount (i.e. the market movers).


 * Assuming we then make the item infobox template substitute the price from the individual exchangeitem templates, we could make these link back to the exchangeitem templates from the item infoboxes so that the price can be updated from either the market watch or the item articles themselves.


 * It might pay to also include in the exchange item templates the high and low alch values too (since they are shown on both the market watch and the item pages). 16:58, 5 December 2007 (UTC)


 * In terms of walking before running it might be a good version 0.1 solution to use some simpler templates. It's clearly going to take some time to get a fully automated system in place, and I don't think it's asking *that* much of people to remember to update the date field when they edit. And duplication of data isn't going to be much of an overhead - the alch values are unlikely to change so it's only the GE prices that would be out of synch on the item pages. Keeping it simple to start with will get it up and running quicker, and will help see how successful the project is and whether it's worth investing extra time and effort in getting an all-encompassing system working. Just thinking out loud... Pointy 17:49, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

I was thinking that it might work to request that the date and old price are updated manually through comments, and have a bot correct them if either field is neglected. This has the added benefit that since it has to watch all the exchange pages anyways, the bot can build up a price history and it could be looked up without having to go through dozens of page revisions. Either way, this seems like it could be a useful feature unique to our site, or at least the most updated version of it. Skill 20:00, 5 December 2007 (UTC)


 * Ooooooh. I likey the 'bot idea here.  I've been scratching my head about some ways that we could build up a price history without having to go through the "page history" of the price itself.  A bot would also solve in the short-term the problem of trying to put the date of the last edit, but I think it might be a pain to have a bot do this sort of checking.  One issue about the bot, however, is that the "source code" for the bot needs to be made available in some public place that can be added and shared.  The largest problem with most wiki 'bots that I've seen on Wikipedia and elsewhere is that they are operated by one lone hacker...and when that individual leaves or gets tired of the whole thing, the numbers stop getting updated or the project they were involved with stops.


 * Ideally, what I'd love to see happen is to somehow get a direct datafeed from Jagex (with permission of Jagex) that is able to relay what is being sold in the Grand Exchange. Basically a Grand Exchange stock ticker.  I might be able to pull that off, but it would be incredibly expensive and would likely require simply setting up a whole different website to massage the data properly.  The expense is that it would be expensive for Jagex (in terms of what it would take for their development team to implement this "feature", and the bandwidth wouldn't be cheap either.  Datafeeds like this from the NYSE can cost in the range from $100,000 USD to millions of dollars (depending on how current the datafeed is).  A very stale stock ticker (1 hour behind) is still thousands of dollars per year.  I'm not kidding here either.  Coincidentally I've actually written some software that uses the NYSE feed, so that isn't even something new for me to work on.  I even know the programmer who wrote the software for the ticker boards that are used on the floor of the NYSE and AMEX, so the Grand Exchange would be trivial in comparison here... but I digress.


 * Let's try to keep this simple for now, but the idea of a 'bot being used to help with the prices is something to definitely look at.--Robert Horning 00:58, 6 December 2007 (UTC)


 * Could the bot not watch specific pages and see whan they've been edited, then scrape the page's text to extract the pricing from the template markup and build up its history? If someone's a drive-by editor they may not know about having to write special text in the comments and then you kind of lose that edit. I don't know how feasible that is with a bot. Pointy 21:26, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

Pricing Arrows
I'm liking the pricing arrows. I think the colours are the wrong way round though - don't most stock tickers have price increases in green and price drops in red? Obviously it depends on whether you're buying or selling as to whether a rise or drop is a good thing, but it's normally from the seller's point of view as far as I can tell... Pointy 17:28, 12 December 2007 (UTC)


 * I didn't even come up with the arrows in the first place, so this is sort of barking up the wrong tree, so to say. Still, I would have to agree that green == up and red == down.  I'll see if I can change the color of those arrows sometime soon.  I'm also going to change the "method" used to create the arrows as well.  --Robert Horning 15:35, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

Wanteds
I know you have been extremly hard at work at the GE exchange thing, and I know how much of a task it is. As a result, the wanted pages are overflowing with articles that need to be made in reference to some of your pages. If you explain to me what I need to do, I would be happy to try and make those pages. Wanteds are a pet peeve of mine. Let me know on my talk what needs to be done Atlandy 16:17, 14 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Holy crap that was fast...[[Image:Wintumber_tree.PNG]] Atlandy 18:38, 14 December 2007 (UTC)
 * I'm just used to using Media wikis and massive use of "tabs" in Firefox. BTW, thanks for the offer to help.... and those pages do need some extra work (images, prices, and more), but they aren't on the "wanted pages" list any more.  --Robert Horning 19:25, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

Good work
I was just going to congratulate you on the project and ask about the namespace.... But I'll leave the last bit alone I think. Although I have wondered about people trying to fix the market price by toying with GE Watch, so perhaps changes do need to be monitored...

