User talk:Sajuukkhar9000

Welcome!
Well met, Sajuukkhar9000, and welcome to the Forgotten Realms Wiki! Thank you for your edit to the A-Ling Shan page. We hope you like the place and decide to stay and explore the Forgotten Realms with us.

Here are some pages that you might find helpful, that explain who we are and what we do and how we do it. You should find these a useful reference, or maybe they could give you some ideas for something to do.

It's our goal to be a complete and reliable encyclopaedia of the official Forgotten Realms in all its forms, and a valuable resource for all Realms fans, players, and dungeon masters. As such, we do not accept fan fiction, homebrew lore, and player characters. All information added to this wiki must be attributed to an official source. Information must not be copied from sourcebooks and novels. Please always give a source for your information, and explain what you've done in the "summary" box.

We hope you enjoy editing here. Please sign your messages on Talk and Forum pages using four tildes ( ~ ); this will automatically insert your username and the date. If you need help, please leave a message on my talk page or ask any of the administrators about things.

Again, welcome! Happy scribing!

— Hashimashadoo (talk) 10:02, January 11, 2016 (UTC)

Hordelands Edits
Thanks for your contributions to some of the Hordelands pages. Don't forget that all in-article written text needs to be in the past tense. Happy editing!Artemaz (talk) 14:04, January 11, 2016 (UTC)

Howling Gap
You did a pretty good job setting up the basic content for the Howling Gap page. The next step is to add bold to the page subject, Howling Gap in this case, and then add links for other subjects within the page that have or will have their own pages ... these are usually all proper nouns. Adding an infobox and categories also helps fully flesh out the page.

I made these changes using the source editor, but you can see how it's done by looking at the edits. Let me know if you have any questions. Artemaz (talk) 17:13, January 11, 2016 (UTC)

Temporary Edit Block
Hi, welcome to the site.

You have done a good job in writing the text of your new articles and including citations. It's good to have new editors. However, I am temporarily blocking your account, until you acknowledge (here) that you understand the points Artemaz raised above. The reason is because it takes a lot of work to go through your new entries and correct them to the standards of the wiki. Please acknowledge that you will try to follow the guidelines, and I'll quickly remove the block for you.

We'd rather you add information slowly and according to our guidelines than a lot of information not in the proper format.

Feel free to ask questions if you have them and many of us would be glad to help.

~ Lhynard (talk) 17:56, January 11, 2016 (UTC)


 * I completely agree with both Art and Lhyn here... please read our Help:Contents page for rules and advice on editing... thanks :) - Darkwynters (talk) 23:19, January 11, 2016 (UTC)

Thank you for writing your newest entry in past tense. However, you still seem to have ignored the other comments about using bold for the title of the page used in the first sentence and the use of links (indicated with double brackets) to other articles.

Again, please respond here to let us know that you acknowledge these things.

~ Lhynard (talk) 23:47, January 11, 2016 (UTC)


 * Sorry, its site for some reason doesn't give me notices like most other wikis when someone adds a new post to my page. Ill remember to use past tense, and bold the name of the location, as well as add info boxes to new pages. Still kinda new to the whole wiki thing. Didn't even know how to add an info box, since its not explained anywhere obvious.


 * Ive just been trying to add most of the named locations described in The Horde campaign box set manuals. Read through them and The Horde camping adventure books recently, and noticed a lot of places in them missing. Areas outside of faerun don't get much love. Sajuukkhar9000 (talk) 00:20, January 12, 2016 (UTC)


 * Great! Thank you for responding.


 * Again, I think your text was great, but I didn't want you editing countless articles if we could not communicate with you successfully!


 * Try going here and making sure you have a confirmed e-mail address at which to receive notifications and checking the box for "...my user talk page is changed".


 * Infoboxes are indeed a little confusing at first. Check over the changes we all made to your several articles today. You can copy-and-paste the code for them for starters and tweak as needed. Linking, though, is easy; it's more important than infoboxes, because links are the main part of what makes a wiki a wiki.


 * Happy editing! (You are un-blocked.)


 * ~ Lhynard (talk) 00:41, January 12, 2016 (UTC)

Uploading maps
I do have one question, about an unrelated topic... what is the wiki's policy on those old maps from the various boxes/adventure sets? such as this one: http://i.imgur.com/B4VAibQ.jpg. Are we not allowed to use those because they are copyrighted or something? I ask because over the years I've collected or made a number of them from various sites and sources, and noticed few of them get used here in the wiki, all, or even parts. Like, I have a map of the layout of Dhaztanar, at least how it was during the year "The Horde" materials are set, and was wondering if you would want them to add to the image sections. Sajuukkhar9000 (talk) 01:47, January 12, 2016 (UTC)


 * It is considered fair-use to employ low-resolution crops of such maps, provided the image files include details about the source and a notice of legality.


