RuneScape:Yew Grove

The Yew grove is a page where community members can discuss larger changes to the wiki, such as policy proposals. It serves as a way for anyone to get involved without having to find the relevant discussion page. Messages should be left on this page, not on the talk page.

What this page should be used for:
 * Policy proposals or changes
 * Discussion of community processes (such as RS:AOTM)
 * Changes to significant wiki features.
 * In general, anything that the community at large would be interested in.

What this page should not be used for: __NEWSECTIONLINK__
 * Discussions about deleting a page. Use RS:VFD
 * Requests for adminship. Use RS:RFA
 * Discussions about the Wiki's theme. Use RuneScape:Theme
 * Discussions that belong on an article's talk page.
 * Anything that does not have a wide impact.

GEMW annoyance
As probably a lot of people have noticed, many other users are updating only the current price on Exchange: pages, and not the times and last price. I think we should discuss if we should employ a policy saying that if it's done wrong, we just revert the edit. I've been fixing other peoples' incorrectly added prices for a while now, and it's rather annoying. This (Nothing meant towards this specific user. Just an example.) is what I'm talking about, and it's happening a lot.

I vote Neutral on such a policy I mentioned earlier. I'm fine with fixing others' incorrect doings, but it's getting annoying.

So, yeah, discuss, vote, whatever. 16:06, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

Oppose Uh, I don't know if I understand this correctly, but it took me about 5 seconds to fix that mistake. I think reverting is just counter productive. =P 22:10, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

Comment - I admit I'm still new to wikia format and templates, so this may be a dumb question: Is it possible to simply update the GE Market Watch template to automatically add the current time of the edit, and the price of the previous version, to their respective fields? Or is something like that just no possible/viable? Regabuh 22:55, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

Neutral It would be easier to just use the current price and date and leave out the last price and last date now that Runescape is introducing the GE price database. I would update the prices more if I only needed to update price and add 5 tildes and not copy old price and copy old date. I'm more interested in the current prices in the various articles that utilize the GEMW data which depends more on the current info and not on past prices. I can always go to RuneScape if I want to know the up-to-date price trends; I don't trust the trends arrows in GEMW anyways because they are not always updated or may be in error. Chrislee33 23:31, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

Oppose - I think that if your already taking time to revert the edit it wouldn't take that much more time time to correct it, now that the GE database has been released couldn't someone create a bot to pull the prices for each item off of there once a day or something? and does anybody know why the wanted pages are full of exchange pages that have been created? Reddo 01:15, 16 April 2008 (UTC)

Comment It's funny Reddo should mention bots - I'm doing just that very thing with User:PointyBot at the moment. Give me a few days and I should have something up and running which will be able to update GEMW prices automatically from the Grand Exchange Database on the RuneScape site. Pointy 01:38, 16 April 2008 (UTC)

Oppose I'm not sure if this is true, but from what I've heard, rollback reverts are only for "simple vandalism". Those who update the price are usually trying to help the wiki, and it is our policy to always assume that at first. So, if we consider it being done incorrectly "simple vandalism", wouldn't that be against the policy? Butterman62 (talk) 21:19, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

Comment Would be possible to Automate this with the new Grand exchange thing on the RS frontpage. Blazel 17:39, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

"LOL NOOBS GO **** YOUR MOM"
Special:Log/block

In other words, there's been a huge amount of vandalism lately. Unlike the usual 1-3 blocks a day, admins are dishing out 7+ of these a day. I'm suspecting that it's a Total Rune, Buck Nell, or www.4chan.org invasion, but that's just me. Seriously, what the hell is going on?


 * Out of the 18 IP addresses blocked today ("today" being the day in my time zone):
 * 11 North American
 * 5 European
 * 2 Australian


 * 13 appear to be residential/business ISPs
 * 5 registered to schools/universities


 * None of them look like open proxies... in other words, this is a product of our growth recently rather than an attack by one or two persistent vandals. (Over 200 accounts/IPs made 5 or more edits last month.) I notice there have also been a dozen or more blocks given out for each of the last few days, as well, and if I were to check their locations, the results would probably be similar to those above. Skill 04:57, 26 February 2008 (UTC)
 * I've always wondered why some IPs are just registered as "residential/business"... don't these things have a country? 06:45, 26 February 2008 (UTC)
 * The databases I use (the ones linked at the bottom of IP talk pages) all seem to have registration addresses... not sure what you mean. Skill 07:35, 26 February 2008 (UTC)
 * Oh, nvm, I misread, I didn't notice you made the same list twice (1st, the 18 IPs by country, and 2nd, the same 18 IPs by school vs non-school). 13:08, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

I'm curious about the security system on the wiki. It seems that the majority of vandalism is perpetrated by anonymous editors, so why do we allow anonymous edits? I know that the wiki is open to everyone to edit, but if we do it by account, the kiddies who vandalise may be less inclined to do so if they have to set up an account, as I imagine most of them have the attention span of a gnat. I'm sure that this has already been discussed before, but it would be nice to hear the reasoning. Hurston 14:30, 26 February 2008 (UTC)
 * The problem is that there are plenty of anonymous users that make positive edits, as well. Especially in the past few months, I've noticed, there are quite a few more anons that add content. I'm sure it would eliminate most of the vandalism to disable anonymous editing, but we would probably lose all those other anons, as well as the fact that it's highly unlikely that Wikia staff would do it for us (none of us can). Skill 23:26, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

I don't really see a huge problem in this.. there are plenty of admins and regular users reverting it and blocking the offenders. Like Skill said, it's a product of our growth. Vandalism is vandalism. Just because there's a lot of it in one day, doesn't mean there is an attack or invasion. 02:28, 27 February 2008 (UTC)


 * Exactly. I don't think vandalism is the biggest of problems right now. I have never seen live vandalism on the wiki. That's because the admins do such a great job reverting it. Keep up the good work admins, Cheers, [[Image:Kandarincrest.gif|25px]]  C  hicken  7 [[Image:Kandarincrest.gif|25px]]  talk  support-the-namespace 05:20, 28 February 2008 (UTC)


 * Chicken, cheers to the admins, to the bearaucrats...but what about regular users like me and ben? Its really not just the admins reverting vandalism. Just something to refelct on., 04:01, 4 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Yep, Regular users do a lot of the work as well. I just meant like blocking other users and stuff. Cheers, [[Image:Kandarincrest.gif|25px]] Chicken7  >talk>sign 06:11, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

Resurrecting an ancient topic, I'm not concerned about vandalism in the mainspace (anyone with a brain realizes that chickens do not drop d chains). What I am worried about is vandalism towards the GEMW: It's very difficult to detect, and compromises the GEMW's credibility as a reliable price guide. I have no opinion over what should be done to protect the GEMW, but it's an issue that really needs to be solved.


 * One thing we could do is semi-protect the GEMW pages. I am very hesitant to do that, as I've also seen some useful anon edits there as well... but the GEMW pages (especially the individual item pages) are rather technical for the new wiki user to understand.


 * Once a useful bot is made for extracting the data from the Jagex pages and at least transferring the more useful data to here is done, the requirement for anon updates on the hard price data is going to be significantly reduced. They certainly aren't doing anything more than simple vandalism, and other than the item pages I haven't seen them doing something like hacking into the templates.... which could do significantly more damage.


 * BTW, while I'm wading through some of the bot scripts... is there anybody currently working on a 'bot right now for extracting the Jagex price data? I would prefer to make something cooperatively than to spin my own in "competition".  --Robert Horning 22:58, 28 April 2008 (UTC)


 * PointyBot's got a list of 3200 items in an Access database it scraped from the Exchange site, and 7000 prices points for those items, but I've hit a problem with how to upload those prices in a way that allows it to work with more than one person running the bot. I don't want to be a critical point of failure on the GEMW prices so I need to make it so multiple people can run the bot and it 'just works' without flooding prices and charts all over the show. I'm trying to make progress, but I'm stuck for time at the moment, so I can't make any promises I'm afraid. If someone else beats PointyBot to the punch that's fine with me :-). In the meantime, if you want a data-dump of items let me know and I'll post it somewhere in table form if that helps. Pointy 00:45, 29 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Judging by some of the recent vandalism I'm seeing, and the reasons, such as the pools closed thing, my educated guess says most of the vandalisms from 4Chan. 70.49.204.107 04:33, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

Explicitating who may participate in RfAs, AotMs, VfDs and the like
This RfB has brought forward a disputatious issue in regards to whether the applicability of one rule found in UotM is or can be blanketed to those other areas where opinions of support and oppose are found. There are some that argued that it did however, after having researched past RfAs which took place after the policy change found in UotM, I did not find a single example of someone being denied a vote due to lack of mainspace edits and to the contrary, found examples such as this one (that took place six months after the UotM rule was initiated) where someone with less than 50 mainspace edits was challenged but ultimately allowed to participate in the disucssion. So as of right now the reality is that de jure and de facto, the only place where one must have a minimum of 50 edits is UotM. Despite this, we have some users and at least one administrator who believe that this policy should or is extended to other areas. And so I have created this discussion so that we may finally clarify and crystallize the rules.0 Let me clarify now that this discussion does not include UotM since the rules was already publically discussed and had been developped exclusively for that area and additionally, the 50 edit requirement in a situation where only support votes are allowed and no negative vote can be expressed makes sense. So now as to who may participate.

So who should be allowed to participate in these discussions? I'd like to start off by reminding everyone that these requests for admin, for an article of the month even the vote for deletion is not simply a question of getting a democratic majority but of a general consensus formed between those people participating so though while 60% of the people may think an article should be deleted and 40% think it should be kept, they can come to a concensus of a merger. As a corollary, in a situation where 70% of the people voice a support opinion without cause and 30% of the people state that they oppose but provide then first and foremost, there is an evident lack of consensus and second, it is not the vote that matters but the argument behind it and so a strong, reasoned and persuasive minority vote will determine the end result over a weak and generic majority vote. We don't bring votes here, we bring arguments and no argument should be nfor reasons that go beyond the breadth of the argument itself. So if a new user or an anonymous IP or an administrator or a bureaucrat gives a unique position or a good idea either in support of a position or person, in opposition or to form a consensus, their voice should not be nullifed and striken out simply due to the mistrust of others. This is probably why there is no rules banning them and why we should explicitly state that yes they can participate. To buttress this, I'd like to quote other official policies.

First of all, we find these truths to be self-evident, that all editors are created equal: "Editors come in all shapes, sizes and powers; from the bureaucrat, to the admin, to the standard editor, to the unlogged IP address. It's also possible that although you do not know it, the editor you're talking to is a player moderator, forum moderator or even a Jagex staff member. In addition, a member may have very high levels in some skills, and specializes in them a lot. An editor's status, popularity, attitude, demeanor, or in-game experience may influence the way we think about them. However, there is no person on this wiki that has more authority than another, no matter what, because all editors are equal."

A good contribution is a good contribution, a good idea is a good idea and so if someone gives a good reason why an article should be deleted or a person shouldn't be an administrator, their "title" should be irrelevant. I also know that a concern of some people would be sockpuppets. Well first, I would say that all editors must assume good faith in others: "Assume that when an editor makes an edit, it was to help the wiki, not to vandalize it. Since anyone can edit, we must assume that most people who work on the wiki are trying to help it, not hurt it. If you are positive someone made an unconstructive edit, then feel free to correct it." Remember, we aren't really "voting" since the majority will not automatically mean that something passes or fails. If there is reason to believe that an editor may be a sockpuppet such as being the single edit of an IP or having come back after two months of nothing to vote, then you can note that in subscript without striking out their comment and if the proof is incontrovertible, then it may be removed. Regardless, ideas are what reign in these fora and if you provide a good idea to support your position and indicate that a particular person or persons parrot someone else or don't even provide any reason, then in the forming of a final concensal agreement, they would not have any particular influence.

Finally, let's remember what the Runescape community is not:

"a democracy: Community decisions are based upon consensus, not polling. When contributing to a discussion, an argument should be given for your point of view, instead of simply voting. Others will then respond to your argument, and eventually a consensus should be reached one way or another. Once all arguments have been made and responded to, the discussion may be closed by an administrator or bureaucrat, regardless of the time elapsed since the nomination. Closing administrators are given limited discretion in determining whether a consensus has been reached in a discussion. If you feel that the decision made was poor or did not reflect consensus, you can appeal the decision on the closer's talk page, or at another community process. Decisions should never be made simply on the basis of majority vote."

