User talk:Ruf67/Archive/2007-06-30

Welcome to the FR-wiki. Those are some nice changes you have made! We hope you enjoy your stay! Fw190a8 05:19, 17 December 2006 (UTC)

Hi. Im kinda new at this wiki-editing, but I love the idea and the Realms! If there's any advice you could give me or point me int he direction of some sort of tutorial in how to better use the editing system Id be most appreciative. Cheers, Johnnyriot999.


 * Hey Johnny, welcome to the Wiki! :) I'd recomend you go and read Wikipedias tutorials, they're really good, and when leaving comments on a talk page, please end them with four tidles (~), (like so: ~ ), this will sign your comment with name time and date, thanks and happy editing! Zerak-Tul 11:02, 17 December 2006 (UTC)


 * Hey Johnny, thanks for the Kudos, but I can't take credit, it was originally created by David Latapie who is one of the project managers of Wikipedias Forgotten Realms project See [Talk:Main_Page#Wikipedia:WikiProject Forgotten Realms|the Main Page talk page] for a bit more detail. Also now that I'm here, fill something into your user page so it isn't a red link, it's bugging me :P As usual, you're doing a good job, and any questions feel free to ask! Zerak-Tul 08:35, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

Baldur's Gate
Go for the eyes Boo, go for the eyes! RUAAARGHH! :) Zerak-Tul 08:44, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

Article quality
Your recent submissions have been great, and much appreciated. Excellent work! Fw190a8 16:31, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

Thanks buddy. Just trying to keep up with everyone, lol. I love the new templates that are out, especially the timeline has been formatted and structured so well. Cheers. Johnnyriot999 06:14, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the Edits
Thank you for editing Vierna Do'Urden and making it a bit longer. I started it but I did not know some of the things you put there so thank you! DrizztTheSlayer 01:25, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

Admin question
Hi Johnny. Regarding your question on my talk page about which sources to use, you can reference anything you like! Canon materials are the TSR and WotC products (including things like the Monster Manual, not just FR-related products), the WotC novels and the WotC website. The computer games are non-canon but they are probably much more familiar in general than the D&amp;D game itself, so they're worth including!

You shouldn't assume that a source is suitable for referencing just because it has been referenced in an article before, because anyone could just come along and write a reference from "Elmo's ABCs" or something, which is obviously not related to the wiki! Also, you should verify your own references rather than relying on someone else to do it for you, where possible. For example, if someone else has stated in an article that a red dragon favours its breath weapon, and given a reference, you should check the source before you use that piece of information in another article, rather than assuming it's correct.

With regard to copyrights, large chunks of text taken straight from the books or the Wizards website are breaches of copyright. It is assumed that a small quote (one or two sentences) is all right, but your article should be describing the issue, rather than the words in the source. For example, assume I have just read "The da Vinci Code". It would be a breach of copyright for me to type out the book exactly on a website, but it is fine for me to summarize the events in the book, or go into detail about one of the characters, because the words are my own.

On this wiki, the aim is to provide a decent reference to about 25 years of source material. As an example, I recently scoured pretty much all the material for information on the Aurumvorax. This was all the monster manuals and related books, a very useful index of topics in Dragon and Dungeon magazines, and all the FR products relating to creatures. The article combines all this information so it's easy to find out about the creature, even though the original passages were scattered far and wide, and now someone else doesn't have to bother spending the amount of time that I did searching through the sources.

