Dota 2 Wiki:Discussion

Welcome to the Dota 2 Wiki!
Hello, new users, and welcome to the wiki. We intend to be the primary source for any and all information for the upcoming Dota 2. If you're new, we'd love to have you help out and pump some juice into what is currently a very thin wiki. Here's a list of some things you can do, even if you don't have access to the beta: Here are some specific changes we need, if you'd like to help out big time: Just be aware that, as a wiki, we try to keep information mostly factual. Please disclaim any information that might be subjective. Don't hesitate to write and rewrite, though! -Lancey 13:18, 17 October 2011 (CDT)
 * Discuss changes to the wiki and its many templates on their talk pages.
 * Contribute information where you feel it's lacking.
 * Build and improve our current templates, or design your own.
 * Correct errors and issues you might see.
 * We've been looking to improve our Hero pages for a while now. See Ancient Apparition for an example of how we'd like the Hero pages to look, and feel free to rewrite ones that don't use this format.
 * Many of the Item pages are very short. Try to add information while at the same time keeping it somewhat objective.
 * We are missing a metric ton of information. Most of what's on PlayDota is still relevant. Add information at your leisure but please rewrite it in your own words.

To do
Let's make a list of stuff we've yet to do - and we can tick them off as we go. RJackson 19:09, 16 August 2011 (CDT)


 * General templates (Maintenance, formatting, ...other stuff)
 * We'll implement these as we come across a need for them.


 * Infoboxes


 * Help namespace - we could probably import most of these from The Portal Wiki or TF Wiki... just have to make some minor changes.
 * Use for reference.
 * Template:WikiHelpNav
 * Help:Images
 * Help:Image guidelines
 * Help:Image licensing
 * Help:Style guide
 * Help:Style_guide/A-Z
 * Help:Style_guide/Characters (Is this applicable here?)
 * Help:Style_guide/Trivia
 * Help:Style_guide/Community content (This might not be applicable either)
 * Help:Language translation
 * Change examples that reference Portal mechanics to Dota 2 mechanics.
 * Help:Translation switching
 * Help:Maintenance templates
 * Help:Userpage
 * Help:Userboxes
 * Help:Custom signatures
 * Help:Taking screenshots
 * Help:Updates
 * DISPLAYTITLEs
 * Template:Hero infobox
 * Expand it to support stats and info relevant to heroes. -Func door and I worked on this and managed to get something reasonable out of it. Lancey 04:20, 21 August 2011 (CDT)
 * Template:Hero bio
 * Figure out what sections are irrelevant and remove them. Add new sections if necessary too.


 * EXTENSIONS
 * EmbedVideo


 * Hero Pages
 * Add pages for missing heroes
 * Redirect old hero names to their proper pages
 * Add stats, etc.
 * Items
 * Get the items onto the wiki!
 * We need a template
 * Template done, needs improving Lancey 15:35, 21 August 2011 (CDT)
 * Started adding some basic info to the main item screen
 * User:Lancey/Missing_List

God of Death Reporting
I'd like to assist in the creation of this Wiki. I'm known by the same name on playdota.com. I've already editted the page of Pudge, adding the post descriptive tips.

Skill pages.
Heyo. Having the skills listed on each hero page as they currently are - lots of huge tables - is very messy and takes up too much space; especially considering how much the hero pages will expand once we get our hands on the game and throw introductions, bugs, trivia etc on the pages. I think it's pretty sensible to give each skill it's own page, and have a very brief overview of the skill on Hero pages; and so I'm putting this note here so that when we've resolved all the content-related kinks and start work on the Style-guide pages, we already have it documented how we do things... if that makes sense. RJackson 00:13, 13 September 2011 (CDT)
 * Is it possible to put them into multi-panel tables? Like they did it here in "Skill Handbook" section.--XRdR 00:49, 14 September 2011 (CDT)
 * Doubtful. It might be possible with actual HTML, but I don't know if Mediawiki is that flexible. Otherwise, separating the skills is a bad idea. That would be the equivalent of, on the TF2 Wiki, giving each individual stat per class its own page. I remember a similar discussion about the main page layout where it was decided that Skills wouldn't be able to support itself as a section. -Lancey 13:53, 14 September 2011 (CDT)
 * Maybe having a page for each skill is a bit excessive as there isn't that many info on a single skill, but maybe there could be a simple description of each skill on the hero page, and then a separate "this hero's skills" page, explaining each on detail, strategies and combos, and such. -ChocolateWaffle 14:11, 14 September 2011 (CDT)
 * Hiding skill descriptions under spoiler tags would be the best decision. Oh wait, we don't have spoilers here...--XRdR 03:58, 15 September 2011 (CDT)

Skill descriptions.
Hey, just another editor here. Just wanted all of you to know that I've edited some stuff down at the Heroes section. I've mostly edited on Ultimates with Scepter upgrades. What I've done is compile the improved values and separate them from the normal values. eg. Fiend's Grip from Damage: 100 (155*) / 155 (*215) / 215 (270*) to Damage: 100/155/215 (155/215/270*). It is less annoying that way. I've also edited on the notes, and some of the traits and values. And I've transferred the "SCEPTER UPGRADABLE" to the traits, see here, and compare it with this. I've already edited from Axe to Huskar (alphabetically) However, this in not the format of the skill descriptions in DOTA2. But all in all, it looks better, and a little bit more understandable. I'm here because I want your opinion. Change the format here in dota2wiki to a friendlier format, or follow what's in DOTA2? If I get a 'go', I'll continue editing. If not, I'll revert them. -GrinnValesti 00:30, 11 February 2012 (CDT)

Hero description
As of now, that huge walls of text are pretty much unreadable. We need a template which will cover background story, placement in team, pros/cons, popular builds and other stuff. — The preceding unsigned comment was added by XRdR (talk) • (contribs)
 * Looking at Beastmaster, for example... Do you mean the text at the top of the page - copied from a Reddit post, or in the section that says "Description" on the left? If you mean the topmost section, we could get rid of it and move relevant information into work sections in Template:Hero bio; what sections would you suggest to be added? RJackson 03:59, 13 September 2011 (CDT)

That "description" section which contains text provided by valve is most probably just a placeholder. We can use it as a character bio, but looking back at dota 1 I highly doubt that it won't be changed by the release date. The text copied from reddit guide is too simple and often misleading. It should be expanded and divided into different sections. I suggest the following sections: 1) Hero introduction (general info about "who and how") 2) Possible roles (Beastmaster can be played as ganker/support/summoner/semicarry etc. They are all completely different. He is not limited to only one role) 3) Player requirements (what player skills complement this hero? Like BM needs micro to manage his summons, flexibility to change playstyle during game because things often go wrong on his lane, good farming abilities because he needs lots of gold to be usefull in mid-late game;  Lina on the other hand doesn't need anything like that, her main requirements are mana management and ability to combo spells. 4) Early-mid-late game scaling. Clockwerk shines during early game and mid game, almost useless later on. In this section we should describe why. 5) In-depth skills. General info + comments, like wild axes description in reddit guide for BM. 6) Best alies/worst enemies optional section 7) Advanced tips and tricks. "Pudge can't use blink dagger, so please don't buy it", Doom goes through BKB, etc.

