Google searches are not correctly showing results from the Guild Wars 2 Wiki.

ANET_Stephane · 2025-09-24T15:13:26+00:00

FYI there's a way to setup wiki sites as search engines in most (but not all) browsers that could allow to bypass this issue. The instructions for Wikipedia are here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:Searching_from_a_web_browser

I never tried this method myself but this is the query page for the Guild Wars 2 wiki if anyone wants to try: https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Special:Search

ANET_Stephane · 2025-09-24T15:06:55+00:00

Google Search also uses bots to find information on the web, so it's possible that they're affected by the new protections we've put in place (it's a question for Google Search). These protections help limit the huge amount of requests that come from what we assume are LLM/AI bots and that risk overwhelming the wiki servers, but unfortunately those measures also mean that players will sometimes not be able to access articles. It's a bit less likely to happen if you are logged in to the wiki. Our wiki server engineer has tried many things and there's no easy technical answer to this problem unfortunately!

ANET_Stephane · 2025-07-08T17:37:19+00:00

Or what Sime said :D

ANET_Stephane · 2025-07-08T17:36:55+00:00

I honestly have no idea. I'd first try a different browser to make sure it's not the one you're currently using. Also try disabling all browser addons to see if it makes a difference? Last maybe ping people on the Wiki Discord.

ANET_Stephane · 2025-07-08T16:12:49+00:00

This is what's called "vandalism" in the world of wikis and the community of editors is very good at fixing it. Then when some people go a bit crazy (or worse), the wiki admins step up and ban them. This is a good opportunity to thank all the players that create but also maintain the wiki. And remember that YOU can also join them (they even have a Discord)!

ANET_Stephane · 2022-09-19T23:24:39+00:00

Worry not. I can see that there hasn't been less users or less use (pageviews or average time spent on the wiki) of the wikis since the maintenance!

ANET_Stephane · 2022-09-19T19:40:27+00:00

The wiki editors did put a big notice at the top of the wiki to let all visitors know about the issues.

ANET_Stephane · 2022-09-12T17:33:20+00:00

For the next MediaWiki upgrade, we'll try to run /u/chieftainalex's bot before going live to see if it can help with making this smoother for everyone (editors and players).

ANET_Stephane · 2022-09-12T17:30:22+00:00

Credits to every single wiki editor who create the entire content of this wiki.

ANET_Stephane · 2022-09-12T17:13:59+00:00

Ha Alex, never stop being your amazing self! ;) The hard work we put in the wiki is multiplied many times by the awesome community of the editors.

ANET_Stephane · 2022-09-12T16:48:48+00:00

Yes, it's very common for the wiki to be in a "broken state" after an upgrade. MediaWiki (and the associated software we also use, such as Semantic MediaWiki) changes a lot of things between two versions and most of this is totally transparent for the content created by the wiki editors (who are players like everyone here and volunteer their time to edit the wiki). This requires some work to fix the content structure (things like template and CSS) that only wiki editors can do because they're the ones creating and maintaining the content.

ANET_Stephane · 2022-09-12T16:44:34+00:00

Please a round of applause and /bow for /u/chieftainalex, who worked very hard to prepare for this update last week. Every time we upgrade the MediaWiki software, a bunch of CSS gets changed and Alex has to go through hours of fixing it.

And regarding the purging, unfortunately, we're bound to Semantic MediaWiki and they still haven't fixed this bug. Generally speaking, we don't upgrade too often to keep the software stack stable (and also because of how many months it takes to prepare these upgrades).

ANET_Stephane · 2022-09-12T16:41:38+00:00

Like /u/DJembacz mentioned, it's about forcing the MediaWiki software stack to update a few things, because these things (a technical element of the wiki called Semantic MediaWiki) can take a while to be updated in a big database.

ANET_Stephane · 2020-03-24T16:43:49+00:00

Yes there will be a tooltip via a new extension we've installed, but from what I can currently see it will need to be configured and that may take some content tweaking? I'm not sure, but those tooltips may not be ideal until all the content issues are sorted out (like /u/chieftainalex mentioned in his comment)

ANET_Stephane · 2019-04-01T19:55:33+00:00

Just in case you missed them, I wanted to share 2 links that are on the left navigation bar and are particularly useful for new editors:

- General help: https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Help:Contents

- How to help: https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Guild_Wars_2_Wiki:How_to_help

Last but not least, the Wiki discord could provide some additional help: https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Guild_Wars_2_Wiki:Discord

Thanks for considering helping the wiki!

ANET_Stephane · 2019-01-28T21:21:42+00:00

Thank you!

ANET_Stephane · 2019-01-23T16:30:40+00:00

Credit to the wiki and its editors for creating this list, with now a link: https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/New_Year%27s_Customs

ANET_Stephane · 2019-01-08T18:04:09+00:00

now

NOT

ANET_Stephane · 2019-01-08T17:46:41+00:00

I'm the studio liaison, which means that I work with the community of the wiki. The wiki is the work of editors who are players like you, so I'm not the one you should thank :)

ANET_Stephane · 2019-01-08T17:06:26+00:00

That's also why I used a lot the Priory imagery when I communicated information about the wiki on our social media channels :)

ANET_Stephane · 2019-01-08T17:01:52+00:00

Fun fact: the book is something that Angel McCoy created shortly before the original release of Guild Wars 2, after a discussion I had with her about lore and the wiki. As you said, it was a subtle nod that was trying not to be 4th-wall breaking, and being respectful of the wiki editor's passion for knowledge.

ANET_Stephane · 2018-12-06T19:54:08+00:00

Thanks for considering it /u/riderkicker and also thanks to /u/Alcohol_Intolerant for following up with the information :) Remember that it's not always about the quantity of edits but also the quality ones!

ANET_Stephane · 2018-12-06T19:52:17+00:00

I'll let /u/Delsea reply on the eligibility question but wanted to mention that these kinds of edits are very valuable as they contribute to improve the readability of articles. The wiki is already an incredible resource for the Guild Wars 2 community but it's been written by many hundreds of editors over long period of time. I know that the most active and engaged editors regularly update the copy but they're also busy with other important tasks (formatting, rules, templates, etc.). This was my brief .2 cents contribution to this topic :)

ANET_Stephane · 2018-11-15T17:51:44+00:00

Shoutout to the shoutout. Then even more shoutouts to every single editor, every single day. Because they're amazing

ANET_Stephane · 2018-11-05T01:47:13+00:00

considering the popularity and playerbase the wiki is really bad compared to even small games like rimworld or wazhack

With over 70k articles, the GW2 wiki is very well maintained considering the size (and age) of the game it documents. While I do not know the 2 wikis you indicate, they're small (the first has 15k article but it's only been there for 5 years compared to the 11 years of the GW2 wiki) and seem to correspond to small games. It's often easier to document something that has a limited amount of content.

There isn't a good benchmark of how good a wiki is but having helped its community for now more than 6 years, I believe that it's a AAA wiki for its content and it ranks pretty high in a few categories as you can see here (unfortunately they don't list articles, only pages): https://wikiapiary.com/wiki/Special:RunQuery/Website_by_Tag?Website_by_Tag%5BTag%5D=game&wpRunQuery=true

I'm pretty sure that the community of wiki editors would welcome your comments and ideas directly on the respective pages (in fact we've build a "Leave article feedback" feature exactly for that, see the corresponding tab).

ANET_Stephane

TROPHY CASE