StrategyWiki talk:Community Portal

http://media.strategywiki.org/images/4/49/SW_CP_Banner.png

This page is for discussion of general community issues; if you just want to ask a question to more experienced users of the site, please use the staff lounge. To start a new thread [ click here]. Resolved threads are gradually archived; see the archives box to the right.

A new skin is under development. If you have any suggestions, please add them to the list

Sigexpand/Sighidden
I found some css on Uncyclopedia that allows expandable sigs. You can find the code in my css. Basically, one span class, "sigexpand," is always visible. However, when whatever is contained within that span is hovered over, the "sighidden" part appears. I think this could be useful for a) a bit better sig styling b) contracting the size of large sigs. Should we implement this (it would go in the Common css if we do)? (PS-In the case of my sig, if you have that css, only the scissors is visible until you hover over it, in which case the other links appear as well). -- 21:00, 12 June 2007 (CDT)
 * Bumpity Bump. Hello?-- 08:17, 14 June 2007 (CDT)
 * Doobey Doo, for me, the sigs can be annoying there, nobody would think to move their mouse over your sig and it gets in the way when highlighting text.--Rocky http://media.strategywiki.org/images/thumb/7/78/Rally-X_Rock.png/25px-Rally-X_Rock.png (Talk - Contributions) 11:01, 14 June 2007 (CDT)
 * Isn't this up to the admins? Because it has to do with limitations on sigs...  I think it's fine as long as it works without problems.  --Notmyhandle (talk • contribs) 19:30, 14 June 2007 (CDT)
 * The only problem with it is that when not put down on a page correctly (like mine is, I have it substitute User:Ryan Schmidt/sig2, which contains in it. Otherwise, it substitutes the entirety of the code, which is really messy (my sig takes up 7 lines in the default edit box). As for the annoyingness, we can always disable it if it gets too bad (plus, having any superscript or subscript makes the line above/below jumpy, so I'll have to change that part in mine if we make this global). -- 20:52, 14 June 2007 (CDT)
 * As long as they're not too annoying, one person had their sig center when you move over it, if you move your mouse off the line then it would go back to the left, it was fairly hard to click.--Rocky http://media.strategywiki.org/images/thumb/7/78/Rally-X_Rock.png/25px-Rally-X_Rock.png (Talk - Contributions) 00:42, 15 June 2007 (CDT)
 * Another problem that I have just encountered is with long sigs that wrap to the next line. You can only click on the links in the very same line, it disappears before you can get to the next line. I do agree that we'll have to guage how annoying it becomes when more people (besides me) start using it. However, any changes made to them should be retroactive anyway (if they did it the right way to begin with). -- 09:31, 15 June 2007 (CDT)

So should I put this into Common.css or not? -- 20:41, 22 June 2007 (CDT)

Personal milestone achieved
Well, I have finally done it. A major goal of mine that I had shared with Echelon and Dan was to turn every link in this list blue. As of tonight, I have written a guide, or at the very least, stubbed in a page for every Famicom game ever made through the first three years of its existence, 1983 through 1985. I went in to depth on every game that was appealing to me, and simply stubbed the ones that were a lot less interesting to play. (I don't think too many people are going to be upset that there isn't more information about Bokosuka Wars or Onyanko Town.) I want to thank everyone who has provided me with some form of help, support, or encouragement, especially Echelon, Dan, Prod, Garrett, Rocky, Ryan, Lunar Knight, Mason, NMH, and last but not least, DrBob (we miss you around here man!)  Thanks also to SnesMaster for his help with maps. Sincere apologies to anyone that I neglected to mention. And I feel that even though this monumental task is behind me, I'm only just starting. So where do I go from here? I always ask for feedback and comments about how I can improve any of the guides that I've started, so please feel free to leave some here, or on my talk page. Thanks again everyone. Let's keep making SW the greatest site on the whole web. Procyon (Talk) 00:25, 14 June 2007 (CDT)
 * 1) First and foremost, I absolutely intend to finish the Pokémon Red and Blue guide.  I made completing it rather difficult for myself, and it became very tedious.  But I have so little of the game left, that I might as well just get it over with.
 * 2) Next, there are a number of Pre-Famicom arcade games that I would still like to cover, so I may try to tackle the bigger titles before I look at any 1986 Famicom/NES games.  The next two on my list are Tempest and Wizard of Wor.
 * 3) I was surprised at how much fun it was to put the Combat guide together (although I hesitate to call it a guide), so I want to do the other 8 launch titles that came out with the Atari 2600.  That includes Air-Sea Battle, Star Ship, Indy 500, Street Racer, Video Olympics, Surround, Blackjack, and Basic Math... which isn't really a game ^_^;
 * 4) I've neglected the Move Lists project for quite a while.  I should try to get through the Street Fighter III and Street Fighter EX series, and maybe move on to Darkstalkers...
 * 5) And then finally, when I've completed #1 and #3, and made a sizable dent in #2 and #4, I will start moving on to the 1986 Famicom/NES games.  At that point, the games start to get more complicated.  The guides will be approaching the size of the Super Mario Bros. and The Legend of Zelda guides, so they will take a while longer to complete, naturally. (More games were made for the Famicom in 1986, then made in the first three years!)


