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: ~ ).

Inclusion of fan-site link on poorly populated guide
As per this discussion, I wanted to give other admins an opportunity to weigh in on the matter and provide their opinions. Thanks for your time.  Pro cyon  20:20, 22 March 2012 (UTC)
 * It's directly competitive to our site, so unless the linking is two-way like with our partners, my opinion is definitely not. The only external links we should provide are to resources outside our scope and they should go in an "External links" section at the bottom of the main guide page, not in the intro. Also, non-admin should feel free to opine as well. :D (P.S. should the title of this section not be "on poorly populated guide"?) — najzere T 02:44, 23 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Duly noted, thanks Naj ;)  Pro  cyon  03:43, 23 March 2012 (UTC)

Linking to a given site isn't the best thing to do. In particular, it's places focus on one fansite over another, especially since the given fansite might not be the primary resource used by fans (even if it's the most popular). Since fan sites compete with each other, there's a good chance that some may be abandoned and users migrate to another one. Since the official site lists the fansites, it's better to link there instead and let the Urban Rivals community decide from there. Also, linking shouldn't be necessary since guides should be standalone, and with links being reserved for non-game information (e.g. as is done with the NIWA partners when appropriate) or for providing proof for contested information. Guides, and other forms of more permanent references, should try to be standalone to avoid having important parts disappear. --Sigma 7 05:46, 27 March 2012 (UTC)
 * I've got to agree with you. Despite being rather late I wanted to add an opinion. An issue like linking fansites should not rely on how populated a page is. A diversion doesn't seem like the spirit of Strategywiki to me since it would not encourage people to fill in the gaps here over following the link. For outside unofficial sites it would be best if they are as complete/active as Bulbapedia and the Zelda Wiki. They don't really seem to do walkthroughs so it is a mutual benefit to partner up for both parties. If we don't have at least one dedicated person over here working on a guide for a game or franchise I can't see a major fansite for one wanting to partner up as well so the underpopulated concept may be a variable for that. It doesn't seem fair to send out an olive branch if we aren't trying to be a good partner as well. I do like that our current partners are active enough I'm not worried that they may disappear or die off in a few years. --Zaiqukaj 06:34, 3 May 2012 (UTC)


 * If we all worked hard on this we probably could get added as a fan site, too. Unless the site has some really useful script/tool that can't be copied, I wouldn't link to it.  -- 15:12, 4 May 2012 (UTC)

Bug list
Feel free to add anything you spot to the list.


 * 1) Classes for tag need to be updated for the "small" functionality that used to have a mouseover box on the right in BlueCloud. This actually still works in Monobook. I don't know if we just want to get rid of this functionality all together, or make it work in all skins. (Dolphin, Vector, Monobook).
 * 2) *Here's a new tag template based on the look of Wikipedia's cleanup tags: User:Najzere/Tag. This goes away completely from the "hidden", expandable box that used to go off to the side. It's pretty simple, just puts a normal box at the top like stub does, or a smaller one for sections. Here are examples: test cases. Each header box template would set its own colors/icons or use a standard one and we could make a multiple issues style template to combine them. The header_box class could be updated with the new styles and developer_header_box could be removed completely. — Najzere  ·  Talk  16:24, 8 May 2012 (UTC)
 * 3) * And here is the multiple issues template, also added to the test cases. — Najzere  ·  Talk  18:02, 11 May 2012 (UTC)
 * 4) **I like this. Would the currently invisible templates (needinfobox, needcat, etc.) be merged into this? -- Garrett (talk) 03:36, 12 May 2012 (UTC)
 * 5) ***I'd still like to bring back the "tagging" feature. They could probably be added something like a toolbox on the side.  Perhaps a "tagbox" or something. -- Prod (Talk) 04:21, 12 May 2012 (UTC)
 * 6) ***Yes, it's set up to include needinfobox and needcat, but we don't need to include any that we want to be category-only, with no messaging. Also I left some out that I thought should always be their own separate banner, like delete and future. — Najzere  ·  Talk  17:03, 13 May 2012 (UTC)
 * 7) subtoc doesn't seem to center when transcluded. See Super Mario 64/Walkthrough, expand TOC, see header "Super Mario 64 DS" aligned left, see Super Mario 64/Table of Contents where header is centered. -- 16:29, 22 June 2012 (UTC)
 * 8) *They're both centered in my browser. — Najzere  ·  Talk  17:00, 22 June 2012 (UTC)
 * 9) **Uncentered in the ToC in Google Chrome, Monobook. Uncentered in FireFox 13.0.1 in Dolphin. Hmmm... -- 18:03, 22 June 2012 (UTC)
 * 10) ***Seems to be caused by the rule, which is part of MediaWiki:Common.css. Not sure what other effects removing/editing that rule will have however. -- 08:06, 24 June 2012 (UTC)
 * 11) ****Should be fixed, please confirm. -- Prod (talk) 02:46, 26 June 2012 (UTC)

