StrategyWiki:Staff lounge

__NEWSECTIONLINK__

Welcome to all users! This page is where you can ask StrategyWiki-related questions to the staff and senior community figures, and they will do their best to answer. If you want to raise a topic for discussion (rather than just ask about it), please use the community issues forum instead. New issues are entered here, with the most recent at the bottom of the page. If your question does not pertain to editing StrategyWiki (e.g. asking for hints or game-specific information), please ask on the guide's talk page or on the forums.

Please review the Table of Contents to see if your issue has already been raised; also check the archives (to the right) in case it was discussed some time ago.

To facilitate ease of browsing and replying, please:
 * 1) Place your question at the bottom of the list.
 * 2) Title the question (by placing the title between equals signs: ==Title==).
 * 3) Sign your name and date (by adding four tildes: ~ ).

Keyboard chart template
I created a keyboard command chart template at Template:Kbdchart. You can see it in action at Gothic/Controls. I have a small database of keyboard commands and will start adding them to articles in the next couple of days. Posfan12 16:48, 22 April 2010 (UTC)
 * This template looks pretty cool, but there are multiple problems with it that don't make it a fit for our wiki. First of all, it's huge. At 1440×900 screen resolution, it still renders well off the side of the screen for me. Of more importance, this is a duplication of a method we already have for displaying keyboard controls, the kbd template. I don't think it's a fitting replacement as it's very much more complicated, creates tons of "whitespace" for unused keys and doesn't provide the room within a key's box for longer sentences often used to describe controls. I like how key groups can be colored, but other than that, I feel that our simpler, more versatile method is superior. Of least importance is the template's appearance, which doesn't really fit the wiki. We don't use large, colorful elements like that, from what I've seen. Anyway, people can add their opinions and you can clarify or bring up additional points here, but in the future you might want to run things like this by the community before spending a lot of time and effort on it. We've been around for five years now, and I can assure you that keyboard control formatting has come up before. :D — najzere T 20:32, 22 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Bad example. Here's one with less empty whitespace: Descent: FreeSpace - The Great War/Controls. Posfan12 01:23, 23 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Nice idea. =D The criticism I would have for it though is, as Najzere stated above, it's really big. I don't know how big your computer screen is (I know it depends on the type of computer you have, because there's another laptop in my house that's 5x bigger than mine, and you can see much more without scrolling on that one, as everything appears more stretched) but on mine, it kind of goes off the screen. =/ Also, are you planning to replace that with the original control templates for PC? Again, Najzere mentioned this above. Otherwise, it's a nice idea for a control diagram...though I'm not sure how that would fit in with the rest of the control templates. =/-- E-123Wario54 The Temple of TalkFFI black mage (8-bit).gif 02:38, 23 April 2010 (UTC)
 * No, I don't see why the existing template should no longer be used - they work fine together. Also, I placed the template in its own scrollable container, so it should not affect the entire page flow any longer. Posfan12 03:44, 23 April 2010 (UTC)
 * The default template looks much better now and the scrollable wrapper is an improvement. I'm still not a fan of its complexity, that it isn't in the standard format which all other controls are in (e.g. we don't try to mock up console controllers like this either), and it means a different section on multi-platform games' controls pages instead of simply adding a Windows column and having the control information located in one place. I hate to keep harping on the colors, but, with the exclusion of guide-specific templates, we like to stick mainly to light grays and blues, so the charts you've made are extremely jarring to my sense of the wiki's color scheme. At any rate, I think you have enough example charts out there now, so until we reach a consensus on this bold new method, please hold off on adding any more control information that isn't in line with what is outlined in the user guide. Hopefully this topic gets some attention this weekend, so we can get this resolved quickly for you. Thanks, — najzere T 22:03, 23 April 2010 (UTC)
 * The style/colors can be pretty easily changed to pastel colors if you have any particular ones in mind. Posfan12 03:26, 25 April 2010 (UTC)