 * A good example of how to do this properly is found here.


 * To upload an image, use the "Contribute" button and select "Add an image". After you upload the image, edit the page and add the file information. I would copy the wiki code from File:Moonsea2eR.jpg and edit that to fit your case.


 * Once you've uploaded a map and attributed the image, you can insert it by name into an infobox or directly into a file using something like


 * ~ Lhynard (talk) 02:04, January 12, 2016 (UTC)


 * Those maps are copyrighted. That said, we do allow excerpts from them, but they need to be "low resolution", which is open to interpretation. I think I read somewhere that wikipedia uses 100Kb as a rule-of-thumb max file size. I take a full-sized image (usually an excerpt of a bigger map) and reduce it 50% in height and width, making it 25% of the size of the original, and call that low resolution. It is a gray area for which no one has an official ruling. Look through Category:Copyright tags for the various reasons we justify uploading things. For example, if Wizards puts a map on their web site, we tend to treat that as Promotional. Basically, if you upload something that does not meet the criteria specified on the Special:Upload page and/or makes us uncomfortable about it being fair use, we will probably delete it and perhaps ask you to try again. &mdash;Moviesign (talk) 02:26, January 12, 2016 (UTC)

Great!
Just saw your newest article. Thanks for taking our comments into consideration. You will get the hang of this quickly. Glad to see more entries coming. ~ Lhynard (talk) 03:29, January 13, 2016 (UTC)

The only reason I can make these so quickly is because The Horde source book had a alphabetical list of nearly every major location in the Endless Wastes. I have just been going through the list and seeing what ones were made already or not. I was lucky to snag it, and most of the other free source books, back when Wizard still offered them. Sajuukkhar9000 (talk) 03:35, January 13, 2016 (UTC)

Welcome and advice
Hi! Welcome to the wiki. Thanks for your additions. It looks like you're doing good work, so I hope you stick around.

I have some advice and requests.

First, please make sure you write in past tense, as per our remove wiki from timeline policy. This protects the wiki against the evolving timeline of the setting. In addition to that, it's a good idea to provide a year to give dating context to the lore that is on the page. For example, you added lore to Zindalankh, but wrote it in present tense, and no year is given. So it's not clear to a reader if this is set in 1358, 1362, 1367, or 1479 DR.

Second, we've seen too many users come in, make a flurry of new articles, then fade away, apparently burned out. It looks like you're doing pretty well, so we don't want to lose you to that. In addition, with many new articles and new lore added to existing articles, it's very hard for us to check your work as we are. So, for both reasons, I recommend you slow down, take your time, spend a little time to check things and craft your article.

Ask if you have any questions. Again, welcome. — BadCatMan (talk) 11:16, January 13, 2016 (UTC)

Sorry, I keep writing in the present because writing in the past tense is entirely unnatural, and no other wiki I've ever edited has used such a system. Its hard to break a habit when every basic fundamental of the English language says you shouldn't write that way. And I wrote that Zindalankh article in the past tense, hence the use of was, has, and "since then, instead of things like is. also, those dateless events were already in those articles, I just added on them. Maybe you should yell at the person who originally wrote it instead of someone else. Sajuukkhar9000 (talk) 11:29, January 13, 2016 (UTC)


 * No need to get snappy. I missed who wrote what on that page, but other work of yours had similar issues.
 * The past tense is quite common in all wikis I've seen, and is basically the default for novels and most forms of writing. And those terms aren't actually all past tense: "has" is present tense, "has been" is a present perfect continuous tense. "Since" is a bit tricky, sometimes readable as from a point in the past to the present, depending on the sentence structure. So, again, please take care to use the past tense. — BadCatMan (talk) 11:40, January 13, 2016 (UTC)