 * Thanks for all your contributions Proc, glad you're still on board and I can't wait to see what else you'll bust out. I'm just puttering a long with my guides, still haven't completed CT and my newest guide is pitiful ahaha.  Keep up the great work, everyone should follow suit!  --Notmyhandle (talk • contribs) 00:30, 14 June 2007 (CDT)
 * Additionally, because of you StrategyWiki has hit its own milestone with 200 completed guides! Congrats everyone!  --Notmyhandle (talk • contribs) 00:31, 14 June 2007 (CDT)
 * Congrats Proc! I'm glad to see that you're able to complete a major goal of yours.  I've always been impressed with your guides.-- Duke  Ruckley  10:04, 15 June 2007 (CDT)
 * *Does little dance*--Froglet 10:05, 15 June 2007 (CDT)
 * You're like some kind of machine! That's really great; here's to the next 100 guides! :-D I've only got three exams left, so I should be back the week after next (these three are spread out a little >:-, although I may be off frequently to go to parties and stuff. Keep up the good work, Procyon! --DrBob (Talk) 06:44, 17 June 2007 (CDT)

Policy on roms and emulators
What is our official policy on roms and emulators? Roms are essentially illegal unless you make your own backup of the game (fair use). Emulators I'm not sure about. bleem! was sued by Sony and essentially died soon after, and I'm not sure if it goes against the DMCA (something about copy protection schemes). Although they are the best way of getting screenshots for any non-PC games, I get the feeling that game companies aren't too happy with them (of course, I could be wrong...). -- Prod (Talk) 09:24, 16 June 2007 (CDT)
 * No, you're right. Emulators "take away" from the possible market of re-releases; like those on the Wii and Xbox Live (I would argue that they actually promote playability, but whatever).  I don't think SW should support it, for legality issues, but I don't think it's bad to discuss them and I personally support the use for images and research, but I think if you can buy the game then you should.  --User:Notmyhandle (talk • contribs) 14:27, 16 June 2007 (CDT)
 * I agree, promoting emulators can Only get us into trouble even if it is in the gray area of the law, but I think that if you own the game then you should be able to take screenshots, I disagree with emulatng modern games but I think it's OK if you can't buy them easily.--Rocky http://media.strategywiki.org/images/thumb/7/78/Rally-X_Rock.png/25px-Rally-X_Rock.png (Talk - Contributions) 14:41, 16 June 2007 (CDT)
 * "Buy them easily" is also controversial, like if the game hasn't been republished and we have to rely on used games, then yeah that's not fair if people say it's not ok. --User:Notmyhandle (talk • contribs) 15:03, 16 June 2007 (CDT)
 * And if you download it then it gets re-published but what I'm saying is that if you have the game then it should be your right to take screenshots. E.g PS1 and older, maybe some GBA games now but I think it's wrong to take a rom of a brand new PS3 game and emulate it without the disk. Republished games are different (for me), they're usually a lot cheaper and have extras (E.g 360 games have achievements), it's not like you are buying them for £30-40, if you don't have the console then IMO it's OK to emulate them.--Rocky http://media.strategywiki.org/images/thumb/7/78/Rally-X_Rock.png/25px-Rally-X_Rock.png (Talk - Contributions) 15:16, 16 June 2007 (CDT)
 * OK, I'm not a lawyer (but my dad is), but you guys are way way off on this topic. There is absolutely nothing illegal, nor will there ever be, about emulators.  If there were, the MAME project would have been halted ages ago.  The law (as far as the United States is concerned, and they're the strictest, so I have to assume this applies to everywhere around the world) is that anyone is allowed to reverse engineer anything currently available, so long as said reverse engineering did not take place using proprietary non-public information.  That is, you can't reverse engineer something if you had to use information stolen from Sony in order to do it.  Claiming that emulators are illegal is like saying that CD and DVD players should be illegal since I can buy one and use it to play nothing but illegally copied discs.  Bleem was sued because it attempted to be a commercial product that intended to make money off of Sony's intellectual properties.  Bleem was under no such attack while it was a non-commercial program.  Further more, Sony could not win a case against them solely on the basis that Bleem was an emulator, there were several other IP theft charges rendered against them.  The point is, emulators are not illegal, and no amount of association with them can ever bring harm to this website or any other.  Offering ROMs for download is an entirely different story.  That can bring the threat of a lawsuit, but as long as the requests were complied with, it would never get to the level of an actual case (that costs too much money, so companies always try to resolve issues "peacefully" first).  I would never advocate SW offering ROMs for download, nor provide links to any sites that do (there are plenty of other ways for resourceful people to find them).  So please guys, do not rashly go down the line of thought that we have to outright ban the discussion of emulators because it's an absolutely false pretense, and it is an extraordinarily useful tool for the purposes of this site.  Believe me, I've been a part of the emulation community for over 10 years.  I know all of the arguments that have ever been presented about the legality of emulators.  It's time for the big companies to stop scaring people into believing things that aren't true, no matter how much they might wish they were. Procyon (Talk) 15:28, 16 June 2007 (CDT)