Done

 * 1) First off, if BlueCloud is completely killed, can everyone's preferences be updated to Dolphin automatically?
 * 2) * Done. -- Prod (Talk) 05:05, 3 May 2012 (UTC)
 * 3) **Awesome thanks. — Najzere  ·  Talk  05:36, 3 May 2012 (UTC)
 * 4) featured needs to use a class instead of inline styles to properly place the star in different skins. (Dolphin, Vector, Monobook).
 * 5) * Looks like the class was already ready, I just did some tweaking to the css rules. -- Prod (Talk) 19:58, 6 May 2012 (UTC)
 * 6) Restore functionality of sortable for custom skins.
 * 7) * If anyone is having problems with this, try disabling abxy scripts, which worked for me. Likewise a fix on the abxy side may be needed.
 * 8) ** Removed the abxy script includes, so it should be working now, with new arrows too! -- Prod (Talk) 06:01, 8 May 2012 (UTC)
 * 9) We need a new graphic for the top left corner in Vector and Monobook. It's clickable to get to the main page, but shouldn't be empty.
 * 10) * Same old image, but at least it isn't blank. Not the highest priority to make a new image, but it'll get updated at the same time we update any other images. -- Prod (Talk) 06:01, 8 May 2012 (UTC)
 * 11) The   class needs to be eliminated, and I think Prod has already started that by deprecating sidebartoc.
 * 12) * All uses have been removed and the template deleted. -- Garrett (talk) 03:36, 12 May 2012 (UTC)

Discussion
They just released 1.19, and I'm going to be updating to that soon (next week if no new extensions break), so expect new bugs to crop up then. -- Prod (Talk) 05:05, 3 May 2012 (UTC)
 * Cool. Have you seen the new diff engine they rolled out on Wikipedia as part of the 1.20wmf1 upgrade? Most people hate it, but I think it's pretty cool and would be perfect with a little palette enhancement. — Najzere  ·  Talk  05:36, 3 May 2012 (UTC)
 * I still haven't accepted the fact that they managed to release 1.19 on time... -- Prod (Talk) 05:59, 3 May 2012 (UTC)

Can we just use the Facebook logo for Monobook? -- 20:52, 3 May 2012 (UTC)
 * Yeah, it's the right size, but it's also from the old logo, so an updated one would be good (to replace the FB one too). — Najzere  ·  Talk  00:22, 4 May 2012 (UTC)

Sysop nomination: Paco
Please see Requests for permissions/Paco. -- 16:30, 14 May 2012 (UTC)

How do you embed text on other text?
What I'm talking about is, I've seen something from another wiki where there will be a line of text with a dotted underline. Hovering over the text makes a text box appear giving additional information. I have checked the wiki markup to see if I can use the code here but it appears I can't. Is there a similar code for that here? T.testLP(talk) 05:03, 16 June 2012 (UTC)
 * We haven't implemented anything like that. It takes a lot of work and I don't think we've discussed how it would be implemented. I guess now's the time to start talking about it. =) Can you show us an example? I remember seeing something like it for the popup-graphics on WoWWiki. -- 05:27, 16 June 2012 (UTC)
 * Just use an element with a "title" attribute. The text in the "title" attribute is what appears in the popup.


 * Example:

&lt;span title="Tooltip text!"&gt;Mouseover me!&lt;/span&gt;
 * Displays: Mouseover me!


