New wiki feature and interaction: Leave article feedback (beta)

New wiki feature and interaction: Leave article feedback (beta)

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Posted by: Stephane Lo Presti

Stephane Lo Presti

Content Marketing Manager, French

Next

Hello everyone,

I’d like to announce here a new feature that the community of the Guild Wars 2 wiki implemented. If you look at the tabs above any article on the wiki, you’ll now find a new one: Leave article feedback (see picture enclosed). If you browse an article of the wiki and realize that it has a piece of information missing, you can click this tab, fill in the text box with the information and just click the “Save page” button. This will leave a message that wiki editors can check and then add the information wherever is appropriate (they’ll also take care of formatting it and adding any relevant links).

We’re experimenting with this feature, so please leave feedback about it in this thread. Although there’s a vibrant community of wiki editors, they could always use a hand and we’ve noticed in the past some players saying they were afraid of trying to edit the wiki, or simply not knowledgeable enough. So we’re hoping that it’ll give Guild Wars 2 players more opportunities to interact with the wiki and, possibly, become an editor!

If you’d like to share the information on this thread, please feel free to do so too! Post a link to the article and the information that’s missing, and one of the editors of the wiki will hopefully add it.

Thanks a lot for your help!

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Posted by: Inculpatus cedo.9234

Inculpatus cedo.9234

I noticed the new tab. I think it’s great; although I edit occasionally, there have been many a time when I saw inaccurate of out-of-date information on an article, but because of formatting, etc., was reluctant to try to edit the page.

Thanks for the information. =)

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Posted by: Lightsbane.9012

Lightsbane.9012

i thought that said Ski feature at first glance…

As quick as the Valkyries ride,
As true as Odin’s spear flies,
There is nowhere to hide.

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Posted by: Just a flesh wound.3589

Just a flesh wound.3589

Sounds interesting. I once tried to add information on a Guild Wars 1 article. I found the whole process of making an account and then figuring out the formatting to be very perplexing and confusing, to say the least.

Be careful what you ask for
ANet may give it to you.

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Posted by: Donari.5237

Donari.5237

I’ll have to overcome the habit of years of not trying to touch wiki contents after learning how inept I was at it, but this does look like a nice simple way of mentioning errors. I’ve passed this thread’s link on to my guild as some of them are much less shy about distributing helpful information.

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Posted by: Aerinndis.2730

Aerinndis.2730

I love this and it will make submitting new or additional information soooo much easier!

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Posted by: rapthorne.7345

rapthorne.7345

Seems a little pointless and counter-intuitive to the nature of a wiki you can add to yourself. Can the article discussion pages not fulfil a feedback role?

Resident smug Englishman on the NA servers, just because.

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Posted by: Stephane Lo Presti

Previous

Stephane Lo Presti

Content Marketing Manager, French

Next

Seems a little pointless and counter-intuitive to the nature of a wiki you can add to yourself. Can the article discussion pages not fulfil a feedback role?

You’re both right and wrong here, it all depends on context. To someone who’s knowledgeable with the Guild Wars 2 wiki and its community/procedures/policies, it looks like an obvious thing to do (and technically this tool is little more than posting in the article’s talkpage). Yet no one apart from the active editors is doing that.

To everyone else, it is different though. Over the past few years, I’ve discussed with various people (both part of the wiki community and outside of it) the possible reasons why more people aren’t editing the wiki. There’s definitely a big chunk of players who are not interested in doing that, and that’s perfectly fine.

But I’ve discovered that there’s a group of players in-between these and the editors. They’re either lapsed editors, who stopped editing for various reasons (issues with other editors and with policies, loss of interest, etc.), or players who are willing to help but afraid to do so (could be because of the technical bits, or being afraid to do something wrong).

So this idea (and credit to Rubi for having it!) is a slightly different way to add information to the wiki by simply “dumping” the information onto it and let the active editors take care of the rest. We’re hoping that it’s going to help both those who want to contribute and the active editors, and even hopeful that it will make the former become the later

Thanks to everyone who expressed interest in this project and for being an extended part of the Guild Wars 2 wiki! A big thanks too to the active editors, without whom this wiki would not be what it is today, serving the greater good

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Posted by: Greener.6204

Greener.6204

Seems a little pointless and counter-intuitive to the nature of a wiki you can add to yourself. Can the article discussion pages not fulfil a feedback role?

As has been pointed out by others, editing the wiki can be extremely intimidating. Even after years of editing the original GW wiki, I found myself completely lost with the new style of organizing data.

The “article feedback” link will actually drop a person’s comments directly onto the discussion page (a page which can also confuse/intimidate users; wiki code can look strange). All actual feedback about the game happens on these forums, and the wiki won’t be fulfilling that role.

G R E E N E R

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Posted by: BuddhaKeks.4857

BuddhaKeks.4857

I might use it in the future. I always shied away from editing the wiki, since when I start getting involved in stuff like that I dedicate more and more time to it. Something I frankly don’t have too much of. But quickly throwing in some stuff I noticed is missing in an article? That sounds reasonable.*

*INB4 I will spent way too much time figuring out how to improve articles on the wiki.

You don’t win friends with salad! Sorry I just got caught up in the rhythm.

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Posted by: Stephane Lo Presti

Previous

Stephane Lo Presti

Content Marketing Manager, French

… To someone who’s knowledgeable with the Guild Wars 2 wiki …

If you target ease-of-use for someone unfamiliar with wiki editing, feedback UI should look more natural. E.g. like a text entry box at the bottom of the page, just like a reply on the forum pages.

As they say, perfect is the enemy of good. In other words, we’re trying here to make progress one step at a time, rather than spend a lot of time implementing the best solution we can come up with. Please keep sharing ideas if you have them, as this project is still in its infancy and it could use everyone’s help.

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Posted by: Illconceived Was Na.9781

Illconceived Was Na.9781

Wiki editors have tried all sorts of techniques to try to help readers become contributors. They have offered contests, help, encouragement, as well as made changes to how stuff can be edited. It still all ends up as requiring some confidence in using markup text. Even commenting on the talk page requires some awareness of policies/practices and syntax.

Consequently, something like this is great: it works much more closely to adding comments to a blog, even if perhaps it uses a design from 1995. (The feedback bit; the wiki itself looks pretty good.)

tl;dr I think it’s a great change and I’ll be encouraging those I know to “add feedback” rather than complain about something they think is missing, wrong, misleading, or unhelpful from/on the wiki.

John Smith: “you should kill monsters, because killing monsters is awesome.”

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Posted by: Greener.6204

Greener.6204

I’d like to show an example of just how important all of your eyes are, and how valued everyone’s input is.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/index.php?title=Talk%3ARing_of_Fire&diff=1043500&oldid=223281 A comment by a player made using the Feedback link.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/index.php?title=Template:Skill_fact&curid=27785&diff=1043503&oldid=1037601 The fix made 25 minutes later.

The errors on the condition damage had been present for nearly a month, and had not been caught by any of the contributors who knew where to adjust the information. These errors were appearing on every page which referenced bleeding, burning, and poison damage! We don’t know how many readers had noticed the errors, but it would have been nearly impossible for any of them to source out where the problem was coming from.

With the quick feedback link, one of the readers became an invaluable contributor.

G R E E N E R