User talk:Robin

Drydorn's comment
Wow Robin, nice work on all those monsters! If you can impliment a "better" way to enter monsters (linkback?) I'm sure others would be pleased. Not sure myself, but others have done more with the monsters than myself. Drydorn 23:09, May 27, 2006 (EDT)

Stooooooop!
I'll explain why soon, but please stop changing all the monster pages, before you get tired and sick of it! ;) Tihocan 14:59, May 29, 2006 (EDT)

Ok, first of all, thanks a lot for all your hard work, you've been doing a LOT of edits just in the last couple of days, and this is much appreciated. The reason why I said "Stop" is because I want to make sure first you're not wasting time doing all this. I gave a quick look to your edits, and you seem to have navigated back and forth between various ways to do things with monsters. This is not surprising, categories can be confusing, and it's hard to figure out what's best on the first try. The botoom line is: the bestiary needs (or needed) to be revised and organized. It would be great if you want to do it. But first, we should write down exactly how it's going to be done, in order to avoid having to change all monsters each time we realize we missed something. Basically, what needs to be decided is: (1) what kind of fields we"re going to have, like type (subtype?), habitat (quest?), alignment, special abilities, etc. (2) what categories we're going to use, and how they will be organized together. We must be careful also to respect the naming policy, i.e. in particular use lowercase everywhere except for proper nouns (e.g. Witch doctor Wang), and plural for categories. We will also want to use a template for monsters, that can automatically modify the display of the various fields we need. So, if you're up to the task, I suggest you first write all this down for yourself on a sheet of paper, then submit a proposal on the Wiki (for instance here), let it be discussed by other Wiki members, then (and only then) go through all existing monsters and update them. Tihocan 15:31, May 29, 2006 (EDT)


 * Haha... lol @ 'botoom' - anyway, wow - I have come full circle! I was looking through the history of User_talk over at the wiki I started on; and i couldn't find the exact warning, but I got pretty much the same warning forever ago - I made over 500 edits in my first day, and they went frantic warning me to stop and 'consult with my fellow editors first!' - I told them they were insane, then went on to make 3k edits my second day (I started at 5:00 PM my time the first day, though). So, I'd have to say I disagree with you tihocan in a little way - I think he can start making any categorization changes he wants to the pages, as long as he's going to be around for a while. Now, changing everything up part way then disappearing - that'd piss me off. But asa long as he's willing to go *back* through again and change everything again if we decide some more changes can be made, then sure - go ahead. Though if you like, it'd be cool to try to figure out exactly what would be the coolest way to do it, then go through and only have to change it once... anyway, welcome, see my message please kthxbai. Elliott Cable  -  ?+¿  -  ‹·›  03:50, May 30, 2006 (EDT)

Welcome!
May I extend my warmest welcomes and offer you any help you may need? Thanks for your contributions, mate!

If you need help with something...
 * ...I'm always available! You can drop a message on my user talk page (which I watch like a hawk) or grab my other contact info on my user page.
 * ...There's a wealth of wiki documentation on the meta wiki, perhaps some of it may be of use to you.
 * ...There's a really good Introduction over on meta also, it should help you figure out what's going on if your new to wikis in general.

I'd like to hear a reply! Just click Edit above, and write a message under where mine ends - then, at the end of your message (on the same line) type four tildes (Like this: ) to automatically insert a nickname linked to your user page, and a date/time signature!

Again, welcome to the wiki - and I can't thank you enough on behalf of the community for your help in making us the best DDO site around (-;
 * From Elliott Cable  -  ?+¿  -  ‹·›  on 02:39, May 30, 2006 (EDT)


 * Also, robin - I need to make sure you understand using talk pages - can you just leave a reply to my comment here? Just edit the page, and add a line under this last one with a comment, thanks! Elliott Cable  -  ?+¿  -  ‹·›  02:39, May 30, 2006 (EDT)

So many words this early in the day! i still haven't had any tea yet. Almost every monster on this wiki has to be edited - that's a fact! I don't think i saw a single complete monster so whoever does what to the monsters has to go through them all anyway.

The categorisation by type i'm going to continue with. I play a ranger, and i love my bane arrows, so i need to know what monsters are in what category. Elves are kinda cool do to and then i'll tackle undead (a huge category). Elementals and mephit-types won't take long. Doesn't matter how you look at the monster changes so far, categorising by type makes sense.

Grouping by type also makes future changes simpler because you can do lumps of monsters at a time rather than face a huge list of all the monsters on the wiki. It works for me anyway.

The only edits i'm not happy with so far are ones where i've linked a monster to a quest when really i should have linked a monster to a dungeon/zone and the dungeon/zone would be linked to the quest. There haven't been many of those.

I work hard. I smoke hard. I'm not leaving the wiki half-way through editing it. If this manually-edited bestiary/linking monsters to one page thing is a problem i'll go through them all and remove the category:monsters link. Alternatively, i'll make the bestiary the master page of all monsters, change every monster done so far to point to that, and make the Bestiary link to the Monsters page (so Monsters only has breakdowns of things but not monsters themselves, and the Bestiary is the one-stop-shop for monsters without other lists cluttering the top). I'm easy.

One thing i would like help on is how to set anchors within a page so i can link a type (e.g. Giant) to the collectibles dropped by the type (e.g. amulets of lost empire, six, and bishop) with the anchors being the collectible names. Similarly, Undead drop funerary token, mark of the keeper (i think - will check) and necro gem. That is, on the Collectible page i'd anchor the Talisman Collector and then add a link to the Giant page to that anchor with Collectible#Talisman Collector to say that amulets could be exchanged at the talisman dude.