 * Companies would love to have you believe that emulators and game copiers are just as illegal as downloaded ROMs. According to Nintendo's legal page, "The backup/archival copy exception is ... relating to a copy being made by the rightful owner ... to ensure he or she has one in the event of damage or destruction", but they then go on to say, "Are Game Copying Devices Illegal? Yes". So a backup of a game you own is kosher if you copied it yourself directly from the original media, but the only device capable of exercising this legal right is illegal? Bottom line is, don't believe everything the companies say. :) GarrettTalk 15:59, 16 June 2007 (CDT)
 * LOL, I just read that. I'm now going to find a link using the 6 links of separation theory to find that nintendo links to emulators then get them to sue themselves. BTW, click the IDSA link on the bottom of that page, I can't find anything on the front page (Shows how much they care).--Rocky http://media.strategywiki.org/images/thumb/7/78/Rally-X_Rock.png/25px-Rally-X_Rock.png (Talk - Contributions) 16:14, 16 June 2007 (CDT)
 * IANAL. Now that that's out of the way, I think we agree that ROMs are most certainly illegal (not exactly sure what law, maybe copyright infringement?), unless you make your own copy, where it's fair use.  About emulators, I think they are still somewhat a gray area.  There's so many rumors going around on both sides that it's hard to tell what is really true (that whole "delete in 24 hours and you're fine" garbage).  Reverse engineering is protected in U.S., however the DMCA is being used in all sorts of ways these days.  Reverse engineering copyright protection mechanisms is essentially illegal by that law (specifically re-distribution of those mechanisms, but whatever).  To stay legal, as long as we don't distribute we're fine.  I guess I should have focused more on the "good faith" part which is the important part.  We want the game companies to "like" us.  Just because it's legal, doesn't make it the right thing to do.  My suggestion would be, you are able to talk about them, but telling how to get them (beyond the obvious "search for it") should not be allowed (ie. no linking to emulation sites and the such). -- Prod (Talk) 16:15, 16 June 2007 (CDT)
 * But... we do link to them. There's a link to MAME's website right in the MAME guide.  So does wikipedia for that matter!  If it was really so bad to point to emulators, then all of the publicly known emulation sites would have been shut down long ago.  There are other uses for emulators besides video games (as hard as that may be to believe.)  Emulators in no way violate DMCA either.  If you think about what an emulator does, it takes one foreign machine language instruction and translates into a native machine language instruction.  It's a translator from one machine to another.  How it that can be put to use is one thing, but there's simply no legal precedent for a company to go after a website for linking to a place where an emulator can be downloaded and played with.  ROMs, no question, we can't do it.  I have my own personally feelings about that, but I'll keep them to myself, they aren't relevant to this discussion.  But I would challenge someone to come after us legally for linking to an emulator's site.
 * Please note that this is about good faith towards game companies, not legality. I also don't want to delve into MAME since it has significant use for games that are no longer copyrighted.  -- Prod (Talk) 16:31, 16 June 2007 (CDT)
 * Sure, we all have good faith (for the most part) in the game companies to make games and consoles. What I have no faith in is the fact that the companies say that emulators to create screenshots are a no-go zone, and then rather than provide a commercially available, cheap alternative (where you, say, slot a GB cartridge into a littler device that links up to the computer), just say that it's illegal.  What choice do they leave strategy guide makers?  To me this reeks of how various governments illegalise drugs, then refuse to provide those dependant upon them and proceed to leave a highly lucrative industry open - if you were addicted to drugs and there wasn't any legal alternatives, would you just decide to stay straight and go without?  No.  Some governments that have legalised and regulated certain drug industries have found that there is little to no black market for them.  I say that rather than we have to bend over backwards to comply with a law made murkier by corporate interests and still make guestures of good faith, we just do what we have to - if we have a game, we should be able to have a ROM of it for making screenshots, as it is not as if we are making the companies lose out upon lucrative profits if we already own the game and the game is a few years out of date.  This is just my personal opinion, the law on these matters is murky and I'm just sick of the game companies witch-hunts caused by their inability to provide an alternative.--Froglet 20:29, 16 June 2007 (CDT)
 * I haven't actually heard much from the game companies in either way (except Sony...they have questionable business practices in many industries). The best thing for us would be if people who work for the game companies chose to contribute to the site directly (ie. fill in their info, maybe add a list of all the games they've made, etc.)  That's however wishful thinking.  All I'm hoping for is that they don't bring up any frivolous suits against us, or perhaps even help out financially (if we require it, perhaps SW can get non-profit status? :P). -- Prod (Talk) 21:38, 16 June 2007 (CDT)

