User talk:Regis87

Welcome!
Well met, Regis87, and welcome to the Forgotten Realms Wiki! Thank you for your edit to the Golden Cove 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) 04:44, December 5, 2017 (UTC)

Welcome!
Hi, welcome to the FRW. Thanks for your additions. I hope you stay and develop our knowledge of the Realms further.

Some words of advice.

First, slow down! We see a lot of new editors come in, get excited, and pump out a flurry of work. However, it takes a lot of effort for the other editors to clean up and point out newbie mistakes, while the new editor gets burned out and leaves after a bit. So take it slow, do a little bit, see how we polish up your articles and additions, then take on board what changes you can for the next round until you're able to operate without the safety net.

Please look at how I've revised articles like M'Khiin Grubdoubler, Chogurugga, and Golden Cove. Their revision histories will illustrate this. In particular, use the full infoboxes such Person and Location and our citation templates.

For that, we recommend using the Source Editor or Rich-Text Editor, not the Visual Editor. The Visual Editor won't show any of the code and makes it very difficult to add templates, especially citations, and it won't give any of our helpful information on some screens. The Source Editor and Rich-Text Editor show you the wiki code, which is easy to learn by looking at it and is simpler than the average forum code.

Don't stop at stubs! They're just placeholders for others to develop. Try to tell the full story or description, to make the wiki more useful to gamers and fans.

When doing Dragon magazines, you only need to list the Forgotten Realms related articles. Because we're an FR wiki, we focus on the FR lore and relevant core material, and don't cover the other settings, so Dragon magazine 407 doesn't need to mention the Dark Sun or Eberron articles.

Finally, if you have any questions or problems, just ask! Any experienced editor will be able and willing to help you. — BadCatMan (talk) 00:39, December 6, 2017 (UTC)

Dragon magazine categories
Hello! I have seen that you have created lots of Dragon magazine article. Its great to have these here, thanks! I noticed that you manually put in the three usual categories "Dragon magazine issues", "Published in..." and "Magazines". These categories are actually automatically added when you use the Dragon magazine template, so you don't need to include them. Moreover, they are usually sorted differently, so it may be better not to add them manually. Happy scribing! Daranios (talk) 20:46, December 12, 2017 (UTC)

Use of the Appearances Section
Hey, thanks for all the great work that you are doing on this wiki!

I wanted to point out something about the Appearances section of the appendices of articles. You are adding a lot, but are misusing them in some cases. It is meant to be used for an appearance in a story or adventure, as opposed to a place where more can be learned about this person, place, or thing. That latter case should be listed in a Further Reading section.

Also, when listing an appearance in a magazine, it is important not just to link to the magazine but to indicate the story or adventure.

When listing further reading, provide the page number, just as you would a source.

For example, an article about the Foo monster might end like this:

Appearances

 * "The Forgotten Realms Is Foobar"

Standardized Sections
I just wanted to point out that we have a set of standard section headings and section order guidelines that were generally agreed upon a few years back. See Standardized Sections on most infobox template documentation pages. For example, a Gallery comes after the Appearances section. Note that those Further Reading sections you've been adding are the equivalent of the External Links section and should go just above the References section (which is always last). Thanks for all your contributions! &mdash;Moviesign (talk) 14:22, January 13, 2018 (UTC)

Dragon 214
Hello! Thanks for creating the Spellfire: Master the Magic page, I was looking forward to that since I have seen the AD&D Trading Cards. But I wanted to contact you about something else: You have removed that "First Quest" entry about Harold Johnson from Dragon magazine 214. Johnson and the article were to an important part concerned about Dragonlance, but he also did a little work for the Realms in his engagement into RPGA, namely contributing to Gateway to Ravens Bluff, the Living City and co-products. In this light, would it be ok for you if I put the mention of that "First Quest" article back in? Daranios (talk) 18:10, January 17, 2018 (UTC)
 * My bad! I was unaware of his connections to FR. Go for it! --Regis87 (talk) 18:26, January 17, 2018 (UTC)