The GFDL is the licence under which the information here is presented, and really means that anyone is free to use the information in pretty much any way they want. The sources we are using are not GFDL, but we are summarizing, listing and referencing this information, rather than copying it outright, so don't worry about that! Fw190a8 01:21, 24 February 2007 (UTC)

Changes to capitalization
I wanted to talk about the changes you made recently to the staff of night article! You changed "umber hulk" so that it links to "Umber Hulk" (capitalization of second word) but as far as I understand, creature names should be in lower case. For example, if you were writing about a dog or a fox, you would write "the dog jumped over the fox" rather than "the Dog jumped over the Fox" so in the same way, the creature names should be in lower case. Also, I am of the opinion that spell names should be in lower case too, but there is no general rule for this as there is in the English language, so perhaps go with the way it's written in the source material? I haven't got any to hand right now but I will try to remember to check later. Fw190a8 01:37, 24 February 2007 (UTC)

Fair Use
Thanks a lot for all the help adding the template to all the book covers! --Ebakunin 18:05, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

Eberron + Question
You don't like Eberron either? I was starting to feel like the only one, but, well, I noticed your userpage. And I have one question about the wiki as well. So, if you live in the US, then you spell "color" just the way I just wrote it. But some users are from England and will spell it differently ("color" is just an example). In England it is spelled "colours" which I think you know. So which is correct? I don't think very many people would be happy if someone made an edit and throughout the article spellings varied fom British to American and back again. So which is correct? It's a consistency problem and well, I think I've said enough. you can respond on my talkpage, but not right here. I won't be able to check your talk page daily for a reply on this question. DrizztTheSlayer 00:35, 12 March 2007 (UTC)

Citation Needed
How do you mark something as needing a citation? Wiki says to use [citation needed], but that doesn't seem to work here. Wenin 15:04, 13 March 2007 (UTC)

I found that if you use, it gives me what I was looking for. Though I'll keep in mind the tag as well. Wenin 17:43, 13 March 2007 (UTC)

Murghôm
Hello,

Any reason for changing all of this content? David Latapie (✒ | @) 23:51, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

Prestige Classes portal
Great portal! I've now linked it on the front page. There's so very many prestige classes, I didn't realise! Fw190a8 10:55, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

Dragon pictures
Thanks for uploading and linking the pictures for me! I'm on break at work, and unfortunately we have a filter that won't allow me to access the Wizards site. Thusly, I thought I'd have to wait until tonight to put the pics up. I owe you. :) ArchangelM127

Re: Welcome
Hey thanks for the welcome message. I have been a member of wikipedia for a while and I wanted to do more about Forgotten Realms and I found this place when I was looking around. Good setup by the way. Also about Parkour, It is awesome hey? And I have seen the movie District Balinue 13. Very good. Although I saw it with a English voice track, so there mouths didnt match the sounds, but it was still very good. I love the chase seen at the start. That guy is actually the inventor of Parkour, David Belle. About Casino Royale, the guy in that chase seen is Sebastian Foucan, the inventor of Free Running. It's a version of Parkour which involves more flips and fancy things that make it more interesting to watch. Look it up in Youtube, you can get some really good videos on there. Anyway thanks again for the welcome and I hope to talk more! Drizzt J  a m  o  00:03, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the welcome from me too. Thought I'd add to this section instead of adding a new one. Looking forward to be of help here. -- Sneltrekker 04:25, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

Challenge for April
I welcome you to April's improvement challenge. Please see Forgotten Realms Wiki:Article for improvement for more details! Fw190a8 23:14, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

Congratulations on winning the April challenge! Feel free to add this userbox to your user page!

Fw190a8 15:04, 10 May 2007 (UTC)

Hurtzbad
Yah, I'd been looking for how to reference those source books, thank you.

Do you know the reference for "The North"

"The North" was a boxed set "The North, Guide to The Savage Frontier". The book inside the box is "The Wilderness" It was published about 1996. It was really a update to "Volo's Guide to the North", with a lot more information. It was updated by "Silver Marches", but contained a lot more information and covers a far greater area. It's ISBN is 0-7869-0391-0


 * Hey, how Cannon is the Wizards' website. Specifically how cannon is The Legacy of the Green Regent stuff. Can we use part of it to add to the history here, given it's clearly evolving. What's your take on this. Hurtzbad 09:29, 16 April 2007 (UTC)


 * Email them at dispelconfusion@wizards.com and ask them :) Zerak talk 15:19, 16 April 2007 (UTC)


 * Since WotC owns the Forgotten Realms licence and even The Greenwood is subject to their whims, I'd reckon that anything that they say, goes. End of story.