Hello, I recently edited Ancient Apparition's page with the suggestions. See how it looks like and if you got any question or comments, go ahead! --Nuxar 15:55, 30 September 2011 (CDT)

Response pages
Hey, opening a little discussion - or rather noting how we should deal with response pages. Currently, we have way too many boxes and way to little navigable TOCs (well, no TOCs)... The voice lines that play always play based upon predefined response rules - which can be viewed (and modified) within  - the boxes we have should mirror these response rules, for each:

Response ancient_apparition_Spawn {	scene "scenes/ancient_apparition/ancient_apparition_appa_spawn_01.vcd" nodelay noscene scene "scenes/ancient_apparition/ancient_apparition_appa_spawn_02.vcd" nodelay noscene scene "scenes/ancient_apparition/ancient_apparition_appa_spawn_03.vcd" nodelay noscene scene "scenes/ancient_apparition/ancient_apparition_appa_spawn_04.vcd" nodelay noscene }

we would have:

I'm fairly sure each VCD file refers to a single sound file, however I'll get that checked and find out how we view the VCD files.

Each few little boxes should also be thrown within it's own subsection of the page, to aid navigation of our response pages... using the TF Wiki as example (stupid interwiki links, y u no set up.) - a group of responses related to killing are all stacked in the Kill-related responses section. We would do something similar to that, grouping sets of response rules based upon their context.

Opinions / am I dumb / how shall we go about doing zis? RJackson 20:29, 5 October 2011 (CDT)
 * - TFWiki response pages look good. I'll keep uploading those files... Thebigone 10:07, 7 October 2011 (CDT)
 * Get me those .vcd files and I'll set those pages up. i-ghost 14:38, 19 October 2011 (CDT)
 * Did anyone send i-ghost the files? Responses aren't done.

What if we make templates for all these Spawning or Killing a Hero? We could make templates contain translated strings too.

Website policy
Hello, I will mainly do french translation, but will also edit/add english content if I deem it wise. :) My main question is : Do you want the informations to be plainly factual, or do you want, for example, to add introductions, or even guides in heroes' page?

At the moment I only did Earthshaker's french page and edited Earthshaker's english page. http://dota2wiki.com/wiki/Earthshaker/fr http://dota2wiki.com/wiki/Earthshaker

Tell me if I do it wrong! JeanAlfred 09:49, 7 October 2011 (CDT)


 * Check out Help:Style guide. Articles should have introductions, and it should be the topmost section on articles.  The introduction shouldn't be as you had written it - an introduction / basic guide to the hero; quoting the style guide: The lead should be capable of standing alone as a concise overview of the article, briefly describing its most important points..  Everything should be factual, but that doesn't mean subjective content can't be noted.  For example:


 * Somebody might wish to say Hero XYZ is best played by roaming the forests between lanes and waiting for opportunities to gank opponents. - however that's not written in an impartial manner to be on the Wiki... a better way of stating it would be: A common strategy to playing XYZ is to roam the forest in-between lanes and wait for opportunities to gank opponents. - Simply a matter of replacing "Hero XYZ is best played" with "A common strategy..."


 * I don't think we're 100% contempt in how to handle everything in the Dota 2 universe on the Wiki, but we'll put together some style guides specific to types of content as soon as we're happy with a medium of expressing that content. RJackson 10:09, 7 October 2011 (CDT)


 * Okay, I guess I'll just translate bio/lore and skills for now then. Thanks for the answer, especially this quick! JeanAlfred 11:25, 7 October 2011 (CDT)

Exhaustive or thumbnail - which type of Wiki are we?
I was just chatting away with Zoolooman about the Wiki and he asked what type of content we were looking for, exhaustive (document everything about the Dota universe) or thumbnail (documenting only information the average player will be interested in). Personally, I had my mind set on exhaustive when I got into this project, however I hadn't really come across these "types" before... and so I think it's very much in the community's interest to figure out what content we will aim for. RJackson 00:39, 12 October 2011 (CDT)
 * My Wiki experience comes from contributing to and moderating an exhaustive wiki - Team Fortress Wiki; it's what I'm used to, so it's what I'd like our content to be. When talking with Zoolooman, he mentioned that Valve will likely ship the game with their own little resources for the game - saying they'd likely aim for thumbnail content; and there's evidence supporting that - there being little Hero guides within the beta files, for instance...  therefore if we went with thumbnail, we'd end up mirroring a lot of content from official resources; I think we'd need to distinguish ourselves by growing to be the complete resource of everything Dota 2. RJackson 00:39, 12 October 2011 (CDT)
 * The game seems to be heading towards having small, fast info on hero pick, like small bio, some tips, skill dsecription and a few other things. If people come to the wiki it's because they want more extensive and detailed info, I think we should have every single piece of info we can gather. -ChocolateWaffle 01:07, 12 October 2011 (CDT)
 * I will agree with RJackson. This Wiki should be extremely detailed instead of only aimed towards the average player (We shouldnt exclude them though). But it is actully a very good thing that you asked this because I wanted to discuss something related: How much content are we really aiming for? Obviously, we will have every possible numerical detail about every hero, items and creeps (And patches). But, if we take the Starcraft 2 "Liquipedia" for example; It includes a substantial amount of strategy talk for every aspect of the game but more importantly, in my opinion, everything about the pro-scene is also on the wiki. The latter is something I actually really want to include here too. However, I am unsure if we should include guides. The same kinds of "guides" that can be found on PD.com. Should we have some included (but obviously kept in a seperate section from the hero themselves)? Im just not sure if its totally viable. The Tf2wiki and L4Dwiki have these kinds of guides however, while they have dozens of items at most (Every TF2 classe, all L4D weapons & infected type) to write guides about, Dota has well over 100 items (every hero). Since we dont want to plagerise, we cannot really take from guides on PD.com yet we also want to always stay the most up-to-date as possible. This in turn asks "our" guides to highlight the most important things of a hero while also summarizing a good amount of the content from any and every other guide out there. Also, do note that Gabe (Or some equally ranked valve employee)said that they are looking to expand the DotA universe massively with DotA 2; We should thus expect alot of content regarding the lore. --Nuxar 01:30, 12 October 2011 (CDT)
 * Just keep the Classes Heroes pages small and Zoolooman will be happy. i-ghost 14:38, 19 October 2011 (CDT)

What currently needs strict improvement? Also, about hero pages...
So ive been wondering, what does the wiki currently need most? I speak in terms of content (im a horrible formatter). Does any particular section need improvement? Ill currently try to add more things regarding the mechanic of the game, most of which will come from the mechanic page of PD.com and guides in the forum. But is there anything else in particular which needs alot of improvement?

Also, I had a question about the hero pages. What exactly should we have in the page? The bio, skill set and (soemtimes) strategy sections are all very good. But should we put a Gameplay section like I did for AA? The first paragraph on most hero pages summarize very well but should we keep it really there? These paragraphs explain the (usual) 4 abilities of the hero; I think that we may be able to incorporate these description seperately for each ability by putting it near the skillbox. I do love the new icons for mana cost and cooldown (the pages should have more symbols like those) but I think there is room for improvement on the template (but i cant improve it, someone with better knowledge should). Anyway, I do think that we can take away the frist paragraph, put a gameplay "guide" after the bio but before the skillset and put the description from the erased paragraph individually near their respective skillbox. But what else should we add? Im totally open for content suggestion and ill try my best to put them up to see how it works.