Rich Farmbrough, 13:12 18 December 2007 (GMT).


 * On the positive side of things in terms of monitoring prices on the GE Watch, all of this is independently verifiable, and you don't even have to be regularly involved with trading the item to get an idea of what the price is.


 * Also, unlike earlier "price guides" on many other websites, you don't have to take these prices as the "gospel truth". I can't tell you how many times I got involved with trades before the GX where during the trade somebody said "But (website) says that a diamond is (fill in price)!"  Especially if I was the buyer.  Most of the time I usually said.... I'm paying (x) coins.... take it or leave it!  In most cases (not all), they would take the trade.  Often storm off and leave... then come back and sheepishly take my money.  With the GX, you will find out the price immediately when you try to trade.


 * I wasn't a major merchant, but I did do some merchanting before the GX. I will say that I've made far more money after the GX than before, and most of that has to do with the ease of getting the items to the market, and to not dicker over the price quite so much.  I hated spending 70% of my time trying to merchant to either buy supplies or sell the items when I'm done.


 * As for the technical arguments over the Market Watch.... I'm not really going to put up a fight. There are some things that can be done to watch over the pages, and I've tried to keep everything in the Category:Grand Exchange to help with watching changes.  My next issue really is how to integrate all of this with the rest of the Wiki, especially on the Main Page and adding links from the skill articles to the Market Watch pages about that skill.  I've already added some links between the GX prices on the Market Watch and the individual item pages.  --Robert Horning 14:49, 18 December 2007 (UTC)


 * Yes, there will be useful spin-offs which will take a while. Pity there isn't a published API for getting the GE prices (it would be nice to have hi-trade-low) - especially a Jagex just revealed there are something like 15,000 items... I've certainly made more money merchanting since GE, about 1M I would say.  Keep up the good work - I've updated a few prices here and there. Rich Farmbrough, 13:44 21  December 2007 (GMT). (Psst. Wanna buy some gold bars?)

100 buy limit
Did you manage to do any testing to verify the 100 buy limit?

It might actually be 4 hours rather than 3, but I haven't been checking the clock timing exactly.

I have been buying things like 200 DDSs, 200 DDPs, 200 green d'hide bodies, 200 blue d'hide bodies, and 200 black d'hide bodies (and a few other things).

Sometime items, like the DDSs, would increase in 1s and 2s over the first hour, then stop when they got to 100. Then about 4 hours later, they would start creaping up again.

Some items, like the hides would almost immediately jump (higher turnover) to 100. Then stop for 4 hours before getting the second 100.

I did initially think that it was just a case of being limited to 100 before being put to the "back of the queue" again, but the consistancy of time before being able to buy again seems to imply it really is time based.

The limit seems to be by player, not by trading spot. For example, buying 300 of an item in 1 spot, or having 3 spots of buying 100 of the item makes no difference. The first 100 buys, then the next 100 4 hours later, then the last 100 after 8 hours (from when put up).

The limit of 100 is per item. For example, I can buy 100 of each type of hide, but cannot by anymore until 4 hours later.

10:17, 19 December 2007 (UTC)


 * The 100 buy limit certainly doesn't have to do with commodities like coal, clay, ores, or even fish. I've been able to buy up to 10,000 items of those kind of items at once.... or when the items start to come in, they come in bunches that I know are in quantities that have to do with what a player has dumped into the GX, and not necessarily something imposed by Jagex.  I'm talking an increase in items purchased like 217 items, or 103 items.  There is no trading limit at all.
 * There may be some mechanism at play here, however, if there are several people all making an offer at the same price. The items I've been testing out seem to be for things where I'm the only buyer at the time (for things like gold bars), instead of items like hides, where there may indeed be multiple buyers.  In that case, Jagex is likely doing some sort of rotation system for 100 items at a time, until the order is filled.  I'll try to put more on the forum thread about this.  --Robert Horning 13:12, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

