Help talk:Portal

Ideas/Modifications

I've recently been working on a "Help:Portal" for new users. The end goal is to have a page where new users can go to easily find a introduction to D&Dwiki, reasons and ways to join, basic formatting tutorial and help, and any basic polices, as well as a easy way to find another user or admin to talk to or pose questions to.

Anyways Help:Portal#Behavioral Policies, I've currently got up a rough draft of something for behavioral guidelines (the next redlink on the portal - trying to get it all filled out). Basically, this is just a copy of Wikipedias and a writing of what has been stated by bureaucrats here or has been standard. I don't feel comfortable making that page without the community's input, as I don't want other users to think that I'm trying to make policy or anything. I just want a page that can help new users and be used to settle and potential disputes. In that regard, I ask others to check out that page and feel free to edit constructively or discuss possible changes here.

While we're at it, any other thoughts on implementing the portal and good pages to have would be greatly appreciated. Just trying to make it really easy for new users to jump in and help, especially now that we're slowly compiling older editions and since we've had so many new users lately sign up. So, any ideas to help with that would be great!   Hooper   talk    contribs    email   10:27, 13 October 2009 (MDT)

I hope one understands these are only help pages - they are not written policies in any way.

“	Incivility consists of personal attacks, rudeness, and aggressive behaviors that disrupt the project and lead to unproductive stress and conflict. Incivility is disruptive and unacceptable, and as such D&D Wiki follows a zero-tolerance policy towards rude and uncivil behavior. Harassment, belittling, or other condemning actions from one user towards another will result in an instant permanent ban on the inflicting user.	”

If you look on Meta Pages we are using the warning system - not as aggressive as this.

Also on Help:Portal#Language and Adult Content I feel the warning system should be mentioned as well.

Is Help:Portal#User Pages from the GWBD admin nomination attempt? --Green Dragon 12:13, 14 October 2009 (MDT)

Yeah I'm trying to find the best wording to make sure users just see it as help. Perhaps using the name "behavioral guidelines" or "precedents" would work.

I'll try to word up something on the warning system. The user page bit is both inspired by the old GWBD discussions and a basic copy of the wikipedia ones. Whatever you think that should say as its really undefined to my knowledge.   Hooper   talk    contribs    email   12:16, 14 October 2009 (MDT)

Template

I just turned the help portal into... Well, I turned it into an actual portal. It's a template, and has been added to the top of all pages it contains. Later, I am going to edit it to give DPL listings of help pages, so we can create, mode, and update our help pages without having to manually update that template, and instead just applying help categories. You're welcome in advance. --Kydo (talk) 05:39, 19 September 2016 (MDT)

If anyone would like to edit it directly, it is available at Template:Helpportal. However, once it has been converted to DPLs, I can't see much reason for that. --Kydo (talk) 05:41, 19 September 2016 (MDT)

OK. it uses DPLs now. In order to make a page into a help page, simply add the {{helpportal}} template to the top of the page, and the header category you would like it to appear under at the bottom of the page. The header categories are Joining, Community, Editing, Browsing, Policy, and Management. I used the word management to avoid future complications; as a wiki, we don't actually have management in the traditional sense of the word, so this is a low-risk synonym. Help pages can now be moved, reorganized, renamed, and revised at will, without need to updating multiple pages, and the entire portal is visibly available on every help page. How handy. --Kydo (talk) 12:11, 19 September 2016 (MDT)

Hm. The spacing is kinda weird on mobile... I'll have to take a closer look at it some day soon. At the very least it works. We can polish it up from there. --Kydo (talk) 20:41, 19 September 2016 (MDT)

Website Name

Ok, look, here's the problems with calling ourselves D&D Wiki on our own pages:

1. That is not our web address.
2. We are not official, and it confuses newbies who think all wikis are encyclopedic, thanks to wikipedia.
3. We do not exist in a bubble. We have at least 2 competitor wikis, and those who know that, refer to us by our web address as a name as a point of clarity.
4. Nobody likes it when a website's name and url are disconnected.