Two other small questions: Is there a way to put the hero responses on the wiki without being in beta? I would gladly do it if I could. - Can there be themes for the wiki? Something I found trivially fun on some other wikis is that you can change the skin of the wiki. Here, we could make a skin based on each hero. I dont mind making the skins, I like photo-editing stuff. --Nuxar 22:00, 14 October 2011 (CDT)
 * Please, if you can, feel free to add to or write up the Mechanics page I started. I'm not very good at writing mechanics apparently. -Lancey 22:04, 14 October 2011 (CDT)

A small matter of publicity
While I do believe that wikis have a good amount of importance now a days, you guys need to start advertising on the Dota Blogs about this wiki because it's really underground right now, though that could be because Dota 2 is still on beta but this is a problem you guys should work on to fix, I can do the portuguese translations -Caiocas 06:57:45, 20 October 2011
 * That's a main reason we're doing this key giveaway - raise awareness of us. :) I've also been told (Valve employee -> friend -> me) we're to be linked to by the official Dota 2 blog, however we'll have to see if that indeed happens. RJackson 07:29, 20 October 2011 (CDT)

Thanks for the answer I've just finished translating the Windrunner page to portuguese, if I have more time I'll work on translating Other major heros =D

What else can we contribute?
For those of us who don't have access to the beta yet, I was wondering what can we do for contributions? We can't provide accurate articles on DotA 2 without only using DotA 1 information. I was thinking of making a DotA 1 - DotA 2 equivalents page if it hasn't already been done yet. Language translations are limited to the ones from the game itself so I'll have to wait for Valve to implement my second language.

The best contribution I can think of is website design/layout suggestions (which I've added on my User Page as an image). Other than that and the ones above there isn't really much we can do unless we copy paste playdota information, but if DotA 2 is a hard copy then even that can be an option. -Mky160 11:21, 22 October 2011 (CDT)

About the "item suggestion"
The new item suggestion is a rather good idea. However, in earlier discussion, we were aiming to be as objective as possible. I simply find this new feature do be very objective. One could see any other guide and it would probably not show the same thing as what is suggested here. I think that we should instead just a list of "useful" (or "core") items on each hero and explain briefly why they are useful and/or how could they be used effectively on said hero. Thoughts? --Nuxar 21:17, 29 October 2011 (CDT)
 * The pro scene will laugh at us and dismiss the entire wiki if we get anything wrong with the items/strategy. Maybe we'll just copy Valve's default recommended items and leave it at that? Thebigone 05:30, 30 October 2011 (CDT)

Valve's default recommended items are aimed at pubs, really (e.g. Shadow Blade as core on Drow Ranger). Common core and situational items are also often not on Valve's recommended list (e.g. Blink Dagger isn't recommended for Sven). I therefore suggest we use our own judgment and common sense to pick out core competitive items that don't occur to the average pub player (e.g. BKB as core or at least as situational on Storm Spirit). —Yoshi
 * Put your own builds under a separate header. As a wiki, we strive to be as objective as possible, and to notify players when information is subjective or community created. -Lancey 00:37, 12 December 2011 (UTC)
 * The main articles will stick to Valve's suggested items. Sites such as PlayDota, with their guides, are more suited for folk's own suggestions - otherwise we'll have constant edit wars about what the best item build is. - RJ  02:11, 12 December 2011 (UTC)
 * I'd suggest we have a subsection (such as Kunka/Builds) with, say, the top three most highly voted guide builds on PlayDota, and then players could add their own (within reason, of course). Also, it would be awesome if we could have some sort of spoiler tab that shows the code for changing the recommended items and/or a download of the .txt file itself. -Baloroth 18:14, 12 December 2011 (UTC)
 * I'd say this is a good idea but we shouldn't do that on the hero's pages. Might be better if a new section is created out of it. However, it does take alot of work and moderation on the "top 3 builds" which could happen to change after some time. Hence I suggest this to be done in the future, not now. Redefining history 18:43, 12 December 2011 (UTC)
 * I meant to put it on a sub-page like the hero responses are (used the wrong word, sorry), so it wouldn't clutter up the main page. SO each hero would have a sub-page with the builds on it, and just a link to it at the bottom of the hero page. I agree, it would take a lot of work. Might be worth (long term) looking to get a bot to do it. Just a thought.-Baloroth 18:53, 12 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Has anyone yet considered something like the Team Fortress 2 wiki's community strategy pages (example: http://wiki.teamfortress.com/wiki/Community_Heavy_strategy) regarding strategy and item builds? I think that the current "suggested" item builds are simply too narrow-minded to be useful (note that none of them contain a Bottle, even though it is core on anyone soloing mid). Also, for this site to really be comprehensive, there must be suggested skill builds somewhere. Every hero could have its own separate "community strategy" page where anyone can post a section regarding their preferred skill build, strategy, and items. We could even have a bot create all the pages with the first section devoted to the Valve builds and then go from there. Initially, the strategy pages would likely be just alt-tab guides from Playdota, but as this game really gets going it could become something really comprehensive.-Stupid Lemon Eater 23:06, 13 January 2012 (EST)
 * Yes. I've been working on exactly this. You should see something up soon, once Curse implements the ratings extension. -Lancey 04:35, 14 January 2012 (UTC)

Page Header
"Please bear in mind that the Wiki is still in it's early days and is very much in-flux as to how content is handled." This is what shows up in Google searches, it should not have grammatical errors. Decency 05:03, 31 October 2011 (CDT)

Competitive Players
Am I allowed to add Dota/Dota 2 players here? Redefining history 08:57, 8 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Just (I presume, competitive) "players" - I don't see how that'd be of any benefit or worth, players can always sign up and create a user-page if they want a profile about themselves. But people that've made a significant contribution to Dota 2 / The DotA universe (e.g. IceFrog - although that's not a great article in it's current form), sure. - RJ  13:58, 8 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Of course I mean competitive players and teams. Those who has shown us the way to play dota (i think that is significant), Ranging from the earliest loda/merlini/vigoss to the chinese players of this era. Like what liquipedia has for starcraft, I think the players/teams would deserve pages on the dota2wiki too. Any thoughts? Redefining history 15:34, 8 November 2011 (UTC)
 * I think it would be cool to have the upcoming teams that compete in tournaments such as EG, Navi, Gosu, etc. (teams can be found on the dota2 website) Some of the styles and ways they play are really interesting. Kyooeh 17:39, 9 June 2012 (UTC)

Adding Page Quotes?
What does anyone else think about adding quotes at the top of pages, such as a quote from a hero at the top of that hero's page, much like the TF2 wiki does? Also, might we create pages that list quotes?--Asbestosp0ison 14:21, 10 November 2011 (UTC)
 * I implemented this into the hero bio and then never did anything with it. -Lancey 22:05, 10 November 2011 (UTC)
 * I personally always felt that the quotes in the TF2 wiki were there for strictly comedic value. They don't really give any information. Not only that, but the TF2 wiki has a quote for almost every single page. Does the Dota 2 Wiki really need that much? Keep in mind that there are a LOT of quotes in this game to go through. -Stupid Lemon Eater 18:12, 14 January 2012 (EST)