"a bureaucracy: Wikis are not intended to be run by a cabal of administrators, or for that matter, experienced editors. Policies and guidelines should achieve a consensus before they come into effect, and should be written down in project space for all to see. They should be designed to improve the wiki, but can be ignored in cases when they are not accomplishing this task. All users should be able to participate in the development of policies, and in other discussions.  There is no power structure of any sort. Administrators are not "higher" than regular users in any way, other than having access to administrator tools. Likewise, bureaucrats are not higher than administrators, except again that they have access to bureaucrat tools. All editors are equal. "

Our policies say so, the spirit of Wikia asks so and so far this place has shown so: all editors are equal, there is no hierarchy and everyone should be able to participate in discussions. Let's make this clear to all.-- 23:38, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

Support the idea of allowing newer users to vote - Ok, first off, that was one of the longests posts I've ever seen on the Wiki or on the Wiki forums. Second, isn't the same thing happening in the U.S. with voter ID cards? Third, it's "we hold these truths..." not "we find...". Anyways, to get back on topic I'd like to back up what you said earlier in your post. Indeed, since many people say that we are not a democracy and that we aren't actually "voting", I find it very interesting that some of the same people are trying to limit who can vote. Like you said earlier, if we really aren't voting then what difference would a sock puppet make? If someone just comes in and says "support - so and so is my friend irl" and that person joined yesterday and has 2 edits, it doesn't really matter since it's a consensus. If their "vote" doesn't contribute to the discussion or doesn't counter a previous arguement then it means nothing. If a new person who has been here one day and has 2 edits comes in and makes a wonderful point and supports it with links, their opinion SHOULD be considered, as it contributes to the discussion. I really don't think these "rules" are helping the Wiki at all... 00:06, 4 May 2008 (UTC)
 * Ilyas, none of the supporters have listed ANY links to validate their argument. Because a large number are new and know nothing about why Chia would be be good, because they don't know the community at all. Christine 01:10, 4 May 2008 (UTC)
 * Support unrestricted voting. In any discussion where we get a load of spammy 'me-too' votes the closing admin can simply note that these were treated as such when writing up the summary. It would only be a problem if we counted votes and used majority rule, but since we look to consensus instead I don't really see it as an issue. Putting a restriction on voting would, however, prevent 'unqualified' editors from making positive contributions to the discussion and that is A Bad Thing. Pointy 00:34, 4 May 2008 (UTC)


 * I suggest an OBJECTION keyword to respond to comments which really should be taken with a grain of salt:
 * Example:
 * Support Endasil is my best friend, he would make a great sysop! Signed, SomeNoob
 * OBJECTION This user has only made 10 or so edits in the last year and clearly is voting in the interest of Endasil and not of the wiki. Signed, SomeDenizen
 * This would allow us to clearly mark points to which we take exception while not removing their intrinsic right to have said it.  14:44, 4 May 2008 (UTC)


 * @Ilyas: I think the reason Christine (whatever, I'll name names) is so adamant on clearly marking those votes is because the process is so dependent on one person: the presiding bureaucrat.  We know that Dtm will always look at the arguments, we trust him to do so, but what if an inactive 'crat stumbles upon the decision, sees all the supports and less opposes, and without really reading the whole discussion decides the result?  I think a few of us are kind of nervous that all of that would rely on one person's discretion (all the more reason to be very picky with choosing a new bureaucrat) and so we want to make certain things clear to any presiding 'crat.  That said, I agree with diberville, and to clarify my stance, I don't think we should be striking-through new users' comments.  It's not a vote, and so clearly inlining an objection or a comment to a Support/Oppose vote that doesn't have a shred of reasoning behind it is sufficient.   14:55, 4 May 2008 (UTC)


 * To Christine - But what does "assume good faith" mean? It means not to assume everything is bad and to at least give people a chance. We wouldn't be doing that if we put a ban on ALL new users would, in fact, NOT be assuming good faith. 15:36, 4 May 2008 (UTC)
 * To Endasil - All the more reason we need crats who are neutral and not on one side or the other. 15:41, 4 May 2008 (UTC)


 * Comment - I've been involved with two other fairly largish wiki communities (Wikibooks and Wikiversity), and the long-time precedent that has been invoked in those communities was in regards to not vote counts, but the quality of the argument being presented. This keeps out sock puppetry... which is from all appearances the reason you are trying to exclude new contributors.  Or am I mistaken about this? This shouldn't be an issue that "majority rules", but to look at intelligent discussions about the various issues that are raised.  In other words, a VfD discussion that has 25 votes in support that are mostly "Yeah, ugly page...needs to go", and one very well thought out and reasoned reply that demonstrates policies where it fits within the scope of the project and why such a page is desperately needed within the project.... I think the reasoned reply should outweigh all of the other essentially meaningless votes against.  In other words, improve the discussion, don't just count votes.  Or simply put, don't rely simply upon the vote totals. Along this line of thought, it is much more likely that a brand-new user could come up with a substantially coherent argument for one side of an argument... or perhaps even come up with a truly novel solution that might even resolve the issue in some way that all parties can agree upon.  I know this takes maturity and it is much easier to simply count votes.  But this attitude can help resolve issues without having to worry about such petty problems like how many edits one of the participants in the discussion has made or not made to represent how valuable their ideas are in the discussion.  --Robert Horning 17:02, 4 May 2008 (UTC)
 * That's what he's trying to say. 17:07, 4 May 2008 (UTC)
 * As a note, this no-voting precedent was made quite a while before RS:NOT, where RFA's were mostly decided by vote count, and the issue was raised when real-life friends of the nominee would vote. Since RS:NOT was made, and has been trying to move RFA's and the like into a consensus with disscussion instead of a voting booth, I think the precedent is redundant now (I feel I can safely say no one here wants to prevent IPs and new users from partaking in disscussion). Of course, we still have the issue of people going "Support - name", but that's a different issue entirely. =) 17:14, 4 May 2008 (UTC)
 * True, but now that it is a consensus, it would make no sense to deny new users the right to "vote", or really just add to the discussion. 17:46, 4 May 2008 (UTC)
 * Right, that's the point I was getting at.
 * And as I said in my somewhat sesquipedalian speech, so far the rules and actions of most people do follow this ideal but a small minority spuriously claim that only some may participate (as seen in the above linked discussion) and so that's why I created this— to explcitate, that is make abundantly clear, that everyone may participate and that an opinion, good or bad, can't be thrown out due to arbitrary non-existant rules that throw good faith and the Socratic nature of Wikia out the window.-- 17:53, 4 May 2008 (UTC)
 * I don't think anyone is saying that only some may participate...I think we all agree that a valid point is valid no matter who said it. But the problem is that most of the new people "voting" don't even have a point!  If I could think of the ideal (not saying it would be possible or practical) we would have a discussion where nobody really supported or opposed, but only said some valid premise with a link or two to prove its validity.  If we could get to that point, signing comments wouldn't even mean anything...either the premise would be true or it wouldn't, end of story.  00:18, 5 May 2008 (UTC)
 * I can tell you from discussions in IRC that at least two users are under the imprsession that IPs or new users are not allowed to participate in these discussions, valid point or not and that these are the rules despite all the contradictory evidence I showed them which is why I think it absolutely necessary to state that anyone can participate. As you can see in the discussion, one even restored the strikethrough "per policy" which doesn't exist anywhere but in the user's mind. And as an addendum in suport of your paragraph below this one, it is a sysop and crat's responsibility to look over a discussion to find a concensus or maintain the status quo in the case that one is not present; strikethroughs are unnecessary.  If one believes they are required for the closing admin, then it means one of two things: either the sysoping of the admin was a mistake or more probably, the strikethrougher does not assume good faith in the ability of the crat or sysop.  In either case, the person contributing to the discussion should not be punished because of the shortcomings showcased in others.-- 00:50, 5 May 2008 (UTC)


 * Anyway, at this point, I think we all agree that this wiki is NOT a democracy, and therefore newbie votes don't really have a theoretical affect. The only argument I've seen to strikethrough such votes is that it provides a visible note to any presiding 'crat or sysop.  But, I think I've demonstrated we can achieve the same thing by objecting or adding comments to an invalid point, a sheep vote, etc.  So is there any other reason that justifies removing a new user's intrinsic right to participate in these vital wiki discussions?   00:18, 5 May 2008 (UTC)
 * Agreed. I'm not sure about using the word "objection" though - it's a bit over-formal and it's kind of confrontational as well. I think "comment" is more appropriate, and it avoids adding new 'special words' to the process. Pointy 00:34, 5 May 2008 (UTC)


 * I think you've contradicted yourself here Endasil. Yeah, this isn't a democracy in the sense that we don't have to strictly count votes.  But what is being suggested here is that new users do in fact have a voice... based on the quality of their argument.  I know this is a bit much to ask from a bunch of fans of a game that is admittedly strongly biased toward the teen-age demographics (and asserted to be largely a pre-teen game by some harsh critics.... I don't want to flame this point any more), but maturity and an air of compromise is something that needs to be made in order to let the whole wiki concept work.  Writing a massive document (you can call this wiki to be a player's handbook for Runescape) collaboratively is a very difficult task and can push differences to the front if you let them.


 * For myself, I find strikethroughs to be offensive and a deliberate attempt to squelch a conversation. If a decision has to be made and action taken (presumably by an administrator), the person taking the action can be expected to be intelligent enough to be able to discount votes on their own.  Let the words written stand on their own.  There are exceptions to this concept, but that should be an exception rather than the rule.  --Robert Horning 12:37, 5 May 2008 (UTC)
 * Sorry, where did I contradict myself? I've said that we're not a democracy, and that everyone should have the right to speak their piece.  I've said that strikethroughs tend to remove a user's right to speech and that instead we should be simply responding to comments with no weight (Support Endasil he's my cousin) with deliberate rebuttals.  If you're confused about the way I used "newbie vote", I meant that specifically to refer to the type of voting that's been happening on Chia's RFB--that is, a vote by a functionally inactive user with no useful argument--NOT to mean any comment left by a newbie.  So, if that's not what you think is contradictory, please tell me what was.   21:42, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

Though I expect this conversation to continue, based on the pre-existing rules, everything said here and on parts six, seven and eight of RuneScape:Gaming_the_system, I am immediately removing the strikes from the RfB since they are effectively currently breaking the rules and gaming the system right now even if we all immediately change out position on this issue. If you see anyone restoring the strikes, please revert and inform them of their mistake.-- 21:27, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

Asking for clarification The heading of this topic is clear in stating that AOTMs are part of what we are talking about, the discussion appears to have been predominately about RFAs and RFBs. I agree wholeheartedy that all should be allowed to participate in those discussions. But I also think that for AOTM the 50 minimum edits needed should remain for a vote to be cast.--24.195.240.91 18:35, 20 May 2008 (UTC)
 * To somewhat reiterate what I said above and what I noted in the AotM, the insertion of the "50 edits" in AotM was done by one person unilaterally by copying and pasting the rules from UotM without any discussion a long while ago and since we can support or oppose in AotM and not UotM, like RfAs, RfBs and VfDs, raw votes of support will not be the ultimate deciding factor when selecting the article. Moreover, you are an Anon IP; why should I deny you your right to voice your opinion in support or opposition of an aritcle simply because you did not create an account?  Does that somehow undercut the quality of your argument or make your opinion worth less than mine?  Does that seem right to you, especially considering the cornerstones of Wikia being the assumption of good faith and the equality of all editors?-- 01:36, 21 May 2008 (UTC)
 * To stop sock puppets is the only reason I think we need the edit count. If someone with less than 50 wants to comment or discuss I do not say they can't have a valid arguement. I would just hate to see someone making a bunch of accounts just to get "their" article as AOTM.--24.195.240.91 01:45, 21 May 2008 (UTC)
 * Well as has been noted several times above, it is the responsibility of the closing admin or crat to look not at the number of supports or opposes but at the quality or even the existence of the argument made. Also, if one AnonIP's single edit is a vote of support for someone's article or request for adminship, this would raise dubious questions as to the true nature of that particular AnonIP and others may raise the point that the voice of support or opposition is the first and only thing ever stated.  If one dozen virgin AnonIPs happen to vote one way or another with no new substantive reason of why they voiced their opinion in such a way, these votes would be subsequentally ignored in the admin or crats search of a concensus.-- 02:10, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