The obvious solutions are:

1. Spin it. We can always just say it says D an' D Wiki. That's valid, people used to write that more frequently than DnD or D&D!
2. Make sure people know we are NOT WotC in ANY WAY SHAPE OR FORM, primarily by looking and sounding different.
3. If the shoe fits, wear it. Let the competitors squabble over their "perfect" name.
4. Try to be somewhat likeable.

It seems pretty reasonable for the wiki to refer to itself by its url, given the above. If you still disagree with me GD, fine, I'll go along with it. I just wanted you to know that my revision of name instances was reasoned. --Kydo (talk) 12:51, 20 September 2016 (MDT)

Here are my opposition arguments. If you can rebut them then I will wholeheartedly agree with your diagnosis.

There are no "rules" in the creative economy. Who cares what our web address is? Why does "danddwiki" or "dungeonsanddragonswiki.com" go here too? Should we ONLY use "danddwiki" or "dungeonsanddragonswiki.com"?

Well "danddwiki" is officially the url too. Its more confusing to use some ill-informed name per the game we are working with.

There are not "competitor" wikis, there are those websites which have republished content not using the correct channel, and created a sphere which no one really knows who they are (think theory: did someone kill all those users — go to their homes and kill them — and then take the content to another website? Why is this not correct? There is no way of showing this).

So lets not disconnect the url — lets use the "danddwiki" url as our official name on pages.

I hope that a statement of "Home of user-generated, homebrew, pages!" defers people from thinking we are WotC at the get go. A lot of people are not much smarter than their computer monitor though. --Green Dragon (talk) 17:11, 21 September 2016 (MDT)

OK. I'll go fix it. But that brings up some other points.

All of the above being the case, (and it is) why the heck do our browsers default to "dandwiki"? People even joke about it, asking "Who's Dan Dwiki?" Even I joke about it to myself, reading it as "dandy wiki". The other urls would go by without notice or mention.

People mistake us for WotC because we're kind of wearing a WotC costume. The wiki's skin looks like 3.5e. Anyone unfamiliar with other editions, or unfamiliar with WotC's obsession with looking flashy and new, could easily mistake this website as official if they don't bother to look at the logo... Which, let's be honest, they won't, because who actually looks at the logos or banners on a website at all anyways? Also, the text "Home of user-generated, homebrew, pages!" isn't even really in the logo, it's below it as standard text on the sidebar. It isn't even bolded. It has the same appearance as the headers for the sidebar sections. So, unless someone is actually reading the sidebar, (Something I don't think I actually did until three months into being a user here) nobody will even see it. It's background noise. Most of our users find this website through a google search. They are looking for the page they have already opened. They have no interest in browsing the wiki, they have no interest in homebrew or collaborative creativity, they just want official material to make a character, and their at-a-glance observations tell them they've found it. That's how I found this website, even!

I agree, that text should be there, but it needs to be stylistically different. It also needs to be attractive- in a lot of browsers, (especially on the various phones I've used on this site) that text looks AWFUL. Sometimes it can't even be read on certain low-resolution monitor settings for old computers. (Like the one at my job, which I'm using right now) I was thinking about redoing the logo, keeping it exactly the same, but just adding a catchy subtitle that has the same meaning as the text we have there now. That way it'll look good, stand out a little more, be visually associated with the wiki's identity, AND be mostly immune to resolution issues. --Kydo (talk) 18:43, 21 September 2016 (MDT)

For the D&D Wiki/dandwiki/danddwiki confusion, this, in my personal opinion, is a pretty negligible matter - I would use all 3 to refer to this site, and that's not a problem to anyone. Newgrounds was known as Newgrounds, NG, NGrounds, Fulpworld, whatever. Not a problem at all. We have multiple names, but it's not causing a problem to anyone wanting to communicate the idea of dandwiki from one person to another.

As for any other confusion between official material and otherwise, I know it's slow going because Blue Dragon is busy, but with homebrew templates and possibly different page colour/looks whatever, after the changes, users will be able to distinguish between official and homebrew material. This is a matter that will be addressed, but really needs technical changes, rather than policy changes.