Wikitables CSS
Hey guys Theres something wrong with your wikitables under the CSS. Cos like on this page WCG Asian Championships 2011, when i put colours on the tables with class wikitable, the colour wont appear. And please change the default wikitable colour to something that suit the template of the wiki (e.g. red) please look into that. Redefining history 16:00, 12 November 2011 (UTC)
 * It looks like the colour is being applied to the row, as it should be, but each individual cell also has it's own colour picked up from the CSS; I'm not 100% sure why we have it written to do this, so I'll look into that. As for your headers, we don't apply any custom CSS to a "table header" element - so you have to explicitly state in the wikicode that you want it formatted as a header - with  .  Personally I think I'll leave that as it is, that way any custom styling applied to headers isn't overwritten by the site-wide CSS. - RJ  19:18, 12 November 2011 (UTC)

Change in the main page
Please change Tournaments in the index of the main page to "Competitive scene" and link it to Dota 2 as an electronic sport. "Competitive scene" shows that more than just the tournaments are covered in this wiki, I will go into updating the page. Thank You. Redefining history 06:05, 17 November 2011 (UTC)
 * nvm, RJackson seems to be doing it. :D Redefining history 06:08, 17 November 2011 (UTC)

"Smurf" Teams
Smurf teams are teams that are not sponsored by any organizations and mostly using some ridiculous/cool names like "Browned Potatoes" "monkeybusiness" "wild honey badgers" "Problem???" etc. etc. Can we have a consensus on whether to make pages for smurf teams as they normally exist for a short time before they disband/got picked up by a sponsor. Not long ago Kroocsiogsi gave the idea of having the smurf teams directly link to whatever sponsors that have picked them up, however as one organization could have sponsored totally different teams in the past (such as Fnatic sponsoring an Indonesian team, then a European mix before the current Serbian team), it would prove to be confusing. Redefining history 18:07, 5 December 2011 (UTC)
 * I think we should stick with sponsored professional teams only. Any other teams are probably not noteworthy, and we need clear guidelines as to which teams we document (Sponsored premier-div teams only is pretty clear) - without which anybody could come and make a page about their hobby clan and get quite annoyed if we delete it because of ambiguous guidelines. - RJ  17:07, 6 December 2011 (UTC)
 * I have no objection, but it also wouldn't be that ambiguous to say, e.g., a team needs either (1) a sponsor and participation at a premier tournament or (2) a top 3 placement at a premier tournament. I'm not suggesting we do that, I'm just floating the idea. --Kroocsiogsi 19:23, 6 December 2011 (UTC)
 * I'm suggesting a Dota 2 Wiki:Competitive Scene Policies or something like that. Redefining history 04:13, 7 December 2011 (UTC)

Adding helpful links to the sidebar
I think it would be useful to add some links on the sidebar that lead to the Items and the Heroes page. -Vitamink 05:23, 6 January 2012 (UTC)
 * I've been asking for -s to be added on the sidebar as well. Let's see what the admin has to say :> Redefining history 01:06, 8 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Support. I would go further, and add all six mainpage sections to the sidebar, right under the Main page link. This results in a lot of linkspam, but I propose compensating for this by removing other sidebar links. (See below.) --Kroocsiogsi 09:23, 8 January 2012 (UTC)
 * It would indeed be great if we had a link to Competitive Scene in the sidebar. Sebra 00:22, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

Remove a lot of links
I propose removing various links, viz:
 * The sidebar's "Community portal", because it contains no content. The function is adequately served by "Discussion".
 * The sidebar's "Random page", because it is useless on a multilingual wiki.
 * The sidebar's "Purchase", because the few people who (a) use this wiki, (b) are interested in getting the game, and (c) do not already have the game know how to get it. (Even if they don't know it's through Steam, I bet they know how to Google "Dota".)
 * The sidebar's "Blog", because we are not Valve. We have a link to the latest blog post on the Main page; that is enough.
 * The sidebar's "Updates", because we are not Valve. We have a link to the latest update on the Main page; that is enough.
 * The sidebar's "PlayDota", because we are not PlayDota.
 * The sidebar's "Forums", because we are not PlayDota.
 * The sidebar's "Facebook", because we are not Valve. Besides, the Facebook page is worthless.
 * The sidebar's "Twitter", because we are not Valve. Besides, the Twitter feed is worthless.
 * The sidebar's "Subreddit", because we are not Reddit.
 * The Main pages's "Website", because we are not Valve. Besides, that link is actually to the Valve blog, and we already have a more relevant link to the most recent blog post on the Main page.
 * The Main pages's "Forums", because we are not PlayDota.
 * The Main pages's "Updates", because we already have a more relevant link to the most recent update (aka patch) on the Main page. (And we actually have a link to the patch timeline right next to it.)
 * The Main pages's "Twitter", because we are not Valve. Besides, the Twitter feed is worthless.
 * The Main pages's "Reddit", because we are not Reddit.
 * The Main pages's "Facebook", because we are not Valve. Besides, the Facebook page is worthless.
 * The Main pages's "Register / Login", because this link already exists at the top right of the page.
 * The Main pages's "Translate", because that link should be moved to the Navigation sidebar, together with Discussion, Help, etc.
 * The Main pages's "Discussion", because that link is already found more logically on the sidebar.

Furthermore, I suggest moving "Discussion", "Translate", "IRC channel", "Recent changes", and "Help" to a new section ("Meta"? "Toolbox"?), since this helps separate actual content navigation ("Main page", "Heroes", "Items", etc) from behind-the-scenes cruft navigation.

Furthermore, I suggest installing WikiMedia's official Vector extension, to allow people to collapse sidebar sections (namely "Toolbox").

Furthermore, if you disagree with some of my suggestions, please do not let that put you off all my suggestions. :-) --Kroocsiogsi 09:23, 8 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Done some suggestions. Edit summary was "Done some of Kroocsiogsi's suggestions from Dota_2_Wiki:Discussion.  Don't want to touch anything udner the 'dota 2' section though - they're all official or popular community resources, so I think they should be listed." - which is my response. - RJ  10:04, 8 January 2012 (UTC)

Request for a hero ability template
I'd try doing this myself, but I honestly don't know how. Proposal: a template, like, but for hero abilities instead. So, for example, would return "85/100/115/145". That way, every time Valve makes a balance change, we don't need to edit every page that includes that ability: we only need to edit one page. Not a huge issue right now, but later on when Dota 2 separates from DotA, maintaining every single page that references a hero ability for every balance change will be massively difficult. Baloroth 22:48, 16 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Actually, wait, looking at I see how to do it myself. Only question is: do we want to have a single template that holds all the stats for all the hero skills (like how  is, or do we want a template that calls another template for each hero? I'm not sure which would be easier to maintain or less of a mess. Baloroth 21:22, 17 January 2012 (UTC)
 * The way the template works now is you just define everything yourself, so no, we don't have a template with all the info. -Lancey 22:17, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

Некоторые поправки в переводах на русский
Only for russian users, top secret!
 * При упоминании героев используем предлог за и оригинально имя героя.
 * Т.е. игра за Anti-mage, при игре за Tidehunter, Играя Broodmother вы делаете то-то то-то.. Не транслитерируем имена. Подробности ниже.
 * Range решили переводить как расстояние, а Radius и Area как радиус. В скиллах опять же все переводят по-разному, нужно ушаблонить.
 * Не переводим названия героев/предметов/умений.(Исключение - в скобках), следуем примеру sts.
 * И самое главное, я не знаток дискусионных страниц. Куда лучше выносить такие правила? Как сделать так чтобы их читали? Faraday 19:12, 18 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Считаю, что нужно, так как облегчит работу с переводами Nkusha 19:17, 18 January 2012 (UTC)

Item Colors
So, I took screens of the shop ingame and used a color-picker to determine exactly what colors Valve uses ingame for the item colors. The results are currently in my userpage (User:Baloroth/Item colors). I was thinking we could add these color codings to the wiki to make it look nicer (more Valve-ish). The problem is the colors look like crap against our current red item-box header, as you can see in the second box. The purple especially burns my eyes.

