Arkham Horror Wiki talk:Community Portal

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Mythos Sources

One thing I would love to see on this wiki is a short entry citing the original mythos source of elements in this game. I can start with some examples (see Richard Upton Pickman, Necronomicon, Elder Sign, and Mi-Go). Is anyone opposed to this addition? If the idea is OK'ed, I would love it if all of the Lovecraft aficionados out there could provide their expertise. Also, a preferred title and style should probably be agreed on (so far I've just used a second-level heading called "Mythos Source"). --skrilmps 4 June, 2009

Do you think it would be sufficient to add some links to Wikipedia and/or WikiSource to show off the original works? e.g. Pickman's model could point to the full text of the short story here. Are there other good sources of information you'd like to include?
Given that this is a wiki and people can append whatever they like, I guess if there are other good sources they can be added as discovered and as needed. I heartily vote in favour of adding sources and references; I find the Lovecraft mythos fascinating and usually end up researching topics or entities I haven't heard of anyway.
My only reservation with this is if you think it breaks the in-game suspension of disbelief - see my talk at the Description Style entry. --Culix 19:09, 22 June 2009 (UTC)

Player Locater

On the Forum over at FFG the issue of a player locater popped up. I could make one such page with a table and all information the people would want to share with others. But: where, how to link to it etc. The King in Green 17:26, 27 March 2009 (UTC)

Maybe it depends on who wants to take care of it and how often the data needs to be updated? e.g. will one person be in charge of maintaining the data, or do individual people update their own data? Is there an existing tool for other types of games you could make use of? --Culix 04:52, 1 April 2009 (UTC)
I would take care of the information coming from the FFG Forum. Users of this wiki are of course free to add any information on themselves they like. I don't know if there exists a tool; simple (but sortable) wiki-tables would be all that we need. ;-) The King in Green 13:41, 2 April 2009 (UTC)
I put up a note on the Main Page asking for a link. When that is done, I can start adding the info from the FFG-forum. The King in Green 18:25, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

Deleting pages

Hey admins. So I created Template:Rfd and some of its associated sub-templates so I could flag this page for deletion. But RFD apparently wants you to create a discussion page for each deletion request. Do you want to do that? This wiki seems to have way less traffic than Wikipedia, so I'm not sure its necessary, as most of our deletion requests are page name typos. Maybe I should just create the 'speedy deletion' templates instead and use those? How do you want to go about requesting that pages be deleted? --Culix 16:11, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

Side note: it looks like All_Queit_in_Arkham! is a duplicate page with a typo. Can it be deleted? According to the special pages it is an orphan. --Culix 07:13, 31 March 2009 (UTC)

I've been wondering what the _____(Skill) pages in the skills category are for. forthegreatergood 10:52, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

Example:

I don't know how those were originally intended, but to me it seemed like it would be better to have the Skill cards under the form Luck (skill), so that the simpler URls, like Luck could be used for the basic skill values/skill statistics which are used in skill checks - they were already linked from all of the investigator pages. So that's the way I reorganized it over the space of a couple days. There are now pages for each skill value and for the corresponding skill check, as well as for the Skill cards. --Notfilc 06:19, 27 November 2009 (UTC)
Thanks Notfilc. --forthegreatergood 04:59, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

Description Style

Do you have a preference between in-game or out-of-game descriptions? By that I mean - do you prefer to describe the rules on this wiki as if the reader is actually in Arkham and the game-world is real; or describe them as if the reader is a person on Earth playing a board game, and Arkham is a fictional city?

I only ask because I thought of this when writing the description for Neighborhood. For example, you can use in-game style by saying "Arkham is divided into several neighborhoods"; or out-of-game style by writing "The Arkham city board is divided into several neighborhoods".

Maybe I'm over thinking this and it doesn't really matter? I doubt we need something as large as the Wookieepedia Manual of Style - the Arkham Horror board game is a much smaller subject, and people are less likely to become confused. At any rate I thought I'd mention it in case anyone cares. For now I'll go with out-of-game style, as we are playing a board game after all. This makes it easier to explain other concepts like moving pieces around and playing with cards. And we do already mention board-game terms like 'tokens' and 'turn phases' throughout the site. --Culix 06:19, 1 April 2009 (UTC)

For example: do you think it's better to have topics like 'Yuggoth' point to an in-universe description page on the Arkham Horror wiki, or should they point to a site like wikipedia? Does it break your suspension of disbelief to have external links mixed in with wiki links, as I did on the Ghatanothoa page? --Culix 18:59, 22 June 2009 (UTC)
As my personal preference, I would favor descriptions as documenting a game - as you say, otherwise we would be unable to describe many aspects of gameplay - but keeping them as concise as possible. To use your example above: "Arkham is divided into several neighborhoods" also describes the board, but does so more concisely than your alternative. I also think it's interesting and useful to provide both on-site and off-site links on Mythos Source sections, and took that approach on my recent additions. --Notfilc 20:23, 1 November 2009 (UTC)

'Edition' vs 'Expansion'?