There have been some recent things that took my eye with Skill's RFB that I want to address. This has to do with some people assuming that the fruit of this discussion was that vandals or sockpuppets could vote. In my opinion, this discussion has agreed that because we are not voting per se, any member of the community should be allowed to voice their opinion. I do not see, however, where this should have any effect on the rights of a banned member. There are numerous problems with allowing input from banned users, these being two: I think the bigger problem is coming from a misconception that some of you have with consensus. I believe some people think along these lines: "well, because we need consensus, everything is objective, and so only the argument matters, not who said it."" This is completely wrong!!!  Consensus is in NO WAY objective, it is still, and should be, completely subjective!  The role of argumentation in consensus decisions is to sway the opinion of dissenters when dissension occurs, however, it is perfectly possible for everyone to be at a valid consensus with no arguments given.  When you're on a board of directors, and you have a consensus vote, you don't think they go around the table and make everyone justify their opinion, do you?  No!  it's only when they're at an impasse that arguments or debates are needed. Before replying to me, please read this: Consensus.  13:33, 1 June 2008 (UTC)
 * We are saying that it is perfectly acceptable for a user to create sockpuppets when they're banned to continue to try and be part of the community. I don't see any way that we should be allowing this.
 * Our decisions are made out of consensus, but consensus is about a general agreement between the members. Just like a shareholder from HSBC shouldn't be able to vote in consensus decisions in shareholder meetings at Citibank, neither should vandals (who are no longer part of the community) be able to voice their opinion on decisions which affect the community which they are no longer part of.
 * In regards to your first point, I agree and part of that is my fault. I was in a bit of a rush and trying to do my daily patrols as quickly as possible so while going through the dozens tabs I had open, I saw a strike and removed it.  The next day when I went back, I saw the person was another sockpuppet of a banned vandal, fortunately, someone had already restriked the vote but others may have seen my edit reason and believed then that even users who attempt to be detrimental to our community can also participate in it.  As to your second point, I'm not sure I understand.  Are you saying that you think that the argument doesn't matter as much as who said it?  Because though I agree with your larger point about not needing an argument or having to make sure everyone is in agreement for the right reasons if there's already a natural consensus but it is of paramount importance that when there is an impasse, the final consensus gets reached because of the more well-reasoned and persuasive arguments, not because "the important people" made them.-- 16:13, 1 June 2008 (UTC)


 * No, take what I said for what you called the "larger point." My point is that consensus is not the same as a courtroom, and we are treating it like it is.  We don't just form an argument, provide evidence, etc, and then let the judge/jury (a bureaucrat/sysop) make the decision based on the argument.  Consensus is still subjective, in that you can have consensus if everyone agrees the same way.


 * If you put 12 Republicans in a room and tried to reach a consensus on the future of public health care, you could probably reach consensus without an enormous debate, whereas if you put 6 Republicans and 6 Democrats into the same room, some argument would be bound to take place before a consensus were reached. This is because Republicans are typically inclined to think in the same direction.  They are subjectively similar.


 * So consensus is still dependent on who the people in the community are, and what their opinions are. Consensus can be reached without an argument, but argumentation will often be needed to reach consensus.  What this means for us is this:


 * A vote from a banned user cannot keep us from reaching consensus. The community's consensus does not require the consent of someone who is not part of the community.   17:15, 1 June 2008 (UTC)


 * Right, so... do you have a worry that people will argue to convince the closing admin rather than the community at large or is it something else? If so, I'm missing the sticking point you have.-- 17:37, 1 June 2008 (UTC)
 * My original post was meant to get across two points:

17:41, 1 June 2008 (UTC)
 * 1) It's a misconception that consensus requires argumentation.
 * 2) Only members of the community may participate in discussions requiring community consensus. Thus, block evaders may not participate in community consensus discussions, because a "no" vote would imply the consensus hasn't yet been reached, when in fact within the community proper, it has.
 * I see and I agree. We have achieved consensus!-- 17:56, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

Drop table/Input and consensus NEEDED
Because I do not want an edit war or something (or to get blocked) I say we need a discussion regarding a drop table. A drop table would have the average number of charms someone could expect to get by killing 100 of any of the listed creatures. This is not the same as a drop log because its' numbers will be based on the experiences of 2 or more people. More whenever possible. When the table was up I referred many people ingame to it and it was greatly appreciated by them. I further state that the table should stay based upon RS:IAR for any who would like to argue that it violates a rule. People, we need a consensus on whether it should happen. Please input.--Degenret01 02:11, 6 May 2008 (UTC)


 * I know I am new as a registered user, but I have used this wiki for about 6 months now. So I am not a total noob. (Just a minor one). I am not sure that the table can be called a lot different than a drop log (isn't it like a SUMMARY drop log?) but the point regarding RS:IAR looks very valid. Even the statements of Butterman seem to suggest he would have not done so had he been aware of that. But shouldn't this be on Yew grove to get consensus? --Varthlokkur 03:25, 6 May 2008 (UTC)
 * Not really Yew Grove appropriate. It's only affecting one page, and IMHO that should stay on this talk page. However, as to the drop log point, as far as I'm concerned, it IS a drop log. As far as I'm concerned, it DOES help the article. I'd rather a list like that then a T/F thing over which monster drops charms. Although, I'd prefer more than just 2 people killing 100 monsters each. So we'll need to work on that. =P Add at least 5, and probably at least 500 monsters, averaged out to be charms per 100. 04:39, 6 May 2008 (UTC)


 * Degenret has a point with RS:IAR. I also told him on his talk page that I disagreed with the RS:SG policy, and that we could attempt to change it (I've initiated a policy change before, specifically RS:AEAE). And to be honest, I didn't know this policy existed on the RuneScape wiki before (but I've seen it on Wikipedia). Also, I realize the table's potential benefit to the wiki. However, also, it could also cause a lot of problems. For example, let's say a user did some testing, so he changes up the table a bit to say "20 gold charms" for so and so instead of 15. Then, someone disagrees, he says it's 10. Then another person does it, and he gets lucky and says it's 40. And on and on and on. However, the table could help and as everyone says, "anyone can edit" and "if you don't want your contributions to be mercilessly edited, then don't submit them". So, maybe it wouldn't be a problem, but then who knows.
 * Also, to another point, I think this should be on the yew grove, because maybe it's only affecting one page now, but it might will affect more later. Some day, someone will come along and try to do the same thing for, say, abyssal whip drop rate from abyssal demon. Then someone changes the rate, and someone disagrees with that rate, and someone disagrees with the table altogether, and here we go again. [[Image:Bloodbarrage.png|20px]] Butterman62 (talk) [[Image:Icebarrage.png|20px]] 21:23, 6 May 2008 (UTC)


 * Oh, and Varthlokkur, your opinion is valued just as much as everyone else's. All editors are equal. [[Image:Bloodbarrage.png|20px]] Butterman62 (talk) [[Image:Icebarrage.png|20px]] 21:24, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

Since this is a Yew Grove topic because we are talking about changing board wide policy, I'm going to move it over there so to those who wish to add their two cents, please go here: RuneScape:Yew_grove.-- 21:31, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

Yet another skin thread

 * See RuneScape_talk:Theme

Recent changes refreshes automatically
Hey guys. I've put some code in MediaWiki:Common.js from WoW Wiki that allows the recent changes to refresh automatically every 60 seconds. All you have to do is go to the recent changes page and select the "AJAX" box at the top of the page beside the header (it might take awhile to load). It's useful if you want to keep a window/tab open to the recent changes to patrol the wiki without having to refresh it all the time. It works in Firefox and Internet Explorer 7, though you must be logged in to see use it.--Richard 00:25, 10 May 2008 (UTC)
 * Hey, how come the admins don't turn green, and staff turn gold, etc? That's what it's supposed to do, but I've never seen it. 00:31, 10 May 2008 (UTC)
 * It might be your browser. I see the colours in Firefox and IE7.--Richard 00:35, 10 May 2008 (UTC)
 * My browser? Can I do anything to fix it? 00:59, 10 May 2008 (UTC)
 * I don't see any colors for user rights groups either, but yet I'm using IE6. Gotta get that updated soon. [[Image:Bloodbarrage.png|20px]] Butterman62 (talk) [[Image:Icebarrage.png|20px]] 18:26, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

When is an edit minor ?
Hi. I'm a pretty new member here on the wiki and am trying to feel my way around without messing anything up. I was looking at RuneScape:Requests_for_adminship/Nq2h and got to wondering, when does this button get checked? For punctuation? Ok. Fixing 1 or 2 spelling errors? Ok. Rewriting 2 or 3 sentences so they make more sense? Maybe not. So I was looking at Edit help and Style guide and couldn't find any information on it. So I asked User_talk:Robert_Horning about it because I saw he knows a lot about the wikis. And he tells me there is no policy so go ahead and start a proposal here to get one. I don't know about all the different edit types yet so I am hoping experienced users can come up with some ideas.
 * For me, I mark edits as minor if it's a small thing, like fixing a few typos, punctuation (as you said above), a link, a redirect, bolding a title, one of those small things. There's really no standard median among users. It varies for everyone. 04:47, 12 May 2008 (UTC)
 * All my edits are marked as minor automatically by wikia, and I don't think a policy makes any sense. It's too easy to forget to check the box, or uncheck the box for those who use it automatically, and what are we supposed to do, punish those who forget...? I don't think a policy is even needed or sensible. Christine 22:02, 12 May 2008 (UTC)
 * I've seen you mark a lot of major things minor, like signing talk pages, and adding a section to an article? Why? 01:25, 13 May 2008 (UTC)
 * Christine, you can change that in your preferences. Under the "editing" tab, there is a selection for "Mark all edits minor by default".  Just make sure that's unchecked.  It's usually off by default, but maybe you checked it by accident some time :) - sannse (talk) 09:39, 13 May 2008 (UTC)
 * I want it like that, sannse.. =\ Christine 02:07, 15 May 2008 (UTC)
 * My rule of thumb is, if I'm adding, removing or altering content, that is, if after my edit the information found on the page is different from what it was before, it's a major edit. Anything else, such as the stuff Chia enumerated, I consider minor.-- 01:21, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

The main issue I have about the "concern" over if an edit is minor or not is how it may be perceived in terms of discussions for adminship (what started this whole conversation) or if a user may be considered a "difficult user". I do agree that some nefarious users can take advantage of the situation where most people consider a minor edit to be something to avoid reviewing when pressed for time in either doing a recent changes patrol or looking at their watchlist. It can be an indication for if somebody is being systematically damaging to the project or not. In a broad sense as well, you can gauge the use (or lack thereof) of the minor edit flag to determine how seasoned the editor is in terms of how they apply the flag on what they edit.

But at the same time, don't think this is an issue that should even be raised at all in terms of granting administrator rights. The minor edit flag is a very deep and personal issue, and something that varies considerably from one user to another. While it may be an indicator of problems, it certainly shouldn't be used ever as the "prime" evidence that somebody isn't fit to become an administrator or to get their account blocked. Furthermore, I would consider it to be very rude behavior to be highly critical of another user's pattern of using the flag if otherwise they are making useful contributions to the wiki.

I support continued discussion about what constitutes a minor edit or not, and that is something that certainly would be useful to the newer wiki users among us. Heck, I would like to learn a little bit more about what others do with this flag. But I rank its use as something akin to somebody using the spelling for the word "color" or "colour" and should be treated the same. --Robert Horning 12:42, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

I use the minor checkbox for, like Diberville said, pretty much anything which does not change the information contained in an article, and for which I would not want to waste the time to be peer reviewed. An exception to this is that I will mark heavy restructuring as major (drastically changing the organization of a page, etc). I will use the minor flag if it's simple rewording without changing content.

I'm against the idea of using minor as a default, because one of the main uses of the minor flag is to filter out what you want to see on recent changes or your watch list. For this reason, I think we should always err on the side of calling a minor edit major, rather than the other way around. It's better for another editor to check a "major" edit on their watchlist, only to find out that it's a spelling correction, than have another editor avoid checking a "minor" edit on their watchlist (because it's marked as minor), and perhaps let a factual inaccuracy slip by.

I do think we should have a note of this in the Style guide or something, just for new editors and consistency. I don't think it's something that should be rigidly enforced, however. It wouldn't be there for the sake of being a rule, but rather as a guideline for curious new users. 17:35, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

Special:Userrights
If a b'crat wants to make a user an admin or give rollback, the new special page Special:Userrights should be used. This page incorporates Special:Makesysop and Special:Giverollback (which no longer works anyway), so it is still possible to give users rollback rights.--Richard 16:45, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

editing help anoying!
Every time I'm trying to edit something some stupid window pops up giving suggestions this is very annoying cause i cant close it so i have to click a suggestion and then remover it from the text!--j-g 14:27, 17 May 2008 (UTC)

I've found how you can turn it of now but its very complicated to turn it off this should be made easier!--j-g 14:31, 17 May 2008 (UTC)


 * I also found this annoying and turned it off in my preferences. To anyone else out there that doesn't like this feature and can't find where to turn it off, you go to Preferences -> Editing -> Enable similar articles suggestions, and uncheck that box. Other than that, I think it's a general Wikia feature and not something the admins at this particular wiki have any control over. 18:14, 17 May 2008 (UTC)


 * If you want to turn off either the tips or link suggest (or both), go to your preferences, click on the "Editing" tab, and check the boxes "Do not show editing tips" and "Do not show link suggest". They should then go away; I've turned them off and they haven't appeared again.--Richard 22:10, 17 May 2008 (UTC)

While it's true that this feature is absurdly glitchy, and should have undergone testing before being integrated, you can dismiss the dialog by hitting the Escape key on your keyboard. 22:28, 29 May 2008 (UTC)

"zomg it's not perfect"
Take a look at the deletion log. http://runescape.wikia.com/index.php?title=Special%3ALog&type=delete&user=&page=

While a good portion of image deletions are to remove personal images, one type of deletion keeps standing out: "Low quality image". I've seen images that were serviceable--not perfect, not terrible--but were deleted anyway.