Two proposed solutions: first, change the item header color to the Valve-tooltip gray (also color picked). Second, just use white text for all the item headers, and only use the colors everywhere else (they look more or less fine against our normal white background, except for the basic item color, obviously). Assuming we want to use these colors at all, of course. Baloroth 15:41, 20 January 2012 (UTC)


 * I actually did something exactly like this for minor use on my own user page tables I like to mess around with, used in Template:Game Item. I'm pretty sure the ACTUAL colors are defined in one of the GCFs or something, but like you I just did screenshots and color picker. The text obviously has slight variations depending on where you pick from, pixel by pixel. I also just used black instead of white for the basic items since the background is mostly white here, but can definitely see how bad some of them look on other color backgrounds. --Ramza 18:52, 20 January 2012 (UTC)


 * I hate to be a Debbie Downer, but I don't like the idea of multicolored text all over. I think it should be used very sparingly. I would accept colored item text in item infoboxes, item navboxes, small display templates (like those at Items, and the like, as long as it's on black or dark gray. I oppose its use uniformly throughout the wiki. --Kroocsiogsi 20:16, 20 January 2012 (UTC)


 * To be honest, I kinda agree. I made that template for pretty much my own use, since I couldn't think of many other places on the wiki it would look well. Maybe if the entire wiki shared the game's color theme, but I don't know about it otherwise. --Ramza 02:44, 21 January 2012 (UTC)


 * On further reflection and experimentation, I agree with the limitation to the use of multicolor text. But I think it can add to a few places. In that vein, I added it to the item infoboxes. They now have a dark gray header (TBH I kind of like having a different header color for items anyways: helps distinguish the entire item section of the wiki. We might want to think about defining more such color schemes) and will automatically assign the proper color based on store (exception: Flying Courier is blue in-game, yet sold under consumables. Problem we can address later if we decide to keep this system).

This is currently the only place I rolled out item colors to. Let me know what you all think, we can roll it back if people don't like it, or if we want to adjust any of the colors subtly (darker gray, brighter item coloring, etc.) Baloroth 22:06, 21 January 2012 (UTC)
 * It looks really bad and non-uniform. I don't see why you'd implement it in the first place. - [ Lancey] 22:47, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

Userboxes for Heroes
I had the idea that it might be a good idea to change from using the in-game selection avatars for heroes to using the new minimap icons for the userboxes. It would allow the id box to stay square and match other generally used ones. I mocked up a few examples over on ChocolateWaffle's talk page, but I'll copy them below too.

What do you all think? --Ramza 18:52, 20 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Don't think it's a good idea. Redefining history 00:14, 21 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Looks better IMO. The current ones stretch the image space too much. -Lancey 03:27, 21 January 2012 (UTC)
 * I like the icon ones, however I can understand why people would prefer the actual images. Perhaps we can just add an attribute "icon=true/false" or for the icon ones, then people can just pick whichever they prefer; defaulting to whichever is the most preferred from this discussion. - RJ  03:43, 21 January 2012 (UTC)
 * We have enough room for the prettier portraits. Counter-proposal:

--Kroocsiogsi 03:54, 21 January 2012 (UTC)
 * I really like your suggestion. Out of the three, it is my favorite one. Sebra 04:24, 23 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Why not have both? - J.P. 19:57, 11 February 2012 (UTC)
 * As I said, I prefer Kroocsiogsi's version. Sebra 04:24, 23 February 2012 (UTC)

Is it appropriate to have links to Professional Players' steam profiles?
Is this considered "public" information and something the wiki wants to be sharing? Seems fairly useless other than to creep/friend spam the player. You can track their profiles in the Dota2 client just by knowing what name they are playing under and can watch replays from there

Examples: Fear

LighTofHeaveN

Thoughts? -Ampere 17:24, 10 March 2012 (UTC)

Started Adding sections dealing specifically with Balance Changes
Right now, I am going though all the currently ported heroes, and adding a section called 'Ability Change Log'. This contains all changes made specifically to a hero in the sake of balance, and not changes done to the hero relating to Dota 2 bug fixes or other miscellaneous changes. An example of what is included is the recalling of an ability, or the change of a base stat. I decided to not include things that are indirect changes to a character (Changes to Neutral Creeps), game wide changes (The Melee changes done during 6.72), and DotA 1 specific Bugs.

Also, I am trying to make sure all changes are in definitive terms, and not relative. For example, instead of "Armor increased by 1", putting "Base Armor increased from .54 to 1.54". Or explaining how an ability worked before being changed.

I decided to do from 6.70 to 6.74c because the oldest patch notes to mention a version number is the January 18, 2011 Patch patch, mentioning patch parity.

So far, I have finished adding sections to all ported Radiant Strength Heroes, and plan to go onto Dire Strength Heroes next. After all the ported heroes are done, I'll will begin working on the unported heroes. --Doctorkirby 07:58, 4 April 2012 (UTC)
 * Finished all the ported Strength Heroes, next up is Agility, but that is for later.--Doctorkirby 09:02, 4 April 2012 (UTC)