Some pages (e.g. Monster) have sort-able data tables that list things by 'edition'. But I think the official terminology is Expansion. Does anyone have a preference about one or the other? Any complaints if we were to change all 'edition' references to 'expansion' instead? ('Expansion' makes more sense to me; 'edition' makes it sound like you're talking about different versions of the Arkham Horror game, like the one from 1987) --Culix 09:41, 14 April 2009 (UTC)

I personally prefer the term Expansion over 'edition', for much the same reasons. Shademan 09:46, 11 June 2009 (UTC)
It's also different because 'Editions' generally refer to reprints of the same thing (although usually with some changes). So the newer version of the main game with the rule corrections from the expansions included would be a new edition, while things like the Innsmouth Horror are an Expansion (although they could have multiple 'Editions' too if they were reprinted with changes). Dragavan 22:24, 39 October 2009 (UTC)
I bit the bullet and converted all the tables to read "Expansion" in place of "Edition". --Notfilc 23:59, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

1000 articles

Congratulations everyone on breaking the 1,000 article mark :) --Culix 14:26, 8 July 2009 (UTC)

Arkham Horror - Innsmouth Horror PDF Rules are up. http://new.fantasyflightgames.com/ffg_content/Arkham_Horror/Innsmouth%20Horror/ah_ih_rules.pdf not sure who can add them to the front page.

Under 100 wanted pages

... and we're now down to under 100 Wanted Pages too. (And some of those missing links are due to discussion of now-deleted pages, which shouldn't really exist.) Woot! --Notfilc 01:03, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

Using Images? And... Board Pics?

Hi there. I'm planning on doing a fairly detailed video tutorial for AH sometime soon, and I'm wondering if I am allowed to use the images on this site. I am not being paid in any way to do that, so I'm hoping it would fall under fair use.

Also, are the board images uploaded here anywhere? I might like to use one of them for the tutorial. --Grudunza 16:13, 21 July 2009

I have no idea if anyone is allowed to use the images... I believe they are scans from the official product? But as for images of the Arkham Horror board, you could try searching Flickr for images with a Creative Commons license. There seem to be a number of those. --Culix 16:39, 21 July 2009 (UTC)

Titles/Headings Consistency

As I've roamed the site, I find that page titles and section headings are not consistent in their form from page to page, nor indeed sometimes within a single page. In general it would be best if page titles and headings are capitalized according to accepted rules of title capitalization:

  • Always capitalize the first and the last word.
  • Capitalize all nouns, pronouns, adjectives, verbs, adverbs, and subordinate conjunctions ("As", "Because", "Although").
  • Lowercase all articles, coordinate conjunctions ("and", "or", "nor"), and prepositions of less than five letters, when they are other than the first or last word.
  • Lowercase the "to" in an infinitive.

Also, articles detailing game items/terms should have their titles in singular, rather than plural form (e.g., "Magical Effect" not "Magical effects" [sic -- I use this example in particular as I recently had a mildly frustrating experience involving it]). References to game items/terms within the body of article texts should of course take their capitalization and form from context. Referenced titles in text body should always follow the rules of capitalization above.

To be sure, FFG have themselves been inconsistent in respect of these two points both among and within the published rulebooks to date, which doesn't set a very good example.

Be advised, therefore, that as occasion (and energy) arises I will correct such gaffes as I come across them. Most likely without comment (for my intention is not embarrass anyone). I will endeavour always to check my work and create REDIRECTs where needed (and there's always 'revert' and 'undo' just in case).