Our expectations for images are way too high; when a new editor's work is deleted, generally scares them away from from contributing here, anyhow. I can understand an uber compressed 50x50 screenshot being deleted. On the other hand, taking out images because they are JPEGs or not "cropped"/edited 100% to RSW "standards" is unacceptable.

Thoughts?


 * These "low quality images", were they actually in use in an article and adding to the article? And are the replaced before they are deleted? I think if the pic is decent enough AND the only one we have of something, then it should stay. Where are the criteria set for what is high or low enough quality? Is this a personal judgement done by each sysop on thier own? --Degenret01 02:03, 21 May 2008 (UTC)
 * Nothing in RuneScape:Images_and_media_policy addresses those questions.
 * I agree, all images, no matter what quality, should be kept until a replacement can be found. 01:48, 28 May 2008 (UTC)
 * Speaking of which, I've had some of my uploaded images deleted for no reason whatsoever. For example, a while back, I uploaded pictures of the blessed d'hide components. Chaoticar put them under speedy delete, my pictures were removed and he uploaded his own versions! The same thing happened more recently with Kytti Khat when I put up a picture of the updated Summoning and Smithing level up message pictures. Look on the history of Summoning and Smithing for proof! None of those pictures had any problems but were taken out and deleted anyway. -.- 01:35, 1 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Sometimes this has to do with making images transparent (Kytti khat explained this in both edit histories, if you look). Users on Monobook or a white-background skin often won't notice that an image has a white background, but those of us who have an off-white background sure do.  Often times we'll simply take the white-background image, download it, photoshop the background out, and reupload it under the same name.  In the case of Smithing and Summoning, the old ones were deleted--instead of being reuploaded to the same article space--to be consistent across all skills (Anvil Updated.png vs Smithing detail.png)   11:58, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

This topic has been up for a bit and not generated enough discussion. In the cases referred to by Arias Knight, I see it very easy for people to get annoyed or their feeling hurt and then edit wars erupting over versions of images. (I am NOT saying Arias would, just saying those are the types of cases that could cause it). I believe we should generate a policy stating if the current image suits the needs, then a different version should not be uploaded. With certain exceptions. Such as, if we are switching to the new skill icons, then all should be updated. (although this particular case could have it's own particular discussion, as the old icons are still used on the display, and the new icon only comes up when its clicked on. So which to use?)--Degenret01 02:48, 2 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Just to add my two cents worth: Is a policy on the matter really needed? The only reason (as Endasil pointed out above) that an image would usually be replaced is for a transparency issue or because the file is out-of-date, both of which are perfectly legit and shouldn't be a problem. If, on the other hand, the file is replaced with one of equal quality, I still don't think there is any reason to worry. It has the same overall result. The only reason I could see for the need to curb this would be if someone (for some reason) was doing this excessively, and I think that in that case a simple talk page message should be enough to sort it out.  12:25, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

Thats all good enough as far as it goes, but we havn't addressed the original question. I got away from it too. Regarding in use images the do NOT get replaced and are just deleted. Ok, C Teng didn't get away from it. So what's to stop a sysop from just deleting images they feel are not good enough even when they are in use? And there is not a current replacement? So we prob do not need a policy, a general guideline would be fine.--Degenret01 13:38, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

Other languages
Here, the community decided to add a set of links to the sidebar for our sister wikis. For convenience, the default setting of the links would be collapsed. However, I don't think it works as well as it sounded. The MonoBook skin's sidebar takes a few seconds to collapse, which blocks the search bar. The Quartz skin's sidebar cannot be collapsed, and takes too much space. I did vote for the sister wikis links, but I didn't think it would be like this. I now think that having a link to sister wikis is pointless. It is simple to just go to the Main Page and click the link there. Instead of links linking to the Main Pages of other wikis, we could have an "other languages" table, like from Wikipedia. Clicking on the links there would take you to the same article on a wiki with a different language. To do this, all you have to do is put language letters:article on the page. For example, if there were a "Yew Grove" on the Spanish RuneScape Wiki, you would put, .The only page on the wiki that uses this is the Main Page. But I think that if there were links all over the wiki for this, it would be a lot better than the "sister wikis" link we have now. 01:47, 28 May 2008 (UTC)
 * I also dislike the collapable sidebars. A lot of wikis use the article linking for different languages and it gets positive responses. I think it would be a good idea. You should also tell the other language wikis about the idea so they can link to the english RS Wiki (here). It might get a bit tedious though. Cheers, [[Image:Kandarincrest.gif|25px]] Chicken7  >talk>sign 09:03, 29 May 2008 (UTC)
 * I'm starting to add the languages to articles. Anyone else, please help. If we get enough language links on enough articles, maybe the sister wikis links can come off. 20:50, 2 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Right now, I'm mostly working on Dutch. I've cleared out Portuguese and Bulgarian, but I can't figure out Taiwanese or German; they're in different languages. Could someone work on another language while I finish Dutch? Better yet, the whole community could just do an article and have the whole thing done. 23:43, 7 June 2008 (UTC)
 * I don't understand...if other language wikis want to reference their language from ours, shouldn't it be their responsibility? Why don't we just go to the other wikis and say, "feel free to link our pages to yours if you have a substitute for your language?"  I don't think we need to be working too hard to send people away from our site.   00:07, 8 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Good point. One of the reasons I want to do this is to get rid of the set of links, because of its problems. But I guess we could also start linking to our site from the other wikis. 02:05, 8 June 2008 (UTC)

"Ask the community" page
I'd like to set up a community page that would be a question/answer type page (or even eventually a series of pages) with one fundamental rule:

No question is too stupid or out of place to ask... especially if it is related somehow to Runescape.

Eventually I'd like to turn this into a sort of FAQ page for questions about the game where they may even be sorted into questions about different skills or perhaps other kinds of categorization. The goal here is that a new player can check out to see if a similar question has been asked before, and to use the wiki interface to help sort through these FAQs. *NOTE* this is not a forum in the traditional sense, but rather a way that new players can ask a question in a non-threating environment.

Those of us who have been playing the game for a couple years or more can (hopefully) come up with a sound answer to the questions.

I'm thinking something like "Who is Andrew Gower?" or "What is the little cross swords that I see on the bottom right side of the screen?" (The multi-combat indicator, FYI)

Why I'm posting here is that I'm trying to come up with a good name for such a page. A few come to mind, but I'd like to find something as fitting as "Yew Grove" that captures the spirit of the game. "Lumbridge Tutor", "Noobs 'R' Us", or "Castle Chronicles" are some suggestions, but I'm fairly certain some better names for such a FAQ page could be suggested. Any ideas? --Robert Horning 04:05, 29 May 2008 (UTC)


 * Well, I constantly see the question "WTF is that?", but maybe it's not very appropriate lol. Noobs 'R' us sounds ok, or maybe "Help, I'm a noob". I'm sure in the end lots of people here will say noob is too negative, but I like it anyhow. I call myself a noob all the time. It's just a funny word to me.--Degenret01 06:08, 29 May 2008 (UTC)


 * Good idea. I remember it took me forever to figure out what those little cross swords meant and why some NPCs stopped attacking me after a while.  If you're looking for name suggestions, how about Mr. Mordaut's classroom?  I mean, the dragon is already smart enough to pick out the featured articles in here.-- 16:47, 29 May 2008 (UTC)


 * Summer School at Tutorial Island, maybe? (no offense meant, at all) Diber's works too... Hmm... or maybe "Adventurer's Training Grounds?" There's alot of name potential...


 * Regardless of what the name turns out to be, I like the idea. --Pikaandpi 17:12, 29 May 2008 (UTC)


 * Wise Old Men? :P Nah I don't have any good ideas for the name, but I do like the idea of the page.  Being probably the longest-playing player here, I could see myself being able to help out a bit with some answers, too.  I have a couple of comments.  First, I think that it's really important that this should be able to teach people how to search smartly for answers on the wiki.  Even if we're answering FAQs, the answer is probably somewhere on this Wiki, and by providing links to where that information is stored on an FAQ, we should be helping newbies better use this site.  Second, I think it's important to have a "post anything" page separate from an "FAQ" page.  Basically, we should have a mechanism for "promoting" a question to a (or the) FAQ page.  22:13, 29 May 2008 (UTC)

Would this sort of be like the Wikipedia Reference Desk? If I understand this right I think it's a good idea. I would like to consider having it in the forums, since that's where a lot of RuneScape-based questions, and it would help reduce the number of one question threads that are answered and then fall to the bottom of the forums. 22:17, 29 May 2008 (UTC)


 * The reference desk is very close to what I was thinking about, but to also link it to a sort of FAQ list that would be built up over time based on the kinds of questions that would be asked. In other words, a genuine "Frequently asked questions" list.  I'm not against linking this into the forums as well, although it should be noted that the forum community and the wiki to seem to be different communities even if they are both hosted by wikia.  The overall goal here is to make it easier, not harder for somebody new to this community and website to ask a question.  If the forums can help with that overall goal, I'm 100% for it.  There will still be an article page that would help explain the forum and contain links to the FAQs.  If the user is more into wiki editing, I don't think that should be discouraged.  This doesn't have to be an either-or situation.


 * BTW, I completely agree with Endasil here in terms of linking to articles and encouraging answers that point to specific sub-sections. This could also help us out in terms of writing better articles, as occasionally I've even been a little bit puzzled by a particular quest or stumped about some game feature that simply wasn't clearly explained as well as it could have been.  Often those of us who are veterans forget some of the details of this game that we take for granted that are bewildering to new players... or we've adapted to the changes over time.  --Robert Horning 01:26, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

Quest guide policy
I want to add a supplement to our Style guide to dictate how guides (Quest mostly) should be written. There have been recent changes which I find particularly appalling from a readability/grammar standpoint.

My draft is found at User:Endasil/Quest style guide. Here's a few examples that summarize the article:

Bad: Slightly better (Bulleting): Slightly better (2nd person): Better (Imperative):
 * Reldo is located in the Varrock Library. The player should talk to him.  Reldo will warn the player that Manbearpig is about to attack!
 * The player should talk to Reldo. He is located in the Varrock Library.  Reldo will warn the player that Manbearpig is about to attack!
 * You should talk to Reldo. He is located in the Varrock Library.  Reldo will warn you that Manbearpig is about to attack!
 * Talk to Reldo, located in the Varrock Library. Reldo will warn you that Manbearpig is about to attack!

The main theme of the guidelines are that, even though we are an encyclopedia, we are also a player manual. That means that some articles will not be encyclopedic in nature, but rather manual-like in nature. All these changes from "you" to "the player" are not written with a user in mind. You wouldn't write a manual to assemble an Ikea chair, saying "The customer should now screw in screw D9 into hole A7," would you? Comments please, there's been enough edits that I've wanted to undo recently due to bad style, but we don't have a very good style guide for this. 23:32, 2 June 2008 (UTC)
 * You're right, it is a lot better that way. I've noticed that users sometimes change to what you say is good to what is bad. I say add it to the Style Guide. 23:43, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

In the imperative sentence can't you just totally remove the word "you" in this case? to say "Reldo will warn that Manbearpig is about to attack!" I think it works well, but I haven't taken an english class in....ummm, omg, like 20 years lol.--Degenret01 00:01, 3 June 2008 (UTC)


 * I've seen some articles that simple replace the word "you" with the words "the player", and it sounds awful when I'm reading through the article after such a revision. In fact, the earlier indefinite article works much better.  BTW, I do agree that a better style guide can help, but it isn't quite so easy as a cut and paste, but rather requires some serious editorial skills and command of the English language.  For example with the above sentence:


 * Speak to Reldo, who is located in the Varrock Library. Reldo warns that Manbearpig is ready for an attack!