EditOwn extension applied to the guides section, Curse wants a discussion so here it is
Since Nickoladze (and previously Lancey) is working on the guide section, we are considering the installation of EditOwn extension and apply it to "Guide" and "Guides for creation" to be protected such that only sysops and the original creator can edit it. I know the guide section would be deviating from the point of a wiki, but the intention of this extension is that Dota players have wildly different ideas on how to play a hero. Where collaboration on guides could be great for other games, it's not for Dota, which previous examples of guide sites has shown (Playdota). I think this would be best for a Dota guides section. Redefining history 09:23, 12 April 2012 (UTC)
 * I second it. Wiki may not be the best enviroment for guides due to it's limitations, but if we are going to do it we would be able to provide all kinds of Dota 2 info in a single place. As Redef has already stated, in Dota everyone has its own style or ideas and would clash with others if we were to make a single and only guide. A guide should be only editable by the original creator, with the only outside input being ratings from other users. -ChocolateWaffle 09:28, 12 April 2012 (UTC)
 * I agree with using EditOwn for use with player-made guides. Each player has their own view on how the game should be played, and edits from other people would provide no constructive benefit to a guide. Ratings would be a way to contribute instead, showing the quality of certain guides. I think a Wiki is a great place to create guides, as it is very easy to create pages with clean formatting, and easy to update content. Terin7 09:40, 12 April 2012 (UTC)
 * If other players want to contribute or comment on a guide, the guide talk page exists. Or at LEAST the user's talk page, which is already linked to from the guide's sidebar. The original user needs to be able to edit to keep their guide relevant as patches change balance, and mods need to be able to edit it... because they're mods. Just as long as we can make the talk pages full for everyone to edit. Nickoladze 09:48, 12 April 2012 (UTC)
 * DotA is one of those games where you can not have a one-guide system. There simply is NEVER one way to play a single hero, this system has to be there or it will not make sense. Allow authors and mods to edit, others to discuss it. Agreeing for confirmation. --Samo 11:35, 13 April 2012 (UTC)
 * There seems to be some misunderstanding of the issue here. The issue is not whether there should be a single guide, that would not be sensible given the situation. The issue here is should a wiki, which by it's very nature is a collaboratively edited project, have an entire section that is only editable by the page creator? I do understand the subjective nature of guides, however, with the appropriate rules in place, there should be no need to limit the potential for positive edits by others. Do the admins want the responsibility of doing simple things, like correcting typos, improving grammar, identifying vandalism and "spam"? Should a reader of guide be required to point out all of these issues on a talk page which may or may not be getting monitored? Or worse yet, notify an admin to ask for corrections? I agree that any substantive change to the guide, the described mechanics of the build, etc. should be limited to the creator of the page, but those kinds of edits can be easily reverted just as any spam/vandalism on a wiki, by ANY member of the community. Limiting edits places more of a burden on the admin team to monitor/read all guides. There are currently 5 moderators, and 2 admins. Of those 7 people, 2 are already inactive, and one more is taking a sabbatical to focus on school for the next 6-8 months. One of the biggest strengths of a wiki is the high quality that can be achieved through collaborative editing. Another situation to consider... what if 2 or 3 players are working on a single build? EditOwn would limit the editing capabilities to only one of them. I'm not saying absolutely not to this extension, I just want to make sure that every aspect of the consequences are considered before a decision is made. -- Wynthyst [[Image:User Wynthyst sig icon.png ]]  talk  22:12, 13 April 2012 (UTC)
 * And how long you want this discussion to last? Another month? We're the ones contributing to make the wiki work, I would prefer the authors to make the change in case the faulty grammar/spelling is intentional, we'll never know. Subjective or not, not editing someone's guide unless absolutely necessary is a sign of respect to the author. And it's ridiculous the amount of permission we need to get in order to start this project, when we have not encountered any significant problems up till now. It's not like we're asking you to help us vet the guides. Just do it already.
 * This proposal is suggested only after extensive research, in which I have asked several playdota people on how they run their guide system, which they have concluded that this would be the best way to run a guide system. I have also looked at previously failed guide projects, which has ended up with too much spam from other editors. And in the extreme case you suggested, where everyone is inactive. It is better for no one to edit it compared to having 80% destructive edits + 20% positive edits, so yes I have considered everything. Redefining history 04:24, 14 April 2012 (UTC)
 * I can see and understand Wynthyst's point very well... perhaps we could run the project without the EditOwn extension for a while and evaluate, as time goes on, whether the plugin is necessary for the Guides section to function - or well it can function perfectly fine without it.  Your research suggests we would face problems without the EditOwn extension, but were there other factors at play in those cases?  Would the intrinsic nature of us being a Wiki - a community and mindset of collaboration and self-repair (if you will) - effect how people behave with eachothers guides (i.e. will there be less destructive edits because we are a wiki).  I think it is worth trying and getting the data for ourselves to decide whether it is necessary.  The more extensions we add to the Wiki, the less of a Wiki we become - we just become more of a general website. - RJ  13:45, 14 April 2012 (UTC)

Namespaces discussion
I have been asked to create 4 new namespaces as well as adding this extension. I would like it spelled out in black and white why you need a "Guides for creation" namespace? Why not simply add the guides to the "Guides" namespace directly? -- Wynthyst  talk  10:18, 12 April 2012 (UTC)
 * The real reason have been discussed on the IRC, in which senseless guides/spam will be able to be filtered through the creation namespace without ever interfering our visitors' experience, as pages under the guides namespace would be listed automatically in the guides page. Such will not let new players be misled by such troll/senseless guides. Redefining history 10:38, 12 April 2012 (UTC)
 * That can be done without a separate namespace, simply use a tag or category to designate the ones that get listed. -- Wynthyst [[Image:User Wynthyst sig icon.png ]] talk  11:56, 12 April 2012 (UTC)
 * Doesn't that create a whole lot of confusion since our guide search is based on "prefix=Guide:"? I have took the liberty of separating this discussion from EditOwn's, feel free to revert it if you think it's not appropriate. Redefining history 12:03, 12 April 2012 (UTC)
 * The same applies to new pages elsewhere in the Wiki. We - the community around the wiki - tend to check edits made to the site to ensure they're not malicious, there's no reason this would not be extended to the creation of new guides.  Adding a new namespace is a very over-the-top solution in my opinion to a rather non-existant problem - as long as we continue what we're doing right now. - RJ  13:45, 14 April 2012 (UTC)

Ability Box Colors
I've just added support to Template:Ability for item abilities. To distinguish them from hero abilities, I gave the header the orange color that was used in Template:SkillboxMinimal.

However, on Template_talk:Ability, Baloroth suggested replacing the orange in both cases with agility green or intelligence blue, as follows:

I agreed that this looks better, and would utilize the underused agility/intelligence colors, but it seems like more of a wiki-wide style subject, so I wanted to move that discussion here.

Whichever color is left over I'd like to use for NPC abilities, so things like Roshan's bash can be distinguished from the other hero abilities on Stun. That would look like this:

Thoughts? --Pigbuster 20:26, 18 April 2012 (UTC)
 * Looks good to me! Aids readability, well implemented and looks great. - RJ  20:31, 18 April 2012 (UTC)