 * Wanderer (talk) 06:35, 16 June 2012 (UTC)

We use abbr on this wiki. — Najzere  ·  Talk  22:23, 16 June 2012 (UTC)

IRC
Let's face it, our IRC server is quite dead. There is usually all of me idling in the channel, and from when I return from being away, I notice a user pop on, get frustrated that nobody is there, and then leave. As such, I propose a simple and easy solution: just turn off the server. There are currently all of 3 users online (including myself) and I don't see the long-standing trend of less and less IRC activity reversing without some serious hype and commitment. Turning off the server (and subsequently disabling the webchat extension we have) would solve this issue in the sense that we would not have to mandate any extra commitment from sysops to sit in the channel to make it seem livelier, and if/when we decide to bring IRC back we can do so on an already established network instead of running our own. Thoughts? -- 08:12, 24 June 2012 (UTC)
 * Sounds good. — Najzere  ·  Talk  19:25, 24 June 2012 (UTC)
 * Yeah, as much as I'd hate to see it go, I agree with Skizzers. Prod is away on holiday at the moment, but when he comes back, I'll mention it to him and we'll go from there.  Although it's entirely possible that he'll see this while he's away and comment.   Pro  cyon  21:31, 24 June 2012 (UTC)
 * I have to agree as well. In the last few months, I've seen very few users in the SW channel other than myself or Skizzerz, and almost all just do exactly as Skizzerz said; and in the other two channels I use (#NIWA, who all prefer Skype, and #MuteCity, for the F-Zero Wiki, which is going nowhere quickly itself), I think there's only been two or three non-bot users (not counting myself) between them, since about March. It just doesn't seem to be worth it anymore, to me. -- 00:49, 25 June 2012 (UTC)
 * I'd like to keep the option of restarting it on our own at some time in the future, but for now, it's just not worth the effort to keep it running. I'd rather move to a more populated server than completely shut down though. -- Prod (talk) 03:10, 26 June 2012 (UTC)
 * Where will we have meetings? -- 15:54, 27 June 2012 (UTC)
 * Well, if we move to a more populated server as Prod suggests, we could have them there. Otherwise, we could use Skype (voice chat is really handy). Although, we haven't had a meeting in years, so I'm not sure if/when we ever plan on starting that up again. In fact, lack of meetings is a contributing factor to this discussion happening, because the lack of frequent meetings meant that there was less incentive to simply stay around on IRC, which caused people to leave, their registered nicks get expired, and snowball from there. -- 06:57, 28 June 2012 (UTC)
 * We had a mini meeting the last time I was on there. What's wrong with just using the Staff Lounge? -- 16:21, 28 June 2012 (UTC)


 * When I was idling on the channel, the only thing I noticed was random people doing a "Hi! Bye!", as well as assuming that it's more effective asking a random question on IRC as opposed to using the talk page for a given game; almost as if they thought it was a real-time hint channel. There hasn't been any real SW use of the IRC channel, and anything needing a fast response could be done via some messaging service.  --Sigma 7 (talk) 05:47, 29 June 2012 (UTC)

PAL region release dates
I want to create pal, but DrBob deleted the template the last time I created it. He referenced this post: http://forums.strategywiki.org/viewtopic.php?f=20&t=26115 which no longer exists, and I couldn't find one at ABXY. Why can't we have a pal template? We need it for games like Agatha Christie: Evil Under the Sun. -- 15:54, 3 July 2012 (UTC)
 * I can't find that topic either, but I did find this one. Like I said there, PAL is Europe and Australasia, which have their own templates, and, nine times out of ten, have different release dates. So, a separate PAL template doesn't make sense to me. -- 17:30, 3 July 2012 (UTC)
 * PAL is huge; it includes more than half of the countries of the world (Europe, Middle East, Asia, part of South America, part of Africa, Greenland, South East Asia, and Australia). Yes, these countries/areas often have their own release dates, but in some cases there are official PAL releases. I don't mind if our policy is to add 10 rd templates to a page instead of PAL, but we need a decision. My vote is for a simplified template unless there are specific release dates. In some cases, we might add PAL and find out later the individual dates, in which case we can change the page. -- 17:50, 3 July 2012 (UTC)
 * How often do we even know specific dates for Africa or Greenland, anyway? I think in most cases we can get away with just listing Europe and Australia and only listing other countries (with their specific templates) when necessary. Wanderer (talk) 22:49, 3 July 2012 (UTC)
 * I agree with Wanderer, NMH. An EU release date is pretty much synonymous with a PAL release date, and how I've always worked.  What icon would you use for PAL, and how can you guarantee that everyone understands what is meant by a general PAL release date?  I'd rather keep the release dates on a system/region level, and not delve into the issue of TV standards.  Then you open pandora's box for listing 480p, 1080i, 720p, 1080p, etc. as well.  Not that I would object to that, but I think it should be kept separate from release dates.   Pro  cyon  22:54, 3 July 2012 (UTC)
 * The TV standards isn't the issue. It's really about the release date region. I was under the impression, due to repeatedly running into PAL rd's on Wikipedia, that this was a legitimate thing. But then when I go to investigate further I only find proof of, say, an EU rd. The latest instance of this was with http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agatha_Christie:_Evil_Under_the_Sun and then running into a more specific entry related to JoWooD Entertainment (see http://strategywiki.org/w/index.php?title=Agatha_Christie%3A_Evil_Under_the_Sun&diff=620313&oldid=620311 ). Unfortunately, I don't know how to prove that it is November 16 rather than 23, as found on GameFAQs. -- 03:23, 4 July 2012 (UTC)