 * I'm not even saying this is perfect, but it does away with the "you" or "The Player" and allows the sentence to flow better. I've noticed that in many places where "the player" is used, it should be a more indefinite article such as "a player" or "players" as well.  Modern English doesn't use a hard article such as "the" all that often, particularly compared to other germanic or for that matter even latin-derived languages.  --Robert Horning 06:18, 3 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Personally, the only time I've ever thought that saying something like "players" was acceptable was when it actually referenced players. Such as "players often find this boss difficult."  Give me a sentence where you ever use a singular player, and I'll make it better (IMO) without.  I think we should always use second person over "player".  12:27, 3 June 2008 (UTC)
 * I always wondered why there were so many different styles of writing. 1st person, 2nd person, 3rd person, etc.  I had been using 2nd person tone for editing articles, until I was told not to use the word "you".  Then, I started using the "3rd person" style ("the players should, they could, they may"), and the article got "undo-ed" for bad writing style.  Admins, can you guys make up your minds? LOL. I really like to clean-up articles.  Especially messy ones, like quest guides. I add sections, make them neater, etc. But at the same time, I editted the style: removing "you"s, and introducing "better" substitutes ("they", "the player", etc.) In my opinion, most articles should use the third person tone (i.e. NPCs, Monsters, Items). However, when it comes to Quest guides, I'm at a blank. Using third person tone make the guide seem more serious/professional/encyclopedic, but can be an eyesore. Using 2nd person tone, with "you" make it seem personal, and un-professional. I agree we're helping players with quest (by writing "manuals"), but we should distinguish ourselves from other fansites. After all, we are wikians. -- 14:22, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

My quick two cents: Aren't the things that are supposed to make us different from every other fansites are that 1) anyone can edit and 2) we're an encyclopedia? If we're an encyclopedia, shouldn't we use an encyclopedic tone, which at the very least requires the third person?-- 15:43, 3 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Well, it sounds better. We want to be the best encyclopedia for RuneScape, even if it's different from other encyclopedias. If you look on armour, there's even a tag that says it should be in the third person, which I think we all disagree with, too. 20:21, 3 June 2008 (UTC)
 * This was added to the Armour article by one user, and I disagree with it completely: "Strategies should be in 3rd person tone ("The player should...") instead of 2nd person tone ("You should..."), and should not sound commanding ("Do this/that...")". We have nowhere stated this as policy, and it should not be taken as such.  In fact, we recently featured Kennith's Concerns, which used only commanding tenses.  22:02, 3 June 2008 (UTC)
 * To Diberville: even if we strive to be an encyclopedia (which isn't necessary for a Wiki...just because Wikipedia is an encyclopedia doesn't mean Wikis are supposed to be), when we add guides or strategies, they are unencyclopedic by nature. There's the reason that Wikipedia has a policy against things written like a user manual...they aren't encyclopedic!  So we are already differentiating ourselves from an encyclopedia, in that we are more acting like a game manual with encyclopedic tendencies.  You have to ask yourself:  what is the virtue of writing quest guides like an encyclopedia entry?  If there is no virtue, by RuneScape:Ignore all rules, I say we write it in a way that is digestible for English speakers.  The whole idea of writing "The player" all over the place makes us look like illiterate fools.


 * I do have some experience in writing technical documentation. I'm in an engineering program.  Here's a document that backs me up: .  While almost everything in that document applies directly to our quest guides, there are a few paragraphs labelled "Writing style" which I'd like to quote directly.  The first and second paragraphs convey exactly what I'm trying to say.  The last paragraph seems to counter what Robert was suggesting.  Bolding was my addition, for effect.

22:02, 3 June 2008 (UTC)


 * I'll admit that I even "break" my own rules here. I got involved with writing Perils of Ice Mountain on the day the quest came out, and it was a sort of fun experience writing a quest guide when such a guide didn't already exist... and proof of where the power of a wiki can be over a more static website.


 * Most technical writing is incredibly dry and to be honest, is something seldom read by anybody in part because it is so dry and boring. As an engineer I was also a part of a successful proposal with my former employer to hire somebody with an English Literature degree and a strong basis in liberal arts to help write technical manuals, explicitly because most engineers don't even know how to write a good memo to their immediate supervisor much less to any customers.


 * In one case, just to see if anybody was even bothering to read the manual, we put in a postcard that even had a business reply mail postal mark (so they didn't even have to pay postage) and a promise of a $100 drawing if you sent the thing in. We got a flood of one post card out of about 3000 manuals that were sent out to customers (on $100,000+ products, which is why there was a relatively low volume).  Based on most phone calls I had to answer when doing technical support, I would say most people don't read the manuals even when they are comparatively well written.


 * More to the point here and going back to my experiences with writing the quest guide as I was playing it, a more informal style seems to be the natural way to write things. The quest guides certainly need to be something that others would want to read, and it should flow as if it is written from one friend trying to speak to another and help you through the quest.  The goal is that it should be read and not necessarily something to impress an English professor.  The real question then is how can the quest guides be improved to achieve this goal and not necessarily sound like a poorly written recipe for Apple pie.  I'm also more than willing to admit that I'm wrong here, as long as we can achieve this basic goal.  --Robert Horning 04:02, 4 June 2008 (UTC)


 * Regardless of the tone or style that should be used, whichever one we do use should be used uniformly throughout the Wiki for cohesion and uniformity. As long as it's not a "u should go up to McGrbrs wood l8tr to get red worms, lol" style, I'll be fine with it and I don't find that the quality diminshes or increases whether it be second person indicative or imperetive or third person using definite or indefinite articles.-- 13:14, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

Bland?
Another thing that bothers about our (or any other fansite's) quest guides is that it lacks details and sounds bland. It's sad to see that the guide's only goal is for players to complete the quest, not to enjoy and cherish the quest itself, and "live" through the quest. To me, everything seems robotic as I'm instructed to "Walk here... jump there.." just like a robot. Some quest guides I've come across even has talk options to choose from: "Choose this option when you talk to him:" Since we're given the answers to these options, we just obey them blindly, without even reading the conversation that takes place between the NPC and the character. I admit, I've done it myself. I always wondered what would happen if I chose differently, or if I took the other path. Even as a manual, we should include the "WHY", not just the "HOW". That's what makes an article complete. I found this walkthrough quite easy to read: Tomb Raider: Anniversary - Qualopec It provides the details, and has a nice flow to it. (I wonder what style is being used? Imperative, 2nd person or 3rd person?)

02:07, 9 June 2008 (UTC)

Copyrighted by Jagex Ltd.
We don't really have a policy on images directly from the RS site. Should we go about deleting these or does doing this not infringe? I've seen quite a few taken from the main site and I'm not sure what to do about it. Removing these pictures would be detrimental, but photos by users look better anyway. 21:05, 5 June 2008 (UTC)
 * To the best of my understanding, the use of screenshots etc. from in-game are treated exactly the same as any images found on the JaGeX site.


 * From this, I'm assuming that the use of any JaGeX material (which includes screen-shots and images from the website) "may not be used except for personal (non-commercial) use". Again, I'm assuming that as part of wikia we are non-commercial and therefore we are allowed to use any of the images on the site in addition to the images that come directly from in-game.
 * In regards to actually using website images, I agree that user-generated screen captures of items/places etc. in-game do often look much better. There are a few cases, however, when the knowledge base may provide a better image (although I can't think of any off the top of my head). In these cases, I don't think we should be making a policy to prevent ourselves from using them.
 * If I'm on the wrong track about the whole free-use deal, maybe it's our Copyrights policy or similar that is what we should be looking at expanding.
 * 05:35, 6 June 2008 (UTC)


 * The only problem with this sentiment is that the terms of the GNU Free Document License explicitly contradict the non-commercial nature of what you are trying to suggest here. While I will openly suggest that nobody that participates in developing the content of this wiki earns any body, there isn't anything that stops somebody from taking the content and publishing a for-profit printed manual that uses content from this wiki.  That is explicitly permitted by the GFDL.


 * Indeed, content added here that can be distributed via a non-commercial use only license is incompatible with the terms of this content license.


 * BTW, Wikia is far from a non-commercial enterprise, and in fact they are very much a for-profit entity that primarily earns their money from sidebar advertisements. Relying upon the non-commercial nature of Wikia isn't something that would hold up to close scrutiny in the long run, and could be potentially damaging to this wiki and community.


 * The relationship between this website and Jagex is a very interesting one, and at best the only real rationale for using the screenshots is what is called Fair-use doctrine under United States law... and interpreting this as broadly as possible in a fashion that normally wouldn't be permitted under UK law. I say all of this because on this website we very much go over the top on fair-use and can be largely considered a derivative work instead... deriving the content from a copyrighted work called the MMORPG game "Runescape".


 * Ideally it would be best if we, as a community, could get formal copyright permission from Jagex to use screenshots from the game to help illustrate the contents of this website. It certainly is very helpful and adds some flavor to what would be otherwise a rather bland set of webpages.  I'm not saying that any of the other wikia gameing wikis are any better or worse than we are, but this issue isn't nearly so cut and dried.


 * BTW, in all of this I'm not trying to suggest that we should go in some sort of administrative rampage and delete all of the images copied from the game via screenshots. All I'm suggesting is that the potential exists for Jagex to make a formal cease and desist request to Wikia under the terms of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.  If such a situation did occur, it is possible we would have to delete all of these images from this website and may even see this website temporarily (or even permanently) shut down.  A little forward thinking on the part of the participants to this website could avoid this potentially terrible situation.


 * I don't know the solution to this issue, and I don't even know if there is one that could avoid this potential legal bombshell. Screenshots by users or images copied directly from the Jagex web pages are irrelevant in this case, as both are potentially infringing on the copyright of the same company:  Jagex.  In-game screenshots potentially have more rationale in terms of fair-use, but it is a rather weak excuse.  This is certainly a situation that the participants of this website need to be very much made aware of, and mis-information like what is above needs to stop.  The information on this website can be used in a commercial manner, and indeed it is being used in a commercial nature even now.  BTW, I don't know how much "profit" Wikia makes each year, and I rather suspect it isn't all that much, but that is also irrelevant to this discussion.  --Robert Horning 10:08, 6 June 2008 (UTC)


 * I can't give legal advice of course, but maybe I can clarify a bit (for those that don't know, I'm part of Wikia's Community Team).


 * The text of this wiki must be under the GDFL, which explicitly allows commercial use. Wikia provides database dumps of the content, as part of our commitment to the GDFL and freely available content.  So that means that text needs to either be original, or taken from a source that's GDFL compatable (in most cases that also means attributed).


 * Images have always been considered separately, and "with permission", "fair use", "Creative Commons licensed" and other rationale are allowed. In fact, for a lot of fan-based wikis, the biggest rationale is "the game/show/whatever owners don't mind fans using this on a fan site, because it all promotes their work anyway".  That seems to be what JaGeX is saying in the quote above.


 * One important part of this is that this is your wiki. It belongs to the community, hosted by Wikia.  It's a similar situation to many free web-hosts, who show ads but may have non-profit groups using the space.  Of course... we do considerably more than a web-host.  And because we are hosting for a community rather than individuals, our conditions for hosting include social rules (no, you can't run amok and ban everyone, the Wikia Community Team will step in if that happens! ;).  But the situations are similar enough to make this all work.


 * So, use images fairly, label them with license or permission information to make it easy for everyone to know the situation, and don't worry about Wikia's (one day!) profits - they aren't the key to this :) Hope that helps! -- sannse (talk) 19:47, 6 June 2008 (UTC)
 * I wouldn't worry about it; none of the other fansites have been taken down over using Jagex's images.--Richard 20:31, 6 June 2008 (UTC)


 * My point was that this isn't a "non-commercial" or "non-profit" situation here. Some of the fan sites actually are, so comparing this situation for this wiki to what other fan sites are doing is irrelevant.  I will say, like I've said above, Jagex isn't prosecuting here or actively trying to enforce copyright.  As a matter of fact, this lack of enforcement is a positive thing... so far as Jagex will eventually lose copyright standing on these images over time.


 * I will say that the images on this website (Runescape Wikia) generally haven't had fair-use rationale established other than as a general site-wide status. In fact, when I've tried to upload free images to this wiki, I've had them deleted as not relevant to the game or the article in question.