PointyBot
I've just created a new account which will hopefully eventually become a bot. It's currently able (in a *very* limited form) to download and cache the page history for GE items and build pricing charts in Excel. There's some example charts on its user page User:PointyBot. If you have any thoughts about this let me know. I'm currently unsure where the images should eventually live so any ideas would be appreciated. I'm thinking maybe we extend the main item infobox template and tag it on the bottom or something? Pointy 00:43, 22 December 2007 (UTC)


 * Wow! And I mean that.... simply Wow!  This is an amazing little tool that you have created, and I think it can be incredibly useful.


 * There is a chart making tool in MediaWiki that may need some syntax help with, and perhaps we can integrate some of this into the charts that you are making.... this way you don't have to bring them into Excel in order to make them look nice. The syntax to get this working is rather complicated, and I'll try to dig into this to see where we can go from here.  I would really like to make this work.  See:  EasyTimeline for some details on how this works... but it isn't going to be trivial to get it to work for our purposes.  --Robert Horning 14:27, 22 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Thanks :-) The Excel stuff was pretty easy - the bot actually spits out the exact *.png files that I uploaded so there's no conversion needed. All I need to do is get it able to automatically upload the images and we're away... I'm still not really sure what to do with them once they're uploaded though - any thoughts? Pointy 14:37, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

Nominated for User of the Month
Lol, since almost all of the discussion on your talk page is about the GE market watch, I figured I'd change it up a bit: I've nominated you for User of the Month - I figured you deserved it after all of your hard work. 06:16, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

GE history
Are you thinking of a price history which could be very useful ? How do you/we store old prices/dates ? Is it possible to mix a database with wiki ? 10:06, 2 January 2008 (UTC)
 * A price history would be incredibly useful and productive, but the real question here is how is this information going to be made available with a minimum amount of user intervention and damage from vandals. Especially in a wiki format.
 * As far as having a "wiki as a database", that is pretty much what I'm doing with the GEMW. There was a proposal thrown up on the Wikimedia Foundation discussion mailing list (also called Foundation-l) called "Wikidata" that has been worked on, but it is a very highly ambitious project that isn't anywhere near ready for prime time.  Many of those working on the idea were also big fans of the Wiktionary project (Wikipedia dictionary... one of the various Wikimedia projects), and there is a working demo of the idea in terms of a multi-lingual dictionary as a database.  Unfortunately, it isn't really all that powerful at the moment.
 * MediaWiki runs off of a SQL database (usually MySQL, but other SQL engines are used as well), and in theory we should be able to work in a sandboxed section of a SQL database like this with the Wiki interface. Like I said, this isn't something trivial, and does require quite a bit more work in terms of how it can all get put together.
 * As a long-term project, this would be something fun to work on... but it can't happen as a quick and dirty solution that can be done in a day or two. --Robert Horning 12:14, 2 January 2008 (UTC)
 * I agree with you, price history could be really, really, really useful ! Having a direct link between jagex and wiki is certainly the better option, but i don't think this is Jagex view...By the way i think a bot is against jagex rules...
 * As i was a dba (oracle, sybase, ...) a few years ago, i may be an useful ressource... Have you got links to documentation about databases on wiki ? Does it require to be an admin ? 09:48, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

Empty GE Items pages?
I remember that at the beginning of the GE market watch, an item page, for instance Exchange:Super_energy_mix, would show all its content (price, icon, etc). Now, after editing, you need to display the market watch page where the item is insterted to check for typo... why not display the information even on individual item pages, like it used to be ? Even if it's ugly, it's useful. 11:32, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

Ring of duelling
On Exchange:Ring of duelling I edited the spelling of the ring because it's spelled differently in game apparently, and now you can see all the words, even though I reverted my edits. What did I do? >_< Christine Talk 19:07, 5 January 2008 (UTC)


 * We can change the spelling on the "Exchange:" page as well.... just make sure you fix the spelling on the crafting pages and elsewhere when you try to make this change as well, as the "edit" like won't work if you move the page.


 * I'll try to clean this one up for now... thanks for pointing out the problem, and thank you so very much for helping me with this little project of mine. --Robert Horning 19:13, 5 January 2008 (UTC)