Dragon Magazine by Year Pages
Much of what you are putting on pages like Dragon Magazine 1977 is already available in the citations and/or articles for those issues. Hold off on creating any more of those until I do a little testing this weekend. I might be able to save you a lot of work. &mdash;Moviesign (talk) 15:22, January 26, 2018 (UTC)
 * ok sweet, thanks. I wanted to do a navbar for the magazines, but having a 430 issue navbar was just too much, so figured to sort it by year. I'll stand by! --Regis87 (talk) 15:51, January 26, 2018 (UTC)
 * What sort of format do you like for these? I see you started with a table and then changed to section headings. Any preferences? &mdash;Moviesign (talk) 16:23, January 26, 2018 (UTC)
 * The table didn't look good, so went with the headings then the cover image gallery at the bottom, looks cleaner and easier to read. --Regis87 (talk) 16:30, January 26, 2018 (UTC)
 * What if we kept the text in a table format and kept the images in a gallery? There's a lot of wasted space with the vertical heading layout, but I agree that the cover thumbnails made it look bad. &mdash;Moviesign (talk) 16:40, January 26, 2018 (UTC)
 * That's a good idea, easier to format as well, since we can pull it from the existing table on the Dragon page. Let's do it. --Regis87 (talk) 16:45, January 26, 2018 (UTC)

Chiming in here: I really like the idea of having such pages, but the page titles are confusing to me. First off, for most of its run, the magazine's name is Dragon, not Dragon Magazine. It is incorrect to capitalize the word "Magazine". 2, I think that "Dragon Magazine 1977" looks like our pages for each issue&mdash;in other words, I thought it was about Dragon issue #1977, (which I know doesn't really exist, but still.)

How about Dragon issues from 1977 or List of Dragon issues from 1977? Or, do this by volume instead of year, such as Dragon volume I.

Another issue that I have had for years is the sloppiness with the naming of the magazine in the articles (not your fault, again, it's been years). Technically, Dragon magazine 5 is not that at all; it should be The Dragon issue 5 as a wiki page and The Dragon #5 in article text. It was not called Dragon yet. I've intended for a long time to go and change all the lead sentences too. There's also the issue with the fact that magazine titles need everywhere to be italicized.

I'm very excited that you are on this project, because it was at one time on my back log of projects, (proof,) before I decided that it wasn't worth the effort to me. :)

~ Lhynard (talk) 17:38, January 26, 2018 (UTC)
 * Very good point! I like the idea of doing it by "Dragon issues from year X", it looks like they stopped using volume #'s when they went digital near the end. And yes, their name switches has had me thinking the same thing you are. It was one of the things I was going to look at when I'm done adding issues, and go through to clean and add missing info. Dragon is my favourite magazine! I have a box full of them, every printed issue. So when I noticed all the missing issues, I figured it would be a good way for me to get into the "groove" of adding content to the wiki. --Regis87 (talk) 17:47, January 26, 2018 (UTC)

Bot Warning
I'm adding the volume and edition parameters to all the dragon magazine infoboxes, so you might want to not edit those until you hear from me here. &mdash;Moviesign (talk) 01:44, January 27, 2018 (UTC)
 * Ok gotcha --Regis87 (talk) 01:55, January 27, 2018 (UTC)
 * I'm done with that task. You will still have to fill in the volume parameter on those pages that don't have it, but the edition is taken care of for the pages that exist as of right now. &mdash;Moviesign (talk) 02:34, January 27, 2018 (UTC)

Infobox fields
Thanks for adding some 2e info and pics to the infoboxes, but please be sure to read what the intent is for each field. The size fields are for a game mechanics term, such as Small or Medium. The actual measurement ranges go in the physical description section. This is especially important, because the fields are intelligent and auto-create proper categories if used properly. Thanks and keep up the good work! ~ Lhynard (talk) 05:35, February 1, 2018 (UTC)

Congrats!
* claps* (at your finishing the Dragon articles) ~ Lhynard (talk) 20:09, February 2, 2018 (UTC)

Proper Catagorizing of Images
I see that you are moving on to adding a lot of images. That's great!

However, please be sure to fully categorize the images. I took a ton of time in the past to categorize, for example, all of the dragon images on the wiki, but now you have added a ton more that are not properly categorized. Here is what each of the new images that you uploaded need for categories:
 * Images of
 * Images of
 * Images of 
 * Images of true dragons
 * Images of dragons
 * Images of creatures
 * Illustrations

Does that make sense? Start that the most specific, and then work up to the most general.

For classed dragons, throw in a
 * Images of

The same goes for every other image that you add.

I did a few of your dragons; could you please go back through and add the cats. to the others? Thanks!

~ Lhynard (talk) 20:46, February 2, 2018 (UTC)
 * ahh, thanks for the heads up! I'll fix the others asap. --Regis87 (talk) 20:56, February 2, 2018 (UTC)