 * BTW, in regards to the text of this website, it isn't nearly so big of a deal. Nearly everything I've seen is more or less original content, or legitimately quoting referenced passages from the game or some other Jagex publication.  I'm certainly not worried about that, but the issue with the images is a little bit more of a concern.  Also, the courts have been far less forgiving about allowing fair-use for non-textual copyrighted material... particular music and video but images have also been prosecuted.  All I'm trying to say is that this is a legal grey area, and something that some other websites... notably Wikipedia but also a few others... have legitimately been quite paranoid about.  --Robert Horning 01:43, 7 June 2008 (UTC)


 * Hmm, alright. It's given me a bit of food for thought. Maybe it's an area we (and by 'we' I mean someone who knows what they are talking about =D) could think about clarifying. As it stands the only thing I can find on the matter is
 * , which seems to contradict what's just been discussed. If we've established that in fact JaGeX doesn't seem to have a problem with us using screen captures and the like (which are pretty important for the Wiki), is there something that could be added to this 'guideline' that could clarify this and what our legal position would be when we do use these images? 02:12, 7 June 2008 (UTC)
 * My only concern is the new CEO of Jagex. He comes from a non-gamer background (he used to be a senior VP at Paypal Europe) and shows at least the potential of getting nasty with fan websites.  He has a lot on his plate, so I'm certain he isn't worried about what the fan websites are doing right now.  But he has hired lawyers to look after intellectual property rights, and has take steps for the new Mechscape game to keep current fan sites from using similar names when adapting to the new Jagex game (like Mechhq and a few different top level domains being owned by Jagex itself).  My point is that it is in his hands, or a corporate attorney for Jagex to go nuts and we may have to delete these images, as it is a sort of copyright violation.
 * My only concern is the new CEO of Jagex. He comes from a non-gamer background (he used to be a senior VP at Paypal Europe) and shows at least the potential of getting nasty with fan websites.  He has a lot on his plate, so I'm certain he isn't worried about what the fan websites are doing right now.  But he has hired lawyers to look after intellectual property rights, and has take steps for the new Mechscape game to keep current fan sites from using similar names when adapting to the new Jagex game (like Mechhq and a few different top level domains being owned by Jagex itself).  My point is that it is in his hands, or a corporate attorney for Jagex to go nuts and we may have to delete these images, as it is a sort of copyright violation.


 * I've also downloaded the official fan image package that Jagex has (it can be found on this link to the official website) and it is pretty limited. Mainly a bunch of ad panels and some logos to help with advertising Runescape.  This seems to be the extent of what Jagex is officially saying we can use.  As I said, I don't know a "solution" to fix this either, other than to carry on and hope Jagex doesn't really care.  There is a statue of limitations in the USA that requires active enforcement of the images, which means the older images which have been uploaded onto this server are grandfathered in.  It would be under American law (not UK law) that Jagex would have to request these images be removed, although that isn't completely clear either.  It is a grey area, and for now it seem unlikely that Jagex is going to make a big deal about it.  --Robert Horning 17:39, 8 June 2008 (UTC)

Win a trip to PAX
Hey guys. In case you didn't know, Wikia Gaming is sending two editors to Penny Arcade Expo (PAX) ! For all the details, see this page at Wikia Gaming.--Richard 17:39, 8 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Anyone on our wiki doing it? 05:50, 9 June 2008 (UTC)


 * Nope, they discriminate against non-USA citizens. Sagarmatha 18:17, 15 June 2008 (UTC)

Welcoming Committee
I've added a page that attempts to organize those of us who often welcome new users to the wiki. I also revamped the welcome template (which is visible on the Committee page) to be more user-friendly. Anyone who has  on their userpage should consider signing up- it's ridiculously easy. -- 18:43, 9 June 2008 (UTC)
 * I have my own template that I welcome users with, so I signed up. Is that ok, or do I have to use the "official welcome template"? I mean I've had my template before the welcome template came out and so I just decided to keep it..

I'm going to throw in 2 cents here and express a hope that those on the "committee" keep in mind that it is unofficial, and also keep in in mind that All editors are equal. Anyone who wants to welcome someone can do so. I am adding this just as a gentle reminder, not to start something.--Degenret01 16:12, 10 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Ilyas: Using the "official" template is just a suggestion, not an order. As Degen said, the committee is more or less an unofficial thing, and you won't get banz0red for using your own template. -- 21:04, 10 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Sounds like a great idea. I have two small suggestions, however. Firstly you might want to add a link to the welcoming committee in the Community Portal, it's a bit hard to find otherwise. Secondly, (this is a bit picky :-) ), I'm personally not too keen on the background colour for the new template. What does everyone else think about it? I'd prefer a green or a blue as opposed to aqua, maybe something that matches the standard skin, but that's only a personal opinion. Cheers, 09:30, 12 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Link is now added. As for the color, well, it's reeeal easy to change. The reason I picked light cyan was because I was aiming to make the template more friendly towards those who are being welcomed, and light cyan seemed to be a mellow, "We are professionals and will take care of you" color. If anyone has any better ideas, by all means, try them out. -- 15:32, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

Possible secondary blackout (server)
I noticed that this morning there was a server blackout but now, at about 4:00PM BST, all of RuneScape and FunOrb went offline.

Anyone got any more news about this?
 * Yes, it was called the Third server blackout of 2008. 12:42, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

A Message from Total Rune
Ok, I've been helping out around here, every so often, and I'd like to state for the record, that as per the above discussion about vandals, none were me. Plain and simple, I've been too busy with work to bother with you guys, not that I'd vandalize anyway; I've given that life up. I no longer want to be the guy everyone hates/the infamous legend/etc. I still to this day browse this wikia and whenever I see something being vandalized, or any personal images (a good example of personal images was earlier today, I used this IP to add deletion tags to several personal images), I tend to go and fix it.

Let's face it, I've had a troubled past. Despite that, I've managed to put that behind me, and continue to (discreetly) help out around here. I'm addicted to Wikipedia/Wikia. I love the way it works, and I'm looking into a way to incorporate MediaWiki into my website so I can do a biography/account log type page, logging all my accounts on forums, games, etc.

I've strayed away from my original reason for posting this. I'd like to formally apologize, once and for all, for everything I've done. I know I've apologized in the past and then strayed back to the dark side, so to speak, but I'll be honest. Blanko's been behind it. I've got him on my MSN and lately he's been coming on and prodding at me, trying to get me to back and vandalize again. Also, Totalicus Rune was not me, rather, it was some fool trying to pose as me.

I'd really love to rejoin this community, either under my previous moniker, Total Rune, or under a new one, but I feel some of our older, more seasoned members would still hold a grudge against me. Wowbagger, I want to apologize for being a jerk towards you as well, but to be fair, most of the time, you had it coming with your attitude and ego. I especially owe Christine an apology. ''Christine, I've lost a fair share of friends in the past, due to my actions, some being due to my drinking problem, which I am currently battling. Out of all the friends I've lost, I miss you the most. I apologize for talking Speckle into bugging you. That was wrong of me. I'd also like to apologize for many of the lewd, and rude things I've said to you. That's not me. That's not me at all...I'm not that kind of person.

RuneScape Wikia, I bid you good day. I have to work in the morning and I need some sleep. Total Rune04:07, 14 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Hi. I'm willing to give you a second chance; I can't speak for the rest of the community, however.
 * I'll be 100% honest with you guys. I really don't expect anyone to be forgiving towards me, after all the stupid sh..er...crap I pulled. My life was just in a rut and I was taking it out on those who aggravated me in the slightest. I'm trying to get my life back together. As of today I'm quitting smoking and I'm gonna cut back on my drinking as well. I'm trying to change my life for the better, and I wanted to start by apologizing to those who I aggravated for so long. 70.49.204.107 04:26, 14 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Is this serious? A second chance?  Please tell me I am dreaming.  This is a person who not only is a vandal, but a pest, and constant annoyance to this and many other wikis including the Oddssey wiki, that he started and then vandalized, Wikipedia, which he told everyone he was committing suicide, and then they (wikipedia) called the cops on him.  Do we really need to give him a second chance?  I am not be the person responsible for his well being if we let him back.  I think every ip he uses should be blocked.  [[Image:Drunk Dragon.PNG|Drunk dragon]]Cheers! Atlandy 14:47, 14 June 2008 (UTC)
 * I never knew you, Total Rune, but I'd be willing to give you one more chance. If you become a vandal again and ask for another chance later, you won't get one. 14:54, 14 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Comment Here is an exmaple of Total's contributions to wikipedia

(For those of you who dont know him) Cheers! Atlandy 15:04, 14 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Well, I know of him, who hasn't? I just mean I wasn't in the wiki then. 17:43, 14 June 2008 (UTC)
 * As for the suicidal threats, it would be best for Total to explain those actions before we make any judgments (I'm admittedly cautious myself).
 * I can and will explain those actions. Believe it or not, I was being e-stalked by an angry Wikipedia vandal. He followed me around to different sites I was a member of (my fault, I had them listed on my userpage). Finally, I did the only thing I could, which turned out to be the wrong thing and posted a fake suicide note to get him off my back. He made emails like tylerwarrenchugscock@yahoo.com, and others, which I had deleted. One day the police showed up at my door. I had to explain the situation to them. I gave them the guys IP address and they assured me they'd be watching him. I apologized for the note on a new account. I recently tried to appeal the perma-ban on Vampire Warrior however some people had some other opinions on that and I failed in my appeal. I'm finished with Wikipedia now, although I still make some IP-based edits to the Marineland (Ontario) article and about the rides at Marineland (I work there, so I can supply the article with info). I realize you're all wary about trusting me, but I've been reconciling with others recently. I was just re-accepted back into a suicidal help group on IMVU, and promoted to an officer (kinda like a sysop) by the groups owner. I want to change my image in your eyes from a no-good vandal to a trustworthy friend. I've made mistakes, we all have, and I regret each and every one of them. 70.49.204.107 19:36, 14 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Also, I'd ask that you take Atlandy's comments lightly as we have a bit of a grudge. As for the Odyssey Online Wiki, I DID NOT vandalize it to be a vandal. I actually play the game (www.odysseyclassic.com). I created the Wikia, and then upon advertising it to the people of Odyssey, I had nearly every player tell me that they didn't need a Wikia because a player already made a website chronicling everything. I didn't know how to delete the Wikia, so I started removing pages and blocking users. Angela took that as vandalizing and de-b'cratted me. I swear to god, I've told her 8 times to delete the wiki. For god sakes, that wiki hasn't been edited in nearly a year. She kept telling me "Someone will edit it" and all I have to say to her is "Where's your editors now?". See what happens when people don't listen to me, and just think the worst about me? The community of Ody (Odyssey) wanted the Wikia gone, I tried to do it but didn't know how, and I've suffered for it. 70.49.204.107 19:41, 14 June 2008 (UTC)
 * I see. Can you provide specific information on your IMVU group?
 * It's not my group, it's run by a friend of mine. She made me an officer, and already today, with her help, I've pruned the topics and deleted alot of them from 2007, and also went through and removed disabled (banned in IMVU terms) users from the group. Here's a link if you go on IMVU. I use my real name as my username on IMVU. http://imvu.com/groups/group/Suicidal/  70.49.204.107 04:52, 15 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Regardless of his new found faith, He is nothing but a vandal, on numerous sites and forums. He has vandalized here more than anyone, but claims it is always someone else.  Total...find a new site to bother, you bore all of us here.[[Image:Drunk Dragon.PNG|Drunk dragon]]Cheers! Atlandy 23:37, 15 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Let me respond to Atlandy's comment, and clear some things up.

''Atlandy, in this wiki you are a nobody. You are one of many. I've seen punks like you come and go and one thing never changes. The ego. Lose the ego and maybe, just maybe you'll get somewhere.'' 70.49.204.107 01:05, 16 June 2008 (UTC)
 * (A) ''He has vandalized here more than anyone, but claims it is always someone else
 * (A) Hmm, actually, you're wrong. IP address are the majority of vandalism, and yes, I know where they are coming from. It's called 4Chan people >.>. Also, I do not claim it is anyone else, other than that one time which was my brother who got access to my laptop
 * (B) He is nothing but a vandal on numerous sites and forums
 * (B) And how the hell would you know? You don't keep track of what sites I visit. And besides, I'm not retarded. I don't use Total Rune as a username everywhere. I only used it as a username here.
 * (C) Total...find a new site to bother, you bore all of us here.
 * (C) Since when the hell do you speak for the entire community? You must really have a big ego to be thinking like that. I ain't looking for your charity. I don't even care if I don't get accepted back into the Wikia. I'm just looking for a little forgiveness for my actions. I feel horrible about it all.
 * Atlandy, we can afford to give him another chance. If he breaks his word and vandalizes, we can permanently block him for the last time just like any other vandal and never trust his apologies again. 01:35, 16 June 2008 (UTC)
 * If you want community consensus for editing this wiki, the flamewar I see brewing on this page is not a good start towards obtaining my piece of it. Messages to both of you:


 * Atlandy: If you have a personal issue against Total Rune, take it up in private with him, not in a public forum. Only your professional opinion counts here; if you have valid, professional reasons to oppose Total Rune's return to the wiki, then cite them without making personal attacks. You don't improve the situation by calling him out just because you hold a grudge, and as an experienced editor, you really ought to know better.
 * And Total Rune: Atlandy might be stepping out of line by saying the things he is, but you need to not step with him. You're making personal attacks too. Now, I came to the wiki after you left, were blocked, whatever. So I don't know you. But seeing how you respond to these sorts of things is not giving me a good opinion of your character so far. RuneScape wiki does not need editors that keep problems going instead of solving them. If you are not that editor, then demonstrate it, and I'll consider giving my consent towards opening the wiki back to you. -- 02:12, 16 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Andorin, I don't mean to start trouble with you, but a few things;


 * (A) Since when do you have "consent" to re-open the wiki to me? That comment confused me.
 * (B) I've been here alot longer than you, not only on the wiki, but also on RuneScape (I'm an RSC original, created my account the day RS came out, although my stats are low, that's only due to my limited play time due to full-time work), and I'd like to take you on in the Duel Arena sometime. 70.49.204.107 02:30, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

ATTN: ALL Originally posted: User talk:Dtm142

"Anyway, my stance on the situation is temporarily opposition, because Atlandy brought up a good point: We cannot be held responsible for any harmful action that Total Rune may take in real life. Given his record of a suicidal threat he claimed to be false, he must acknowledge that his action was illegal. While the threat was placed on Wikipedia--not RSW--, the two sites are obviously similar, meaning that a similar event may occur on RSW. Additionally, his YG topic strongly infers he has received "help" from others possibly meaning that if he were to resume editing here, he would behave with a greater degree of civility. We need proof (i.e. a referral from a helper/group member or a very logical, factual, detailed essay) stating Total Rune has in fact gone through a form of treatment and is psychologically stable enough for him to resume editing RSW. The judgment from our community would be most appropriate after he has done the above."