Dragon Warrior 3 enemies and control selector linking
Another big issue: Dragon Warrior III/Enemies. This page is huge and uses control selector to combine three pages in one. To upgrade the walkthrough of the game, we need to link to the enemies whenever there is a reference. However, we cannot currently link to enemies of the other versions (I created the IDs for the names, so a proper link will put the reader down to the right monster, but the control selector will not change from NES so GBC/SNES users end up having to scroll back up to change it, and then back down to find the enemy again).

The question is: is there a way to set the control selector opt value when linking? If not, is there a way to add it? If not, then do you agree that the best solution is another overhaul of the enemies page where we combine all three versions into the tables and remove control selector from the page? Is walkthrough linking to enemies useful/necessary/wanted? I want this guide to be featured. -- 17:37, 4 July 2012 (UTC)
 * As was mentioned from the get go, the control selector isn't meant to be used for lots of tabular information the way you did. You can see on enemies pages in other guides that individual sections for enemies with alphabetTOC at the top works just fine and avoids these problems. So yes, I would say it needs an overhaul. — Najzere  ·  Talk  18:44, 4 July 2012 (UTC)
 * It was fun while it lasted. -- 19:47, 4 July 2012 (UTC)

Spoiler image script
I'm proposing an addition to the site wide javascript for spoiler image functionality. It replaces images with a spoiler placeholder image and reveals the hidden image on mouseover. Usage would be something like  . To see it in action, add importScript('User:Najzere/spoilerimage.js'); to your common JS or skin-specific JS and visit my sandbox for an example. The example just swaps two images, but obviously the "top" image would be the spoiler placeholder. If javascript is disabled by the user, then the normal image would appear without the spoiler placeholder. — Najzere  ·  Talk  21:03, 4 July 2012 (UTC)
 * Do we support users without javascript enabled? I mean, who doesn't have js enabled while browsing? My real concern is with using mismatched file sizes. Can you script the spoiler image to resize according to the size of the image it is covering up? -- 22:45, 4 July 2012 (UTC)
 * We support them in the sense that we try not to do things that will entirely fuck them if they don't have javascript enabled, but if you take something like spoiler for example, you can see that there is precedence for making content entirely inaccessible without js enabled. This particular script won't do that, you'll get the normal image if you don't have javascript on. But really in this day and age you would be hard-pressed to find any site that doesn't use some javascript, it's really not worth worrying about anymore.
 * The spoiler image will be sized to whatever the original is set at, or its natural size if nothing is set. Only the source of the image is changed. For the spoiler image, the easiest way from a coding perspective would probably be to just use a .png image with a single color that will look the same at any dimensions. The spoiler image template would add text somewhere (like above or below) with instructions to mouseover to reveal the image. There are other methods if you wanted the placeholder image itself to say "mouse over me", but there would always be either scaling issues, funky image size changing issues or unnecessary complexity. — Najzere  ·  Talk  00:08, 5 July 2012 (UTC)
 * There's no way to pass the image size as a parameter of the script? Or, would it be possible to put an image on top of the spoiler image? Like, have a "SPOILER" text image centered on top of the, say, red spoiler block image that would scale? -- 16:14, 5 July 2012 (UTC)
 * SVGs seemed to scale all right as far as not getting pixelated at larger sizes, but you'll always have problems with odd stretching if you try to use one image considering you can have very wide and short dimensions or very tall and thin dimensions. I updated the script to use another method, which repeats a small background image and hides the original image. This works with any size or dimension after 50×12 (the size of the background image). You can see different image shapes at the example section. — Najzere  ·  Talk  17:22, 5 July 2012 (UTC)
 * Okay, I updated the script to center "SPOILER" over the image cover and it reveals the image when you mouseover. — Najzere  ·  Talk  23:32, 6 July 2012 (UTC)
 * It should also say "(mouse over)" so people know it's not just an image. -- 02:08, 7 July 2012 (UTC)