Cheers,

Grog

Some sites such as Wikipedia use different conventions for capitalization, but in general I agree that it would be good to make articles and section headings consistent here. I heartily agree with creating redirects as you fix singular/plural form and tense of words - that way people can easily create an article and not worry about making the links match.
Thanks for all the work! --Culix 03:04, 14 August 2009 (UTC)
I've been doing some more of this kind of thing too, mostly as I stumble across it while looking through the "wanted pages", "wanted categories", or other special pages. FWIW, --Notfilc 17:00, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

Images

I've been asked by Fantasy Flight Games to remove the text from the images. I've done so for common and unique items, spells, and allies. I'll be overwriting the existing images as I get more time with the text removed. They were gracious in not shutting us down completely, so I'll comply with their request. Benjamin 20:59, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

FFG are fairly consistent and vigorous in protecting their products, but usually also polite about it to a fault. It's just a shame so much good work has to be undone. Old Grog 00:01, 12 August 2009 (UTC)
I was wondering if we were able to use all of these images. Thanks for the note. Yes, I'm glad they don't want us to shut the wiki down completely. --Culix 03:09, 14 August 2009 (UTC)
A suggestion: just in case FFG should become impatient with the progress of bringing images into compliance, all (or, at least, most) images could be temporarily disabled by "breaking" the various image templates. Comment, or "nowiki" the functional portions of their text, or whatever. It's a simple matter to restore functionality later with an undo. I won't be doing this myself, but leave it to an admin to decide. -- Old Grog 01:20, 15 August 2009 (UTC)

Corruption images

I was playing with corruptions recently so I grabbed all of the corruption images and removed the text. I can upload them if you want. Also, for each corruption we use two images - one for the black movement direction and one for the white. What do you think about only using one of the cards? This removes the text and reduces the images used on the site - throwing a bone to FF and hopefully showing that we're acting in good faith. --Culix 18:39, 8 April 2010 (UTC)

Category Tags

My question is, category tags priority: general to specific, or specific to general? Put another way (for example):

Categories: Arkham Horror|Locations|Areas with special encounters

or the other direction? There's a bit of inconsistency in this regard throughout the site. (In case anyone is suspicious, yeah, I used to work in systems analysis and database management, so these little things tend to set me off on a 'crusade' [don't worry, I'm laughing, too].) -- Old Grog 01:38, 16 August 2009 (UTC)

I think from general to more specific is the logical way to go, particularly as we add category tags over time. --Notfilc 23:50, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

Most Wanted Pages

The community has been doing a fantastic job filling in the gaps in the wiki. I've been trying to work through the Wanted Pages and fix links (where the missing page was due to a broken link) or add pages as needed, particularly where it was simple and obvious what was needed. If anybody is in the mood to add pages, here's what I would consider the most important and useful of the remaining 87 "Wanted pages", starting from those with the most links and most important to game play:

and of course any other pages you want to "go for". All IMHO, of course. --Notfilc 19:12, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

Lots of additions to fill in the missing pages, thanks everyone! --Notfilc 01:45, 8 March 2010 (UTC)

Stubs No More

When does a stub stop being a stub? For instance, Skill sliders don't have much more to them, unless someone adds an example (user-created/non-copyrighted) image of an investigator to illustrate their usage. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Rdguthrie 11:15, 1 June 2005 (UTC)

Yeah, I would say Skill sliders is pretty good. In general, I don't know; a page is probably not a stub when it explains its topic and isn't lacking information. Wikipedia has this page and this page discussing stubs, if that helps. If you want to add some examples though they won't go to waste! :) --Culix 19:24, 13 March 2010 (UTC)
Another example - expansions. Curse_of_the_Dark_Pharaoh lists the date of release and what new rules/cards/etc were included with the expansion. Do the expansion pages need more than this? I'm not sure what else we would include. Any ideas? --Culix 13:47, 8 April 2010 (UTC)
For the expansions, the last thing I'd like to see added is a description of the theme, possibly with a little bit of the flavor text from the release - the box blurb, the intro to the rulesheet, etc. At that point I think we could say we've covered everything. There are a lot of pages which really have said about everything they can on a subject and could be very well de-stubbed. --Notfilc 17:39, 10 April 2010 (UTC)

External Links

I am developing a program related to arkham horror and wanted to share a link with the community. I can't see anybody to email it to. What should I do? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Lukestowe1979 09:21, 8 March 2010 (UTC)

Benjamin is one of the admins and usually responds pretty quickly if you post a comment or request on his Talk page. He also has Facebook and Twitter links that you could use to reach him. --Notfilc 07:40, 11 March 2010 (UTC)
Depending on the program, you can probably share the link here and/or post it in the Arkham Horror forums as well. I'm not sure if we have an official link policy for this wiki. As long as it's not violating any FF copyrights it's probably okay. What does it do? --Culix 19:33, 13 March 2010 (UTC)
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