 * 1. I was never suicidal. Sure, I've been depressed at times, and it's not my fault. I'm on new ADHD medication and it's increased my depressing thoughts, but I have control over them.
 * 2. I swear to god this is the 3rd time I've said this. I realize the fake suicide note to get rid of the stalker I had (annoyed wikipedia vandal who took it too far and decided to stalk me) was not the best route to take. I explained it all to the NRP (niagara regional police) and the cop who came to my house said he'd watch the guy's activity.
 * 3. I haven't received "professional help" because quite simply, I don't need it. I'm not the type of person who gets depressed and cuts. Whenever I get those depressing thoughts from my meds, I go and have a smoke. However, with my plan to quit smoking, I've had to find new outlets to keep myself busy, one of which was editing this wiki (as evidenced by my contributions). Simple fact is I love wikipedia. It's a great thing and I love the way it works. I am a very civil person, however my past actions were basically due to pent-up frustration because many of the members of this wiki kept poking their noses into my personal life, and finally I had had enough. What I did back then was wrong. That's not who I am. I'm not some ne'er-do-well or miscreant. I'm a legitimately nice guy. Nicest guy you'd ever meet.
 * 4 While the threat was placed on Wikipedia--not RSW--, the two sites are obviously similar, meaning that a similar event may occur on RSW. Um, what the hell? Why would a similar incident happen here? I've already taken care of the guy who was following me around from site to site, insulting me through emails and private messages. 70.49.204.107 03:04, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

Total Rune, I love your attitude. I really do. First off, you have the gall to make assumptions about my RuneScape career. How do you know I didn't played Classic too? How do you know I'm not a "veteran," as it were? Good job on making completely unwarranted, irrelevant assumptions and judgments to try to discredit me.

Second, you might notice that I was speaking to both of you up there, yourself and Atlandy. Did you ever possibly think that I was trying to help? Perhaps my wish was to avert conflict and settle things through negotiation, not "I'd like to take you to the Duel Arena." And for the record, that is an absolutely horrible argument, because RS and the wiki are separate things, meaning your skills as a player and your traits as an editor can't be substituted for each other. Anyway, you just had to take my comments, which were actually meant to defuse a situation, and turn them into "How do YOU have any say over ME?" I don't think Atlandy's the only one who needs to lose the ego here, pal. And for the record, community consensus means the general acceptance of the community at large, and obviously that is easier as more people give consent. Every person you alienate in the manner you've just demonstrated to me means your presence here will be that much less welcome and that much less tolerated. Would you really like to keep ignoring actual advice and make things worse on yourself? Honestly, it's up to you.

My point: If you want to be welcomed here, fix the attitude. Don't automatically put yourself above whoever comes your way, because that is a true mark of arrogance and the wiki does not need arrogant editors. -- 03:31, 16 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Nooo, no no no, you got it backwards Andorin! I know all about you. You've been around for quite some time, yes? All I was saying is your comment about re-opening the wiki to me confused me, and that I'd love to fight you in the Arena sometime. I wasn't trying to put myself over than you, despite how easy it'd be, I'm not a masochist fool like that. 70.49.204.107 03:37, 16 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Ok, if anyone wants to just chat with me, or anything, my email is quotetheraven666@live.ca . Add me on MSN, or email me, I'll be glad to answer any questions you have. I just want to clear my name as a bad person and show you guys I'm a nice guy. 70.49.204.107 03:49, 16 June 2008 (UTC)
 * OK. I think Total should be allowed back into the wiki. I just created an account after he was blocked, I think, but from my time at the wiki I have seen he had made many good contributions before that. His fourth point from above is a good one and I don't think he's going to go and commit suicide or claim to. I think we should let him be but if he makes trouble, only a little bit, we should take action straight away, no more chances. Cheers, [[Image:Kandarincrest.gif|25px]] Chicken7 >talk>sign 03:35, 16 June 2008 (UTC)
 * I don't know if I can trust you. [[Image:Kandarincrest.gif|25px]] Chicken7 >talk>sign 06:55, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

Please explain your relationship with Ugozima. (if there's some sort of connection)
 * That's not me...I've changed Lord of Ra's redirects so that User:Total Rune doesn't redirect to his page, but rather to my page. I'm also asking the moderator who handled Ra's name change to protect both pages. 70.49.204.107 04:40, 16 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Heh. After I read your response I fished around Wikipedia for information -- it's clear to me that you are not buddies with Ugo. =P
 * Around 5-6 weeks ago a sysop, whom I shall leave anonymous, was allegedly sent a message, saying that you would "bring the Wiki to its knees". A hearsay lacking any sort of proof, but leads another editor and I to be suspicious.  Additionally, many notices have been posted by users across Wikipedia, RSW, and RuneScape over the compromising of their accounts; two of which suspected the hacker was you.  Obviously, these complaints are unfounded; however, I feel that issues with account security should be of top priority (ex. no one likes getting hax).  These users (won't name names), as well myself to an extent, wish to have their suspicions redressed in some shape or form.  A simple "I didn't do it" would suffice, judging by my lack of knowledge over the subject matter.


 * I laugh at the fact that some idiots get hacked because they lack any account security, then blame it on the nearest guy. I didn't do it. I don't know the first thing about hacking. 70.49.204.107 05:43, 16 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Chicken7 Why don't you trust me? I'm a very trustable person. I am not untrustable at all. Honestly. I sat down last week and thought long and hard about everything I've done, and frankly I was disappointed in myself. I decided then and there it was time for me to repent (that's the word I was looking for earlier). Is it my fault that a couple of new editors on the Wiki don't trust me because of a reputation that's at least a year old? No. Is it my fault that I vandalized? Yes. I admit that. I screwed up. At least I'm willing to admit it. If I wasn't, I'd probably take the 4chan road and organize a raid. However, like I said, I'm willing to admit that I screwed up. I'd love to stay and chat longer, but I have to get up for work tomorrow (well, today basically, it is 3:22AM here. 70.49.204.107 07:22, 16 June 2008 (UTC)
 * You're having a really bad first impression.
 * S'not my first. Try 2nd or 3rd. Also, I'm not looking for compassion from newer editors, as the newer editors don't really know much about me. It's comments from the older editors from when I was here that I'm looking for. And for the record, Chiafriend12 has expressed that he is glad I wish to return to the wiki. He told me when I logged onto RS earlier. 70.49.204.107 07:33, 16 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Your "lulzy image-board contributions" definitely weren't pleasing some of the editors here, yet you come back asking for forgiveness. You're certainly in no position to act cocky; ironically, you have been doing that for most of this discussion.  We're not asking for you to bow down and kiss our shoes--just treat all of our editors with a degree of decency.


 * Additionally, many of our "newer" editors contribute more to the Wiki in a month than you have in your entire time here. You should leave the Wiki right now if you feel superior to us;  no sysop will tolerate an elitist attitude coming from ex-vandal. Seriously.  Either take that giant stick out of your ***, or kindly leave and continue your raids, because you won't gain any forgiveness if you keep acting the way you are now.

Does this discussion actually have a chance of letting him be allowed back in? It's getting to be a long discussion so I am wondering if people are wasting there time here or what? (regarding just this topic) --Degenret01 09:58, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

Christine says no. Does that count? He's had literally dozens of chances, seriously. We've had checkusers done on him, so don't believe him when he says he hasn't vandalized past that "one time" or that this is only his 3rd chance at forgiveness. We don't let other vandals come back after they've been permanently banned, and Total, quite possibly the worst vandal to ever hit RuneScape wiki, certainly should not be the exception. He has left suicide threats multiple times on this wiki, and really, no one even asked him. We weren't prying into his personal life. It was his idea to spill his life story, about his family, about Gem, about suicide. On the wiki. It didn't help him, I don't see why he did it, but blaming everyone for asking for it is completely off base. And I'm sure it's bull about you missing me, Total, because this is also not the first time you tried to suck up to me to be allowed back. I have no reason to believe you, and certainly no reason to forgive you either. Christine 10:49, 16 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Does nobody here know how to read? I've admitted to all the vandalism so please, fucking tell me where I said only the first 2 vandalisms were me. Jesus. And honestly, I don't see how my professional sounding posts (yes, I try to keep it professional) are cocky. Christine, you were prying. Constantly with the questions about my siblings and my life on my talk page, so don't try to pull an Atlandy. As for my time on 4Chan (lulzy imageboard), that's certainly none of your business. So if you think my professional tone is sounding cocky, then that's your fucking problem. I try to get a little forgiveness, I honestly don't give 2 shits if I'm allowed back. All I want is forgiveness for what I've done. And Christine, leave Gem out of this. I left her. Turns out she lied to me about everything she told me about her life. My biggest mistake was falling in love with her. And I don't see how I'm the worst vandal. Honestly. Do you fools really think I organized some big vandalism thing that lasted 3 days? Hell no. I lied about that. I have no fucking clue who half those IP vandals were. Face it, you guys are an automatic target because nobody likes RuneScape. I do, but I'm not playing until the new graphics come out. I can't believe the stupidity here. So what, I changed a few numbers on a page as vandalism. So what, I insulted people. Honestly, Blanko's vandalized more than me, he used proxies to get around his bans, and you guys still let him stay. That's pathetic. Also, almost half the IP vandals that you banned, and put "Total" as the reason were not me. I simply found it funny that whenever an IP vandalised shortly after I was banned, that "Oh, it must be Total". Fuckin pricks. I don't know why I even felt sorry for what I did. Honestly, you guys earned it. 70.49.204.107 16:38, 16 June 2008 (UTC)
 * I never pried Total, you offered the information to us, because Oddly asked. And, I never said anything about you being cocky or anything about 4chan..? Your mood changes from post to post. Christine 18:32, 16 June 2008 (UTC)
 * All the newer Wikians should know that Total was a huge vandal and encouraged others to do the same. He has been banned from many many forums online (If you want me to list them I will).  Also, he has threatened sucide many times on the wiki here (I know because I offered a suggestion of going over the falls in a barrel, which I thought would be funny which I later regretted due to his unstableness).  If he wants to edit...do it via an ip that he hasn't had blocked yet.  He uses an ip randomizer (he admitted that too), so he should have plenty to choose from [[Image:Drunk Dragon.PNG|Drunk dragon]]Cheers! Atlandy 20:19, 16 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Once again Atlandy, you never cease to fucking amaze me. I'm not fucking unstable you cocksucker. Also, I'd be delighted if you'd go ahead and list these sites, because I've only been banned from 1 forum and that was Habboxforum. All the other ones I've been on I've either been inactive, hacked, or requested to be banned. Get your shit straight, dumbass. Also, I don't use an IP randomizer. Back when I did vandalize, I used www.proxy.org, which Blankothe3rd found and used when he was ban evading. My IP changes on it's own thanks to Bell Sympatico Lite. I did not threaten suicide many times either. Once again, get your shit straight. 70.49.204.107 23:34, 16 June 2008 (UTC)