The North. Thanks for the link. I already have it. In fact have all the free downloads. I personally think we should include the links to all the free stuff, but I'm not sure. What are your thoughts.Hurtzbad 03:58, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

BG and canon
Well, you're doing a good effort in organizing the characters. But you don't need to add the category "non-canonical" to any Baldur's Gate articles. Either there is (or should be) one of the tags "BG", "BG2" or "BG2 and expansion", which automatically mark the article as non-canonical, or the article is at least partially about the novels and thus not canon (like Adalon). If there's a section about the games, that should be and usually is marked as non-canonical, and that also puts the article automatically in a category for partially non-canonical articles. (Then there are also, in case you wonder about those, articles that are about the games with only stub sections about the novels; these I've also been tagging as being about the games and thus non-canonical, since that's what their actual content is about.) Ville V. Kokko 07:32, 13 April 2007 (UTC)


 * All right, I only removed one that was redundant rather than inappropriate, I'll put that back. Ville V. Kokko 07:38, 13 April 2007 (UTC)
 * I mean, you don't want to put the ones with only non-canon sections in the wholly non-canon category, right? Does what you said apply only to the gaming templates, or also the "non-canon section" one? Even if it applies to all, I think that category should be used where it applies, not the one for wholly non-canonical. Ville V. Kokko 07:46, 13 April 2007 (UTC)


 * Montaron and Xzar at least are in the BG novelization as well as game, so they're "with non-canonical sections" (although Xzar doesn't even have sections yet... but it would be that if it were properly written). The Xzar article didn't even say he was in the novel now for some reason, although I thought it did earlier. I can see it can be unclear with some of these articles... How about this: just about all BG articles are on my Watchlist, and I usually know how much they're canon, except maybe for some Throne of Bhaal ones. You can edit the "inhabitant" categories for BG, and I'll follow behind and see about the canonicity. (Seriously, is that a word?) And, of course, I can do that on my own initiative too. If this works, do you want the "Artices with non-canonical sections" category written down separately as well? Ville V. Kokko 08:05, 13 April 2007 (UTC)
 * ...Actually, it seems there's nothing much left to do there. You've been pretty efficient. Ville V. Kokko 08:19, 13 April 2007 (UTC)

Articles on years
I made a couple of changes to the way you cited the year articles, for example 714 DR. This is not to say the way you did it was wrong or anything, but in anticipation of the future expansion of these articles, the individual statements did not have citations, so they would become lost. By the way, thanks for mentioning the exact date of Fflar's death&mdash;it made a good addition to his article! Fw190a8 11:33, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

A Grand History of the Realms
I hadn't actually realised that the grand history was going to be published as a sourcebook! As far as I was aware, Brian R. James has for a long while been compiling a huge chronology using everything ever published within the Realms that has a date. As far as I am concerned it's a reliable source to be used for references. His work is thoroughly and exhaustively researched and there are likely to be few errors. Fw190a8 23:01, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

DnD preferences
You ask why I do not like spellcasters very much. Sorcerers have not so great spell advancement, wizards, I guess are ok, but clerics just stink. Divine spells are not my favorite thing. The worst is druids. I'm not trying to offend, but I hate druids. Also, spellcasters in general have hell awful reflex save stuff and base attack bonuses. Also, when I use the elite array, I have two great scores. 15 and 14. The wizard/bard whatever i'm playing forces me to put those abilities into mental abilities. Dexterity and Constitution, the two most useful abilities are left out. As I said, wizards are ok, and so are bards, but rogues (because of 10d6 sneak attack) and monks (because of various things) make them look like little girls. Still, barbarians are the worst of the bunch, even though their rage is ok. DrizztTheSlayer 22:41, 28 April 2007 (UTC)
 * I think I probably offended some people with what I said about barbarians and sorcerers. Sorry. I was wondering your D&D character's class, because you seemed pretty incredulous when I said I didn't like sorcerers. I'm guessing your D&D character is a sorcerer. You know, sorcerers do get some awesome new spells in Complete Mage which I think is pretty much the best D&D book ever. DrizztTheSlayer 18:10, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

