StrategyWiki:Staff lounge

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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.

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Series templates format
Currently, the series templates commonly have lists of games all on one line, separated by only Dot templates. This makes the code hard to read and work with, and it's not very semantic. It should be possible to have the game lists formatted as bullet lists in the code, so it'll be easier to read and type, and use CSS to make it still be displayed the same way. Wanderer (talk) 19:18, 19 February 2016 (UTC)
 * I agree that your proposal would be preferable, but how can CSS be used to do that?  Pro  cyon  20:42, 19 February 2016 (UTC)
 * The template could wrap the game list in a DIV element with a class name, let's say, "series-game-list" or something, and the CSS could have something like:

div.series-game-list ul, div.series-game-list ul > li { display: inline; } div.series-game-list ul > li:before { content: "\00B7\0020"; } div.series-game-list ul > li:first-child:before { content: ""; display: none; }
 * This will display the list as a line of text, and render the dots as pseudo-elements before all but the first list item.Wanderer (talk) 21:47, 19 February 2016 (UTC)
 * The idea sounds pretty good to me too, can you set up a demo template? We can then look into using a bot to make the change. -- Prod (talk) 21:56, 19 February 2016 (UTC)
 * I set up a demo here, but I can't edit the style sheet. Wanderer (talk) 00:29, 20 February 2016 (UTC)
 * I've updated common.css. You should be able to see the changes if you purge your cache. -- Prod (talk) 01:35, 20 February 2016 (UTC)
 * Wow, that looks pretty cool. Nice job.   Pro  cyon  01:47, 20 February 2016 (UTC)
 * Fyi, you guys are all great and appreciated. --Zaiqukaj (talk) 05:43, 20 February 2016 (UTC)
 * I think we need to clean up a bit of the styling still, but it is a cleaner solution. -- Prod (talk) 22:31, 27 February 2016 (UTC)
 * I just added a few more examples with different formats on the demo page. Wanderer (talk) 23:58, 28 February 2016 (UTC)
 * I don't think it's possible to switch to lists like this without changing how they look. It seems impossible to have an optional first "heading" in the list format. The option where you've included it with the first entry seems less intuitive than just using the dot. -- Prod (talk)
 * Trying to keep the headings on the same line does seem to be proving problematic. Wanderer (talk) 05:20, 29 February 2016 (UTC)

Template:Infobox
Should Infobox be renamed to Game? This would match System, Series, Company, etc.. -- Prod (talk) 02:35, 2 March 2016 (UTC)
 * Makes sense, lots of pages would be impacted by this but that's what bots and redirects are for. -- 17:21, 11 March 2016 (UTC)
 * I'm on board. Would really like a refactor of the entire box tbh...   Pro  cyon  18:48, 11 March 2016 (UTC)

Copyright policy regarding official manuals
Is it acceptable to upload graphics taken from the official manual of a game? I see that at least some complete walkthroughs do this.

I'd like to improve the Zelda II walkthrough. Using the existing Ocarina of Time as an example, I see that the walkthrough landing page includes an image of Link sitting on a stump with Navi flying around. This image comes from the official manual of the game.

Following suit, I uploaded an image of Link taken from the Zelda 2 manual to the landing page of the Zelda 2 walkthrough. The text of the image upload screen seems to indicate that this content is prohibited.

Cedearia (talk) 03:31, 12 March 2016 (UTC)

The copyright policy page gives me the impression that the image I uploaded is okay.

Cedearia (talk) 03:36, 12 March 2016 (UTC)

Hello everyone at the Staff
Hello to all the staff members on here, I feel like before I start editing, I should say this to everyone on here. I truly am sorry for the way I was acting on here should have acted my own age and shouldn't have egged everyone on here especially Proycon and Prod the owners. Shouldn't have lied about pretending to know the original owner or making new accounts like ThugLife as well as saying that I was Clay. I guess the reason why I was doing that because I was being stupid and Proycon I shouldn't have acted like I'm the best on here I know the staff is a lot more organized and better at shortening there sentences as well as better writer's than I am I really need to work on that but guess that's what happens when your homeschooled from middle to high school. I really should have just listened like I was supposed to and you all were helping me out on the Super Mario Advance to make a Super Mario Bros. 2 a featured guide I really do appreciate that and was wondering since you all tell me happy birthday and talk to me even if it's about this site more than my actual friends do I was wondering if we could all be friends and get to know each other. The only three things I'm going to be a ask Proycon and Prod for will you all allow me to take this down once everyone has read it, would you possibly allow Super Mario Bros. 2 to see if we can get it to a featured guide possibly in the future, my final request is if I accidentally mess anything up besides the Wii U Virtual Console titles already learned my lesson from that can you write on my talk page and have me fix it instead of everyone else fixing them for me. I really want to be an awesome writer like everyone else on here someday have a great rest of your night staff keep up the awesome work. PS I know Proycon and Prod are going to keep an eye on me thanks for that by the way to both -- RKimble (talk) 00:34, 2 April 2016 (UTC)

PCGamingWiki
Should we set up a partnership with PCGamingWiki? We can link to them from our infoboxes, and they can do the same for us. We'd also add a blurb to Guide/Partnerships. -- Prod (talk) 20:44, 10 April 2016 (UTC)


 * Interesting partnership. What specifically would interlinking provide us or simplify for us? Additionally, is it complimentary to our scope or outside of our scope? 50% of their content is duplicate with our Getting Started scope. Elements they appear to provide and track: hardware compatibility, language localization, a summary of bug fixes (whereas we often go with a mirror of official patch notes), troubleshooting fixes, 'hack' tips (e.g. special console commands for Half-Life 2).


 * I'm cool with it if they're game. There doesn't seem to be much content overlap.  My only concern is growing the Infoboxes even further, but there's not much alternative if we want to give them some visibility.  I would just make sure we have a solid agreement on how a link back to SW would be displayed.   Pro  cyon  03:31, 12 April 2016 (UTC)
 * I think our scopes are complementary, with very little overlap. They help with everything non-gameplay (backing up saves, how to get the game working if it isn't), and we cover the gameplay itself. They're also an open content independent wiki and the cross-promotion should help us both. -- Prod (talk) 05:06, 12 April 2016 (UTC)


 * I only see overlap going as far as initial setup to get the game working. With PCGamingWiki, most of the content lists how the game technically operates and goes beyond what's necessary to play the game for the average user.  StrategyWiki's Getting started pages might only describe actions to make the game playable or otherwise familiarize the player with the interface, rather than digging down into more advanced configuration or potential source ports of Doom or Hexen.  There's almost always overlap, but I don't see it between PCGW and SW. --Sigma 7 (talk) 05:49, 13 April 2016 (UTC)

NMH/Sigma 7, do you think we should go ahead with the partnership? -- Prod (talk) 06:49, 13 April 2016 (UTC)

Series template cleanup
Series has some parameters I don't feel are useful. I'd like to remove the following from the template (and all occurrences): -- Prod (talk) 03:56, 14 April 2016 (UTC)
 * Japanese - No real benefit knowing the name in Japanese, since the category is just for organization.
 * Designer - More relevant to check the individual games, since we don't have this in many places.
 * Firstdate/Lastdate - No benefit to mention on the series page, it's just the release of the first/last game.