Other than that, I do think it would be a positive change to incorporate text into the logo if it, or any other meaningful changes, meaningfully improve responsive readability. --86.175.25.184 10:45, 26 September 2016 (MDT) --SgtLion (talk) 10:46, 26 September 2016 (MDT)

OK. Well. All instances of the help referring to this place as anything other than "this wiki" or "D&D Wiki" have been removed.

I'm just putting the finishing touches on the help portal, making sure everything is as clean, tidy, organized, intuitive, and as professional-looking as possible. Mostly, it just needs people to read its contents and criticize/improve it now.

I really can NOT wait to see what you and BD have in mind. I'm so excited, I could almost burst! That single change could completely change the way people interact with this wiki, and really get this snowball rolling!

I will hold off on incorporating our homebrew focus into the logo, until the new skins are up and running. I don't want to make something ugly.

I guess my only question now is, how do we put Help into the sidebar? I tried messing around with it a while back, but my test edit made absolutely no change, so I have no idea how that works. I don't think it should replace meta pages though, I think it should be located above meta. One is useful for newbies, the other is useful to admin and other experienced users. It makes sense to keep both. --Kydo (talk) 00:45, 27 September 2016 (MDT)

I've added the Help Portal into the sidebar. Feel free to change it/remove it/whatever as pleased. --SgtLion (talk) 06:29, 27 September 2016 (MDT)

What the heck, why'd it work for you?? Oh well, whatever, it works, I'm happy! --Kydo (talk) 13:53, 27 September 2016 (MDT)

I will admit that I have no idea why it worked for me and not your edit. I'm scared to play around with it though, so I'll blame browser caching or something. --SgtLion (talk) 07:24, 28 September 2016 (MDT)

What big change are you talking about with Blue Dragon? To my knowledge he is not doing anything of this sort now. I know he would appreciate if someone made a skin that worked, tested it in their userspace, and then shared it so that we could change it like this. He has told me the best way to approach this is to let individual talent take the top tier to make a new look.

If you have a new logo I would love to see it! Just upload it and then everyone can decided on it/vote! Cool. Thanks for correcting the title text everywhere! --Green Dragon (talk) 17:44, 5 October 2016 (MDT)

I was actually thinking about that. How good is this wiki's software at multimedia? Like, if I made a vector-based translucent logo in neutral tones, would it be able to display that? Or can it only display static images with transparency at most? I ask because a neutral-tone vectorized logo could be used in a variety of locations at a variety of sizes without variation in image quality due to scaling, and would effectively use the color scheme of whatever is behind itself, allowing it to look good no matter how many times the skin changes, or what it changes to. I've never made such a thing for web browser display though, so I have no idea if it's actually possible. --Kydo (talk) 19:56, 6 October 2016 (MDT)

Hi Kydo, it would probably be best to leave the logo as a PNG with transparency (as opposed to something like an svg with alpha channels, as you are describing) simply because that's likely to work on almost any browser. You can certainly test out whether it will work by rendering the logo in any webpage, or I'll be happy to test it for you. Thanks, — Blue Dragon (talk) 17:02, 8 October 2016 (MDT)

Oh wow

I'm so used to the way I hunt the site I never realized this old thing I made is now linked on the sidebar. I'm glad it's getting good use!   Hooper   talk    contribs    email   16:05, 4 December 2016 (MST)

Its part of a larger project to revitalize sections of D&D Wiki to grow the community. You can read more about it starting here and with a focus on this. --Green Dragon (talk) 15:51, 5 December 2016 (MST)

Need help

im trying to make a link to a class that i created but it shows up in read and when i click on it it says this page does not exist Vampyre (5e_class) but i want that link to go to this one https://www.dandwiki.com/wiki/Vampyre_(5e_Class)

Take a closer look at the names. One of the c's in Class is uppercase, and the other is not. Does this get you anywhere? --Green Dragon (talk) 09:09, 1 December 2017 (MST)

Alright i will see if that helps --Alucarddragonborn (talk) 11:14, 1 December 2017 (MST)

Email Preferences

I can't find a way to set my E-mail address, everytime I try, the box I need to type my E-mail into disappeares before I can do anything about it. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by TimeMasterII (talk • contribs) 07:48, 31 December 2018‎ (UTC). Please sign your posts.