Item Page Style
I've currently implemented the Ability template on the following items: Clarity, Tango, Healing Salve, Smoke of Deceit, Town Portal Scroll, Dust of Appearance, Dagon, and Vladmir's Offering. Before I do any more, there are a number of things I'd like to get a consensus on:
 * 1) How should I deal with ability notes? One thing I didn't think of when implementing this was how squished the notes would get by the infoboxes on item pages. Vladmir's Offering is especially egregious. Should I move that information to the main article?
 * 2) Should I remove Additional Information sections or not? I felt like the pages were too small to warrant separating information out from the first paragraph, but now I'm not so sure. Compare Dust of Appearance and Dagon.
 * 3) How loyal should I be to the ingame description? Dota 2's descriptions can be really slight, even misleading in some cases, and I'm already deviating from them by having the "ability/affects/damage type" info.
 * 4) Should I work out a way to implement the ability sound buttons that are currently used in the infoboxes? They could fit right in the header, and an extra benefit is that we could add sounds to hero abilities, if we want. --Pigbuster 22:29, 18 April 2012 (UTC)
 * I would move the notes to below maybe. See how that looks. Or else move that into the additional information section of the page?
 * Leave additional information for now, it's quite helpful to explain some things out like in Dust of Appearance's case.
 * I'd say leave the sound out, it would be highly redundant on item pages which should be the only place we use these fullsize boxes. - Nickoladze 22:58, 18 April 2012 (UTC)
 * I thought of moving notes below, but making the notes act completely differently than they do for hero/npc abilities makes me worry about stylistic consistency. Moving to additional information is what I'm leaning towards, yeah.
 * Sorry, I wasn't suggesting removing the actual information, just it's section, merging the info with the opening paragraph or otherwise.
 * I meant to imply that we would basically just move the sound from the infobox to the ability box. It wouldn't be in the infobox anymore, so no redundancy. --Pigbuster 23:42, 18 April 2012 (UTC)
 * Both ways seem acceptable to me. The "squishing" doesn't bother me much.
 * I lean towards eliminating the "Additional Information" header.
 * The description field itself should usually be verbatim, I think. Clarifications and additional information can go in Notes, or in the main article, and the addition of the ability/affects/damage type is good.
 * Sure, go ahead and integrate the sounds. I put them in the infoboxes as kind of an experiment. Putting sounds in the Ability template makes a lot of sense. I keep meaning to tweak the design of the buttons, too. Smaller and less blue is what I'm thinking. --Kroocsiogsi 06:44, 19 April 2012 (UTC)
 * Unfortunately, after some experimentation I've found that tags do not understand wiki-style variables, so you can't pass something like to them. You can pass on the whole thing ( Dust of Appearance.mp3 ) to the template as a variable, though. Wish there was a more elegant way to do it but oh well. We're already using the tags directly in the infoboxes so it's not too bad. --Pigbuster 18:38, 19 April 2012 (UTC)
 * I have fixed the extension to work with wikitext. As soon as 0.3.2 is installed, I think template parameters will work. --Kroocsiogsi 03:19, 20 April 2012 (UTC)

Update History
Just putting some points out for update history that I feel should be looked at: Overall however I think an excellent job has been done on update history so far, just a little tweaking and it'll surpass the otf2w model. -- Focusknock 20:26, 23 April 2012 (UTC)
 * Where the hero was implemented into the game, have their name in bold. eg: Added Juggernaut! as opposed to just Juggernaut. Also maybe have what the patches say (Added Juggernaut!) instead of playing it down.
 * Noticed some character pictures in the update history on hero pages. I think they should go. Should they? I think they're more suited to being in just the Patch notes.
 * There could be a bit more organisation regarding undocumented changes. Sometimes these are noticed within the Patch pages, and sometimes they are not. Generally anything worth picking out of the game files is an undocumented change and should be noted.

Strategy Guides
Much like on the TF2 wiki, wouldn't it be suitable to have strategy pages for each hero? Even though PlayDota has those, each hero usually has multiple guides with differing opinions. The Dota 2 wiki is a great opportunity and platform to unify the guides for heroes and various other Dota 2 topics. Selaphiel 11:46, 29 April 2012 (UTC)
 * We are working on a guides section where users can author and maintain their own individual guides. We decided against having a "community guide" per hero as there are a lot of different ways a hero can be played to achieve numerous objectives; a singe page would end up being convoluted, inconsistent, and generally a place to attract edit wars. - RJ 12:35, 29 April 2012 (UTC)

Roles in the bio
Yesterday Nicko tried using the new pips in the bio to express the roles a hero can do, but Kroo didn't like it so he reverted it. I would like to hear everyone's opinion on this to take a choice: text, images or both? -ChocolateWaffle 14:32, 10 May 2012 (UTC)
 * I like the images with text shown on hover. The main argument was that nobody would know what the icons meant until they figured out they could mouse over them, but my best guess would be that those icons will be heavily used in the game client eventually. People would know what they mean. - Nickoladze 14:34, 10 May 2012 (UTC)


 * Right now, I think text is a lot clearer. Icons somewhat ruin the look of the box too, IMO, and no one knows what they mean yet. It's something that we could play around with, but my vote is to stay with text for now. -Baloroth 14:38, 10 May 2012 (UTC)


 * I think text would always be clearer than icons for roles, especially for those new to Dota 2 but has decent understanding and experience in other ARTS games. So, my vote is on text. Redefining history 15:47, 10 May 2012 (UTC)


 * Text only. Icons without text should only be used when the icons are widely recognized and unambiguous (like str, agi, and int in Hero infobox, or mana and cooldown in Ability), or text is not possible for some other reason, like a lack of space (like linkens and bkb in Ability). Also, I agree with Baloroth that they just don't look good in the Bio box. --Kroocsiogsi 15:56, 10 May 2012 (UTC)

SMW discussion
Two things about SMW: first, I think it might be prudent to create a discussion page for how we are planning to proceed with it, especially re. ability and item schemas, if only for future reference (why we did what we did, what we do, etc.)

Second, a particular thing, I want to add a Special:Types/Boolean Boolean "released" property to the Template:recent addition template to help categorize unreleased heroes for SMW purposes (they are in a category, but as far as I can tell there is no way to exclude a category from a SMW query, which is needed for certain tables such as User:Baloroth/Sandbox stat tables). If anyone has any objections or knows of a better way (Kroo?) let me know. -Baloroth 00:54, 15 May 2012 (UTC)


 * I am currently following "The Plan", which has me creating a Help page as soon as it is decided that we keep SMW (i.e. probably in a few days, after I make sure that Curse sees no immediate issues). I suggest SMW discussion either on this page (Dota_2_Wiki:Discussion) or on Help_talk:Semantic_MediaWiki.
 * The boolean "released" property sounds OK to me, but I think I would prefer to add it to Hero infobox. I don't want to spread SMW code all over different templates if it can be prevented. This property can be added by a bot. --Kroocsiogsi 01:36, 15 May 2012 (UTC)
 * That sounds fine. I was thinking the recent content template would work well as it is already on all the unreleased hero pages, and we really only need to tag them (all other heroes can be assumed to be released). But however you think would work better. -Baloroth 01:44, 15 May 2012 (UTC)
 * After further consideration, I still think we should use Hero infobox. Recent additions can be used on non-hero pages, in addition to all the other "bad" places that Hero infobox already tests for, namely: non-Main-namespace, non-English, and pages where SMW has been asked not to assign properties. I also thought about making Released heroes a category, but I think making Released a property is OK. It does create one more thing to remember to change when a hero is released, but that's not too bad. I'll run a bot tonight; it'll be easy. --Kroocsiogsi 03:28, 15 May 2012 (UTC)
 * (New property page: Property:Released; Hero infobox edit: here) --Kroocsiogsi 06:02, 15 May 2012 (UTC)

Adding Gold Ratio information
Would anyone else agree to adding gold ratio information for the various stats on an item? For example, if one were to go to the Health page, in addition to having the item name and its HP (regen) granted, would it also be pertinent to include the amount of gold it costs for every point of HP on that item? I think it could be a handy lookup for seeing which item would be most worth your money if you needed a particular stat. Chronomaster 02:55, 21 May 2012 (UTC)

Regular tournaments
We already have got pages for every tournament and for all tournaments together, but don't you think pages for series of tournaments like Dreamhack, TI or Premier League will be fine? JoinDota Masters for example, 7 were tournaments hold under this name. Such pages would contain stats like number of participations for each team, teams with the biggest number of wins and so on. What do you think about it? Example: User:Kemerover/Sandbox/The_International
 * Yes. But try to not link it from the Tournaments page. Redefining history 22:57, 5 June 2012 (UTC)