 * Fallout wiki, TES wiki, Star Trek Online wiki, Stargate wiki, most wikis I frequent use is. Was implies.. well.. was. If Neverwinter WAS a city on the sword coast.. what happened to it? did it disappear? was it destroyed? Was implies something no longer is, but, unless something in canon specifically says a place was totally destroyed or abandoned, then it wasn't, and still IS a place in the world, no matter how long its been since we last actually saw it mentioned in lore. That's how canon works for every fictional series I've ever seen, and I've never seen a book use the word was in regards to place still known to exist. Was is always was in the case of "was there but isn't because of X". I was actually kind of confused why so many places were seemingly gone because of the frequent use of the word "was" here is so utterly uncommon in the use of referring to something that IS. Sajuukkhar9000 (talk) 12:20, January 13, 2016 (UTC)


 * Those are wikis for franchises with static timelines. They only need to go up to a certain point, the unchanging present date of their setting, then stop. Stargate is a dead franchise even. Now see Wookiepedia, Memory Alpha & Beta, and others, which are for franchises with evolving timelines, and events occuring in different eras. Past tense. The Forgotten Realms covers events thousands of years ago (Netheril and Cormanthyr ages), centuries ago (Myth Drannor), the 1300s with present times ranging from 1356 DR to 1375 DR or so, and the 1400s, with present times in 1479 DR, and whenever 5th edition is now. This is a wiki that should be useful to games in all eras (mine are in 1375/1376). Either we rewrite the entire wiki (and this is a much bigger wiki than those you listed, and I'm not even going to check their article counts) to update and rephrase everything every time the setting advances two years or a century, or an author changes something, or we just use past tense.


 * I've heard that argument countless times, and I'm afraid I still don't see it. English just doesn't work that way in practice when applied to fiction. The vast majority of novels are written in past tense (personally, I find it more comfortable and solid). That doesn't mean everyone is dead, it only means this is a story that happened. We are telling that story here.


 * I've been working on a proper style guide for the wiki. It's still an incomplete draft, but have a look at the sections on Perspective and Tense, here, for more details and clarification. I hope that helps. — BadCatMan (talk) 15:55, January 13, 2016 (UTC)


 * I do hope this is a joke, and you aren't seriously trying to state that games like Elder Scrolls, and Fallout, which have lore going back hundreds, if not thousands, of years, are static timelines. That is disgustingly ignorant of all of those series. Sajuukkhar9000 (talk) 20:21, January 13, 2016 (UTC)


 * I haven't played either of them. I have Morrowind, but I just didn't have time for video gaming at that point. Anyway, "disgustingly ignorant" is pretty extreme thing to say. They're just games, not everyone has played them – most people in the world haven't, in fact. By static timeline, I mean they go up to some present point, a current state of affairs, that doesn't have to keeping changing each year.
 * And The Elder Scrolls Wiki and Fallout Wiki (I looked at them now), and the STO wiki are game wikis that focus on the rules and gameplay of their respective games. Their primary point-of-view is an out-of-universe one: most articles begin by telling you what game the subject appears in, quest information, gameplay, etc. That's why a present tense is used, because it generally has a real-world point-of-view. Our sister wikis for the Baldur's Gate, Icewind Dale, and Neverwinter games have the same approach.
 * The Forgotten Realms Wiki is a story-based wiki. It doesn't present gameplay or rules information, we've got policies against it. Instead, it presents the history of the setting, the stories within the novels as much as in sourcebooks. Hence we treat it as a novel and use past tense.
 * We're comparing apples and oranges here, but you're biting an apple and complaining it doesn't taste like an orange. The apple is fine. — BadCatMan (talk) 08:31, January 14, 2016 (UTC)


 * Greetings, Saj... the topic of "past tense" can be found on our Forgotten Realms Wiki:Remove wiki from timeline page and the discussion can be found at Forum:Split the wiki. - Darkwynters (talk) 00:50, January 15, 2016 (UTC)

Full Infobox
Great work on the Ustann page! I began going through making new pages for the Hordelands, which is an area I love, but got side-tracked with other things. It's nice to see a new editor helping to flesh-out this fascinating region.

When adding an infobox to your pages, make sure to copy and paste the FULL infobox template code even if you are not using most of the different lines on the infobox. This makes it much easier for future information to be added to the infobox. Artemaz (talk) 14:19, January 13, 2016 (UTC)


 * What do you mean copy paste the code? I have just being using insert -> info box on the normal editing page, theres no "code" it just brings up a list of various fields that are valid for that kind of info box, and even then, all you have to do is click on the little "infobox" popup that appears when you mouse over the infobox in the editor to add or remove more fields. I really don't know what you mean by copy pasting code. Sajuukkhar9000 (talk) 20:21, January 13, 2016 (UTC)


 * The easiest way to see the code I'm talking about is to go to an established page like Elfinster, and click on the down arrow next to the edit box, the edit source option will show as the first choice. After selecting that the source editor opens, which is by far the easiest way to edit pages on the FR Wiki. The source editor shows how the page looks like with all of the code. Using the Elfinster page as an example, the full infobox is represented by everything seen between the { { Person at the top and the }} located toward the middle right before the actual text begins.