What is the link to get to the "Homebrew Banners and the case of the Blind Users"?

I've been searching but other than the actual search bar everything is needless for me. I won't be races and plot formats for topography until a much further date, so I won't even glance over there until I am fully developed. Way of the Viper (talk) 18:12, 13 April 2019 (MDT)

You mean User talk:Admin/Archive 4#Homebrew banners and the case of the blind users (DnD Quest)? I guess the discussion just kind of stopped at some point, and didn't get worked on. --Green Dragon (talk) 02:25, 14 April 2019 (MDT)

Pious Prestigious Class for the Avenger

I once read an article here that had a pious, holy, set of gains. I vaguely remember it as it being an avenger for GOD and had "smite" like dexterity with swordsmanship, religious fervor, and punishment. Here's a link to what I'm talking about, but I'd like this website's page as well; https://dnd4.fandom.com/wiki/Avenger. --Scales of the night. (talk) 00:36, 13 November 2019 (MST)

Flame's Problems

So, I was looking at the Rewards page of the wiki, and I found a reward, one of the spells, that says you need a divinity rank to use it, and my question is, how would a player get a divinity rank, or how would I give a player a divinity rank? Flamestarter (talk) 07:47, 16 December 2019 (MST)Flamestarter

By divinity rank I assume you mean ascending to becoming some sort of god(greater god, lesser god, demi-god). Although there are no official rules to becoming a god, these are some of my thoughts on how you would become a god:

• Making it to level 20, obtain many powerful magic items, and gain a variety of epic boons
• Be a well known figure through the lands and have people who pray to you
• At this point, depending on the DM, you could say that a pc has become a demi-god
• Finally, overthrowing an existing god and take over their domain and gaining their powers would allow you to fully become a god.--Blobby383b (talk) 17:41, 16 December 2019 (MST)

Hmm. Interesting. Thank you, Blobby! Flamestarter (talk) 06:23, 17 December 2019 (MST)Flamestarter

So, I'm just reusing this section of the chat for my problems... Anyway, I want to make a race or creature based on the Floette Pokémon since I've been doing pretty well with my other creatures and races based on Pokémon, but the Pokémon in question is 8 inches tall and I'm not sure how exactly I'd do that. --Flamestarter (talk) 20:58, 24 January 2020 (MST)

I have a different question. I figured out that Floette problem... But now I'm wondering if a grappled creature can attack the creature that's grappling it. --Flamestarter (talk) 15:29, 6 March 2020 (MST)

Yes, a grappled creature can attack anyone within their range. You can see grappled for exactly what the grappled condition does along with all other conditions in 5e.--Blobby383b (talk) 20:36, 6 March 2020 (MST)

A certain spell in the Player's Handbook is not on this wiki, Evard's Black Tentacles. Is this by choice? And if so, why? --Flamestarter (talk) 17:56, 12 March 2020 (MDT)

5e SRD:Black Tentacles — Geodude (talk | contribs | email)‎‎ . . 18:50, 12 March 2020 (MDT)

See, I tried to search for it, but I got 3.5e version. Why is it not under the name Evard's Black Tentacles like it is in the book? Flamestarter (talk) 18:53, 12 March 2020 (MDT)

Because "Evard" is a character in the Forgotten Realms setting and is considered product identity under the OGL. — Geodude (talk | contribs | email)‎‎ . . 19:33, 12 March 2020 (MDT)

But that's the name of the spell... Oh, forget it... --Flamestarter (talk) 04:30, 13 March 2020 (MDT)

Policies

I'd like to make this wiki more usable. It's full of great SRD-quality content, but the grand ability of wiki, particularly mediawiki software is collaboration. The Help says that it is open to editing everything, but the SRD content is so well-made that hardly anyone can modify it without deteriorating it's content. Also, admins have really been over-conservative and worried that the wiki will get taken over or something.

How do you recommend improving the experiences here based off your insights? --Green Dragon (talk) 13:55, 2 January 2024 (MST)