This discussion is getting sidetracked. The bottom line is, Wikipedia regularly links to emulators and even BitTorrent sites without getting in any significant amount of trouble. If anyone's going to be targeted for spreading "warez" it's going to start with them since they can affect the widest area. As for screenshots, their validity as fair use of a copyrighted work is not affected by the legality of how said screens were acquired. The sole exception is when the screenshots were associated with a separate licensing deal, such as being exclusive to a magazine, but these cases are few and it is unlikely scanned screenshots would be good enough quality to use here anyway.

In order to use the DMCA to bring legal action against infringing parties the plaintiff must give reasonable notice that infringement has occurred (14 days seems to be the standard), within which the defendant may remove the infringing content and thus avoid further trouble. The plaintiff's position is made weaker if the infringement was done in good faith (see also safe harbor); additionally, if the use is likely to fall well within the fair use provisions of copyright law (meaning the case is likely to be dismissed, as fair use, when satisfied, overrules all other laws) they may decide against further pressuring the other party in case they file countersuits for loss of profit during the downtime (whether assumed or proven). Being non-profit doesn't necessarily increase or decrease the validity of the fair use--unlicensed, illustrated strategy guides exist), and since we use AdSense we are considered to be clearly for-profit.

I am working on a ground-up rewrite of Copyrights to hopefully demystify use of copyrighted content here. To cut a long tale short, don't link to sites with ROMs and don't explicitly state you are using ROMs you didn't dump yourself, but other than that discussion of ROMs and emulators really isn't anything to worry about it. GarrettTalk 22:54, 16 June 2007 (CDT)

stubs
This wiki could be really useful but there is to many stubs!
 * Yeah. :) This is largely because many people sign up, make a start on some guides, and then disappear. There are also some skeleton layouts that were deliberately seeded because some people find starting a new guide a little too daunting but might feel quite confident at filling in the blanks on an existing layout. The core user base remains steady and is constantly working on completing guides, so stubs will eventually become a minority. GarrettTalk 03:16, 22 June 2007 (CDT)

StrategyWiki scope
Today I noticed Dreams of Deception. While on the surface this looks like an interesting indie game it doesn't actually exist yet, nor has it actually been given the ESRB rating shown on the cover. A quick look at Wikipedia shows that this was just deleted there. I'm not too keen on covering freeware/shareware/etc. games that aren't sufficiently popular, let alone games that don't even exist yet!

Mason11987 questioned our inclusion policy back in March, but nothing ever came of it. After talking to Prod about the matter, I've decided to start Guide/Scope to contain such a policy. This is a rough draft only, so feel free to make or suggest any changes or improvements you feel are right. Once we're satisfied with how it's written and what it encompasses it can become a proper policy.

The requirements I've come up with are mostly "fail safes" so legitimate games can fail some expectations (e.g. being released in a physical form in stores) but still pass the test.

Please comment on this proposal on the talk page, not here. This will make tracking the policy's history much easier. GarrettTalk 02:49, 22 June 2007 (CDT)
 * As per Dreams of Deception, I did my research on it as well and there are absolutely no mentions of it whatsoever anywhere. It has not been rated by the ESRB, even though it was indicated so on its "box artwork" (blatant lie #1=strike #1), "Seed Entertainment" is not truly a company (blatant lie #2=strike #2), and it appears that the page was designed to be nothing more than a sales pitch on the front page (which goes against our goal to have actual walkthroughs for games=strike #3, it's out!). If he/she IS one of the designers (as suggested on the Wikipedia deletion discussion), he/she could at least provide us with the walkthrough for the first level or something, he/she should have that info even though it has not been released. Because of all of that, I marked the article for deletion. Please discuss this nomination on its talk page, not here. -- 21:05, 22 June 2007 (CDT)