Featured blurb
Please check out the Forgotten_Realms_Wiki:Proposed_blurb_for_featured_wiki and make a contribution to the proposed blurb if you want! Fw190a8 18:58, 9 May 2007 (UTC)

thanks
Thanks for giving the warlock page a citation. The warlock class is awesome, if you haven't played one. As a thanks you, and if you are a huge D&D fan, go to google and type in "D&D stat test" and somewhere on the first page their will be a link to a website that will give you your stats after a few questions. I took the test and my stats are on my userpage. ChaoticNeutral 00:14, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

Malchor
When I reverted your edits the page didn't show all of the things you had put in, just the 2e bit in the character template, which, with the archmage levels was wrong. Sorry for the inconvenience. Firefox has been acting up for me today so I'm trying Opera now.

Question
I'd say that as long as an image is freely available on the Wizards site, we can use it here, provided we are not claiming that we own it. The promotional template should be fine for that. Fw190a8 23:25, 23 June 2007 (UTC)

Spaces in references
I congratulate you for using the inline citation format so well! It's great to see well-cited articles, and it is very difficult to dispute the information in these articles, which is the sign of a good, reliable wiki. I'd like to ask that you leave out the space between the full stop (period) and the reference itself. For example, instead of: Bananas are good. ...use... Bananas are good. Don't let this minor thing diminish the efforts you've put into the references themselves! Fw190a8 01:19, 24 June 2007 (UTC)

Stubs
Just wondering, but why do you have this obsesion with putting stubs on all my articles? I understand that if someone makes an entry that says 'Elminster is a mage', that would be a stub...but a lot of the stuff I'm posting has very, very little lore. There is nothing to add to it. And if your going to say they might add more lore later I'd ask-1.Why don't you put a stub on every article YOU create? and 2.If your gonna say that everything anyone but you does gets a stub...don't you think the whole Wiki will just be a stub? 3.And why is nothing you do a stub? (Bloodtide)

Thanks...did not mean to sound so harsh(now that I look back and read it). You do help out a lot, and I'm still new here. (Bloodtide)

Notes and references
Ask as many questions of me as you like! The more we ask each other the more we can learn and the more we're all on the same "page" I guess.

There is some ambiguity at Wikipedia over the "Notes" and "References" sections. Logically, the way I see it, notes are things like annotations, the kind of thing you might put in brackets (parentheses) in the text, but put at the bottom of the page because it would interrupt paragraph flow. A reference is a listed source of information intended to provide irrefutable evidence that a statement is true or correct. Therefore, logically we should be using the "References" heading for everything, right?

I was using this "References" section originally but then I noticed that Ebakunin was changing them all to "Notes". Having checked on Wikipedia it seems to be an "either/or" situation. I don't think it's an "and" situation though, meaning that I don't think it's necessary to have an entry duplicated in both the "Notes" and "References" sections.

The way I have it in my head is that a note is a citation directly related to a specific piece of text, such as when we use the tag to provide a citation, whereas a reference is when there is just a piece of source material relating to the article in general, but no specific sentence, such as when someone has only roughly sourced an article. We're in a unique position here because almost every single statement in this wiki can be attributed to a specific page of a specific source, so I say let's use that to our advantage. If you can provide a reference for a specific statement using the tag, let the tag in the "Notes" section handle it, but otherwise, use the "References" section. Ideally we'll have no "References" sections at all! Fw190a8 04:48, 30 June 2007 (UTC)