 * All of these templates can be copied and pasted, into the source editor only, to make creating pages easier. The infobox templates can be found by hovering over the Help tab at the top of the page, then selecting the templates tab that pops up, then you just select the appropriate template (Location, Person, Building, Item, etc)


 * I know it sounds like a lot, but it's really easy once you try it a few times. Artemaz (talk) 20:55, January 13, 2016 (UTC)


 * Why on earth are you using source editing when there is a wysiwyg editor as the normal default editor? You're just making life harder on yourself doing everything by code when you can just click edit, click on the info box, and then just add in the info into the box that comes up. You know, like this http://i.imgur.com/OG9SYw7.jpg I am honestly pretty baffled by why you would suggest such a round about way to do this. Sajuukkhar9000 (talk) 21:31, January 13, 2016 (UTC)


 * That's exactly how the admins instructed me to add infoboxes when I first joined. If you are baffled by it then I suggest you ask them. You can certainly add an infobox using your method, but by doing so it leaves the infobox arranged like a giant run-on sentence at the top of the source editor page (instead of a clean top to bottom list), making it a pain to edit future information. Most of the time when making a new page, I just copy and paste the source code from one of my other pages, and then just change the text, references, etc to suite the new page. Artemaz (talk) 14:07, January 14, 2016 (UTC)


 * Most of us admins are old-school Wikia editors who cut our teeth on the source editor when it was the only one available. I still find it easier, faster, and clearer, while the rich-text and visual editors feel slow, clunky, and obscure, and have been known to cause problems. — BadCatMan (talk) 02:36, January 15, 2016 (UTC)


 * To follow up on BadCatMan's comment, it is true that several of us have coding backgrounds of some sort, so we prefer the raw HTML/wiki markup. He is also correct though that it is more than simply preference. One has far more precise control of an article's appearance if she or he edits the markup directly. There are many powerful things that a WYSIWIG simply cannot do, in part, because there are not characters for so many "invisible" things that are happening on pages.


 * As strange as it may seem, I even edit Word documents with all hidden characters displayed.


 * Ultimately, you are of course free to use whatever method you like. In certain areas, though, like the use of infoboxes, it is helpful to other editors after you if you use the raw markup, because the WSIWYG system wipes information and ruins markup formatting for the next person.


 * ~ Lhynard (talk) 14:05, January 21, 2016 (UTC)

Categories
yeah I realized I forgot to add categories at the bottom of the page, i'll do that from now on. Sajuukkhar9000 (talk) 02:28, January 14, 2016 (UTC)


 * Great; thanks. ~ Lhynard (talk) 12:26, January 14, 2016 (UTC)

Black Courser
I noticed you cited Black Courser on one of your pages. Do you own any more of that series like Blood Charge, etc? If so, are they good sourcebooks/adventures? I've been meaning to add those to my collection, but the prices on ebay seem a bit high. Thanks for any info. Artemaz (talk) 14:49, January 14, 2016 (UTC)


 * I don't personally own Black Courser, or much D&D material, outside the things Wizards gave out for free way back when. I don't even actually play the boardgame. I only know what was in it because my friend was a MASSIVE D&D nerd way back in the mid 80's/early 90's, and had a ton of this stuff, that series included. He still has most of his old stuff, and I read it like books for the lore, since I really like D&D lore from playing games like IWD, BG, and NWN. But as for the series itself, I found it funny, and all the Indian(India) based religious stuff gets really overblown, and some of the characters were funny. But since I don't actually play the boardgame, I can't really tell you how it stacks up as an adventure worth owning though. Sajuukkhar9000 (talk) 20:02, January 14, 2016 (UTC)

Good Job & Minor Request About Refs
I am very happy to see all the new pages you are adding! Thank you for adapting to the formats we use here; the pages keep looking better and better. You seem to be picking things up quickly.

One really minor thing to change: Could you use  instead of   for creating the references section at the end of articles? The former includes a consistent formatting scheme built in. For small articles, it does not matter much, but with larger articles, the refs look much better in a smaller size.

~ Lhynard (talk) 13:57, January 21, 2016 (UTC)