 * With language like this, it doesn't seem like you feel very welcome in this community. I will say, language like you are using here isn't going to win friends and positively influence people.  This certainly isn't helping your case, unless you consider it hopeless anyway.  Please, for the sake of discussion, could you scale back this kind of personal attacks and try to make your case using somewhat...er... more mature language.  At least try to demonstrate that you have grown up somewhat from earlier actions deserving of having your old account unblocked.  --Robert Horning 00:25, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

Give the guy a chance. The worst that will happen is he'll turn out to have not grown up and the Wiki will re-ban him.Planeshifted 00:35, 17 June 2008 (UTC)
 * I know Rob, and I apologize. My language was uncalled for but I'm sick of Atlandy pulling "facts" about me out of his rear end, when in truth, he doesn't know anything. I'm sure I stated that I don't really care if I'm reinstated. All I ask is for forgiveness for my actions, and I'm met with bullcrap along the way. To be honest I expected as much from Atlandy and Christine. Apparently, when I sound professional, I sound cocky. The claims of me being cocky are unfounded as I am simply wording these posts as best I can. But yeah, if I'm not reinstated here, there are other Wikia's I'm a member of that you guys aren't aware of. 70.49.204.107 00:53, 17 June 2008 (UTC)


 * Thank you for finally showing your true colours to everyone here on the wiki. I dont understand how...if you want to be invited in...you continue to act like a child.  You have threatened a few times (on irc) and professed your true love for other wikians.  Your actions on this wiki and other sites speaks volumes about you and your character. Your way of handling this whole situation (by flaming me) isn't helping your cause.  Please get the help you need and move to another wiki.  Thanks [[Image:Drunk Dragon.PNG|Drunk dragon]]Cheers! Atlandy 00:57, 17 June 2008 (UTC)


 * Speaking of flaming, have you looked in a mirror lately Atlandy, because that's all you seem to be good for around here. The whole reason I hate you is because all you ever do is flame me, and claim to know facts about how I've been banned or whatnot when you're really just trying to impress the sysops and kiss-up to them. I don't need to get help, you sir, need to lose the ego, otherwise, you're gonna go say something to the wrong person (IRL) one day, and end up in the ICU ward getting fed through an IV after they beat the unholy hell out of you. This is where you fail, young padawan 70.49.204.107 01:02, 17 June 2008 (UTC)


 * I have not "flamed" you..only presented facts. You have been banned from this wiki, The odssey wiki, wikipedia, and other forums (You want me to list them?) That is a fact.  You are unstable.  (You said it) YOu have threated suicude (on here, and on wikipedia) both facts.  You told christine you love her (fact)....what part of that is flaming?  I am telling newer wikians about your past before the let you come back.  If any of those facts are wrong..let me know [[Image:Drunk Dragon.PNG|Drunk dragon]]Cheers! Atlandy 01:06, 17 June 2008 (UTC)
 * List them Atlandy. Go ahead. I doubt you know the usernames I use. Also, must I state this again? The reason I got banned from the Odyssey Wikia was due to mass retardation by Angela. I asked the players of Odyssey if they wanted the Wikia, they said no, so me, not knowing how to delete it, banned all users (i was gonna ban myself last) and deleted all the articles. Before I could close it up, Angela went retarded because of you guys and banned me and de-ownered me. I asked her to delete the Wikia 8 times, and all 8 times she claimed (with no proof mind you) that someone would edit it. It's been nearly a year and NO-ONES EDITED IT. You see why I get pissed off now? Nobody listens to me. They just immediately think the worst. 70.49.204.107 01:11, 17 June 2008 (UTC)
 * I will be happy to find all of them...and I will list them here tomorrow. We are all on the IRC if you want to state your case btw.[[Image:Drunk Dragon.PNG|Drunk dragon]]Cheers! Atlandy 01:15, 17 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Heh. You don't even know the usernames I use. And if you're thinking of using my username directory on Blogger.com as a reference, don't. I've deleted it due to privacy reasons, and I deleted it last week. 70.49.204.107 01:18, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

Ok, I'm reading all of this and I don't know if I'm underthinking the situation or missing a key element but why not just create a new account, use it to edit and contribute and not say "I used to be Total Rune"? Seems it would solve all the problems and drama.-- 01:20, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

Image Policy
I think we need a nice big clickable link on the main page that leads our current users to the image policy, because while going through the new image gallery, I'm seeing alot of personal images, most of which are those ugly stat sigs. The members of the RS Wiki need to be reminded that uploading personal images for their userpages isn't allowed, and that they need to upload them to imageshack. Hell, even a tutorial would suffice. All you gotta do is explain how to upload an image to imageshack, then to use that image here, just put the image's URL. It's not hard to do. No tags are needed to put ImageShack'd photos on the wiki. Just copy the URL of the image into your page and you're done. Anyone with me on this? Maybe we could add it to the sitenotice, like Due to frequent uploading of personal images, we'd like to remind you of our Image Policy and link "Image Policy" to the image policy page. 70.49.204.107 22:35, 14 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Abit offtopic, but thank you Skill for deleting the items I had tagged :) 70.49.204.107 23:14, 14 June 2008 (UTC)


 * What kind of "personal images" are you referring to here? In going through the recently deleted images, I'm not exactly sure that such a policy needs to be so strictly enforced as it is here.  I certainly am allowed considerably more latitude on Wikipedia where nearly everything I've casually looked at with the deletion log would have been accepted (in the context of that wiki).


 * What is wrong with stat sigs anyway? We could set up something that would allow a "preference" to be able to turn off loading those sigs if you don't want to see them through templates or something similar, and I personally find the current enforcement of this to be a bit too aggressive.  That plus screen captures of your own character that would (presumably) be put on your user page.


 * I would agree that perhaps there ought to be some sort of general limit to this kind of activity, and certainly it should all be Runescape-related (aka no image repository for other websites), but please.... what is wrong with allowing somebody to show off their favorite costume or a picture of their P.O.H. on their user page?


 * From my experience, I would rather that they be managed locally by admins here and not have to rely upon admins at ImageShack.... unless they are completely unrelated to Runescape in any way shape or form. I certainly haven't heard any complaints from Wikia about running out of image server storage space, or that somehow this project is abusing that option with the current load of images.


 * If the stat sigs have a copyright issue that needs to be addrerssed... OK, that is something worth discussing. But I don't see that as an issue here or why it such a big deal to you.  If this is genuinely a bandwidth issue on the part of Wikia (aka users are loading up stat sigs here and using them on BBSs that are non-Wikia) that is another issue as well.  But show that is a problem first before throwing them out.  --Robert Horning 01:26, 15 June 2008 (UTC)


 * I don't even know why uploading personal images to the wiki is against the rules if Wikia has unlimited media space. But if it is against the rules, I believe we have a problem. Users are always uploading personal images all the time and then they are clueless when they are deleted. Once they realise they're not supposed to upload personal images, they look for the article about their image and add it to the article as well as their userpage (even if it is a duplicate). I think there is not much we can do about it though and a link on the main page could maybe do a little difference but users tend to just create an account, make a userpage and then upload all their personal images here without looking at policies, main page, rules, etc. [[Image:Kandarincrest.gif|25px]]<font color=#B22222> Chicken7 >talk>sign 01:43, 15 June 2008 (UTC)


 * This is a policy that has been established by the "community" here on this wiki, not necessarily something that is being forced upon us by Wikia. What I'm taking issue with is the interpretation of what is intended by Wikia.... that this not become an image dumping ground like imageshack or Flicker.  I'm not even advocating for such a thing either.


 * I'm just trying to raise the issue here that perhaps we don't have to be so hard-nosed about a certain class of "personal images" that certainly can be considered related to the topic of this wiki: Runescape.  Keep in mind, it isn't Wikia that is deleting these images, it is admins that are working on this project.  This is a community decision, and I'm raising the issue here to see if there may be support to "changing" the current policy, or at least clarifying what a "personal image" might be in terms of this policy.


 * No, I don't think it is appropriate to upload gigabytes of images from your last vacation, pictures from your birthday party, or having dozens of other random images that have nothing to do with the game. But that isn't what I'm talking about with a good many of the recently deleted images.  This is a policy that can be changed, and it certainly isn't engraven in blood with Jimbo Wales' finger.  I'm talking something reasonable here, and suggesting that perhaps we are being too hardnosed about the whole concept of personal images.  --Robert Horning 01:34, 16 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Exactly. That's what I've been trying to say for a while. The only "problem" with personal game screenshots is that "it will clog the servers", when we have unlimited space. Besides, deleting an image will just take up even more data (even though something is "deleted", all revisions are still stored on the Wikia servers, so all it does is conceal it from all non-sysops. On top of that, there's the aspect of the deletion being logged.).
 * With taking out the whole data subject, why delete them? Some people (like me) get "omfg this site is super-unsafe leave and never come back!!!111one" notices whenever going to an image holding site, so this is not only a good option, but a final option.
 * I mean, come on. They are only 100KB at the most, when most are less than 10KB. My talk page is 21.2MB, and you don't see any restrictions or anything on that. It would take 212 large personal images to equal the data in a talk page. But what about a few reasonably sized images? Maybe 30KB. It's no big deal. 02:24, 16 June 2008 (UTC)


 * OK, so the discussion has changed to whether personal "RuneScape" related images are welcome on the Wiki. I would have to put a Neutral/Pending on such a policy/rule because I think we'll be bombarded with images and if we have thousands of users their all going to want to upload like "The first time i killed a Tz-Tok-Jad" or "My POH Kitchen", "My POH Bedroom", etc.... With all the users doing this we will have thousands of personal images. And if we ever change our minds there will be heaps of deletions. And Wikia might get annoyed with the amount of space we are using. They must have a limit to storage space. Robert and Chia have brought up good points though. But people won't come here to make a talk page. They'll come and uload their armour outfit and their POH, make their userpage and then disappear. Maybe I'll support if there is a limit to the number of personal images you can have but it would be hard to keep track of. [[Image:Kandarincrest.gif|25px]]<font face="Kristen ITC"><font color=#B22222> Chicken7 >talk>sign 02:55, 16 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Well yes, then it would be a problem. I think a limit would have to be put in place, maybe 10 images, or something? 03:00, 16 June 2008 (UTC)~
 * I would support a general limit like that in terms of images per person, and those images must be on an actual page, not just uploaded somewhere and forgotten. In other words, those images must be used on the wiki somewhere, even if they are of a personal nature.  A limit of 10 such personal images is quite reasonable, with strong encouragement to keep it well below that.  --Robert Horning 04:06, 16 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Sounds good. I like that limit as a policy. [[Image:Kandarincrest.gif|25px]]<font face="Kristen ITC"><font color=#B22222> Chicken7 >talk>sign 04:11, 16 June 2008 (UTC)
 * That sounds pretty good. And thinking long term, would there be a way to track if someone logs on every 6 months or so? Because if they leave for 6 months, we might as well delete those pics (if they are only being used on that persons user page). And maybe find a way to ensure users name the pics about the costume, so the same pic is not uploaded 600 times. How many do we need of someone in full dragon with a Santa? Could we list all the "personal pics" so people will be able to check if the one they are uploading is already there?--Degenret01 07:48, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

< --- resetting tabs for ease of discussion

Certainly there is a way to scan user contribution logs to check if they have been active for the past six months, and I suppose we could develop a tool that could scan through user contributions to find out when the last time that the user logged in.

Mainly, I see this as a way to be doing a recent changes patrol and notice somebody who is uploading a whole bunch of images all at once. By setting a limit, you can either tell the (presumably new) user that they need to slow down and not go overboard, and point to the "official policy" as a reason why they can't have a couple dozen "personal images" about their character. This would be particularly if the person uploading the content has just created the account, uploads the images, and never contributes to the wiki again.

As for long-time users that contribute to many other parts of the wiki and only upload a couple images every other month or so.... I wouldn't be so paranoid about the issue. If you happen to come across somebody like this who has gone past the limit, a more gentle reminder may be in order to keep things under control but I would find it unlikely that they are going to go past the limit anyway. It is likely that the user is going to be disruptive and have attention placed on them if it becomes a serious problem (see the discussion in the previous section), and have a great many other issues as well.

Again, I don't think we need to get aggressive here. I certainly was a user who came in, made a couple of edits, and then left for six months only to come back and become a significant contributor. I'm willing to assume good faith and presume most users have the best of intentions when trying to add content.

As for scanning to see what other images a user has uploaded (if you think it may be excessive), I would suggest checking Special:Logs and entering the user's name. For most users, this is usually page moves and image uploads.... again, I seriously doubt that a major contributor is going to be a problem here. It would likely be somebody who is trying to upload a whole bunch of images all at once and/or be a vandal anyway in other ways that would be a problem. --Robert Horning 12:32, 16 June 2008 (UTC)