Semantic MediaWiki vs Dictionary
So a couple of months ago we wanted a system to do as the Dictionary system did on the TF2 Wiki, and we didn't have anybody willing to host a bot to run the dictionary back then so we decided on SMW and that is what we have been using. Well, now we have the choice between the two; so I'm opening a switchover up for discussion. Should we drop SMW and use Template:Dictionary? - RJ 19:57, 3 June 2012 (UTC)
 * Dictionary - I prefer the Dictionary system. I have more experience in it and I think its a frankly better solution.  It would allow us to separate information such as Hero stats away from hero pages, reducing the likelyhood of that information being falsely modified; and removing declarations from pages or other templates gives us cleaner page/template code.  It is also centralised - which means mass-modifications (e.g. store price changes) are easier as they can all be done in one page, rather than the individual pages the values are hidden away in. - RJ  19:57, 3 June 2012 (UTC)
 * It's interesting that you describe putting values on individual pages as "hiding" them; I have exactly the opposite reaction. If I, as a new user, notice that Earthshaker's movement speed is incorrect, my first reaction would be to edit the page to correct it. If we used a dictionary to store that information, I would have to navigate a chain of templates to figure out where that value is stored. As another example, I'm trying to figure out how I would go about adding an item to Scout's Special Delivery item set. Do I have to add it to Item_set_infobox, or to Dictionary/item_set_weapons, or Set, or all three? Does one overwrite the others? Do I have to manually update Special_Delivery/ru, or is that updated automatically from one of the other values? Are there other pages I have to update, like maybe a page with a list of item sets or something? If Dictionary/item_set_weapons doesn't automatically update Special_Delivery and/or Set, then what does it do? How would I even know Dictionary/item_set_weapons exists if I hadn't stumbled across it earlier? In short, I won't claim that Dictionary is more or less logical or intuitive than SMW, but I suspect your experience with Dictionary is largely responsible for your comfort with it. --Kroocsiogsi 22:09, 3 June 2012 (UTC)
 * If you try to edit one of the dictionary subpages, there's an editnotice that makes it pretty obvious you're not doing the right thing WindPower 00:21, 4 June 2012 (UTC)
 * Yes, I saw that editnotice. "Please do not create or edit individual dictionary subpages, e.g. Template:Dictionary/items/flamethrower. Make changes to the main dictionary pages linked above instead." Dictionary/item_set_weapons is one of "the main dictionary pages linked above", is it not? --Kroocsiogsi 01:00, 4 June 2012 (UTC)
 * Dictionary much more convenient than use switch templates--FreeXMan 20:02, 3 June 2012 (UTC)
 * What does this have to do with anything? - Nickoladze 21:39, 3 June 2012 (UTC)
 * I don't understand your comment. I don't think anybody's suggesting switch templates, although they appear to be used for the last-mile language translation in both Dictionary and SMW. --Kroocsiogsi 22:09, 3 June 2012 (UTC)
 * We had this debate a month ago, it's even 3 discussions above. We had already created dictionaries for ability and hero ifo, and we all decided to switch to SMW because it was easier. Anybody who had a voice against SMW didn't say anything, and now we've spent hours of time converting everything that was using ability dictionaries to using SMW and now you want to switch back to dictionaries again? Absurd. I actually find this quite offensive because I was the one that originally spent 6+ hours setting up the ability dictionary and I voluntarily dropped the project in favor of SMW. You say we didn't have anybody willing to host a bot, yet Curse has told me over and over that they will host the bot I've written to manage the Guides listings. - Nickoladze 21:35, 3 June 2012 (UTC)
 * I originally asked Curse back in December to run a bot for the dictionary system, among other things; their response was that they did not have the server capacity to do it. If that is no longer the case then I hadn't been informed (I knew you had a bot, but I didn't know what was going on regarding hosting it).   Looking at The Plan (for SMW), one of the "Decision points" is "We decide to keep Semantic MediaWiki, or to scrap it." - that can effectively be the discussion going on now.  While a lot of work is already done for SMW, is it still the best system now that we have an alternative available? - RJ  22:01, 3 June 2012 (UTC)
 * Comment. It's a bit of an odd question, because they don't have the same functionality, although we probably shouldn't use both. Dictionary has the not-insignificant advantage that TF2 wiki users are familiar with it. SMW has the advantage that it is an established project that has decent documentation and support channels, and does not require a specialized bot.
 * But the killer-app of SMW, and the reason I am so enamored of it, is a function Dictionary lacks: SMW can query from a value, not just from a name. Dictionary can take a Hero and tell you what primary attribute it has; SMW can take a primary attribute and tell you what Heroes have it. This means that we can dynamically generate information about released strength Heroes, or lane-support Heroes, or Heroes with non-standard vision ranges, or all abilities that are UAMs, or all abilities that are spammable because they have a cooldown of less than 20 and a mana cost of less than 75, or all abilities that are partially blocked by magic immunity, or all items that provide bonus movement speed, or all the tournaments that have started but haven't ended, or all the players who play the ganker role, or all items that have abilities that are blocked by Linken's Sphere, or the twenty most expensive cosmetics, or all the immortal strange hats, or whatever other silly thing comes to mind. And equally importantly, these lists or tables or charts will be always up-to-date in all languages, even Hungarian, without manual modification.
 * But, y'know, tee-eff-teu gets along fine without all that, so maybe it's not necessary. ;-) --Kroocsiogsi 22:09, 3 June 2012 (UTC)
 * TF2 doesn't have nearly as much data to work with to make SMW worth while. Making a list of something such as which classes have a base HP > 120 would be trivial for them, as it would probably include 2 or 3, while a similar query for Dota 2 would return something like 50 heroes. Some of the best strengths of SMW involve the thing we were just trying to figure out last night, listing all heroes that have cosmetic items and list them out nicely. A dictionary would not be able to accomplish this. Like you said, all data in a dictionary is only accessible by name, and not value. That's a pretty big negative if you ask me. - Nickoladze 22:21, 3 June 2012 (UTC)
 * Hm. Excellent points.  I suppose both could co-exist, but have to be careful not have either treading on eachothers' applications...  The dictionary system is a lot better at handling translated strings and/or getting correct strings for things, e.g. what we use Template:Item name for; but it is inferior in its dynamicity of application.  It sounds to me like SMW would be add a ton of functionality to the guides section of the Wiki (the most likely place for obscure queries like "all heroes above 120HP"), which of-course the dictionary system is incapable of, and so for that reason I'm on-board with keeping it; but I do think the dictionary system can still be of value.  - RJ  22:38, 3 June 2012 (UTC)
 * I created the dictionary system as a consequence of Valve not wanting to install SMW (or any extension for that matter). It is much less powerful, much slower, very crufty (why use tons of wiki pages to store data?), and has some pretty bad limitations. SMW is more powerful and can do pretty much everything the dictionary system can do WindPower 00:21, 4 June 2012 (UTC)

Updated SkillboxMinimal
I went ahead and updated Template:SkillboxMinimal so it can accept a "source" variable that is a wikilink. The idea here being that you make the Hero or Item name the source, and the actual ability name the name, so it makes a nice wikilink to the source of the ability. The more links the better! Let me know if there are any issues/improvements on this. I'm also going through the articles that use the template and updating them accordingly. --Ten19 20:55, 9 June 2012 (UTC)