StrategyWiki talk:Community Portal

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Adsense Announcement
Just so the previous thread does not continue to grow, and because the decision has been made, I wanted to start a new thread and announce the new announcement that I added to the main page. I was very thoughtful about how to phrase it in as positive a light as possible. Examine it, and let me know if you have any comments about it. But leave them here, don't edit the announcement directly. Thanks! Procyon 15:22, 24 January 2007 (CST)
 * I edited your comment in the previous thread out. Don't do what you were saying.  Not only is it against Google TOS but it is completely unnecessary.  We WILL get banned for that type of thing.  And that would pretty much screw us over.  But yeah, echelon asap let us know what the results are and fix the alignment.--ConfusedSoul 19:24, 24 January 2007 (CST)
 * Note, this doesn't show up in the monobook skin, and perhaps others. -- Mason11987 (Talk - Contributions) 02:06, 26 January 2007 (CST)
 * The width of the ad box doesn't bother me as much as the margin on the top. There should be a margin equal to the left and right margins between the ad box and toolbox. --blendmaster 18:10, 29 January 2007 (CST)
 * well, i don't like the Google Ads ad all. If you have to have them, please make them more different from the toolbox on the right side. As for now, the blue Google Ads look like some expansion of the blue Toolbox on the right of the screen. Maybe some empty lines below "related changes" (in the toolbox) would do a good job to better seperate strategywiki content from Ads.--Horstjens 13:58, 1 February 2007 (CST)
 * So in summary of all comments so far (plus my own):

-- Prod (Talk) 14:14, 1 February 2007 (CST)
 * Put space between ads and toolbox
 * Either shrink width of toolbox or expand width of ads to make them the same width
 * If possible have only 3 ads so that the 4th doesn't go off the screen.

So, any news on funding? Recieved a check yet? --Notmyhandle 20:02, 13 February 2007 (CST)
 * Since we didn't deploy the ads on SW until late January (when we noticed Abxy was not going to pull in the requisite $100), we did not wind up meeting the month's $100 required earnings total (we were a dollar short!). Google carried over our January balance to February, and they won't mail us our February check until 30 days after the month ends--that is, the end of March. Google is earning interest off of this money in the meantime. Our check should be for over $200, and if my estimates are right it may be closer to $300. I'm going to begin a budget for purchasing one or two rack-mounted servers and I'll also start looking for colocation quotes. I'm also going to chip in some of the money I earn with CompSci tutoring at my campus.  ech elon  00:58, 16 February 2007 (CST)

Template:Toolbox
Can the funcationality of this template be exteneded to monobook? -- Mason11987 (Talk - Contributions) 19:21, 29 January 2007 (CST)
 * Any response? I know Inarius set it up, but I'm sure someone with more css skills can make this work for monobook considering the fact that people from wikipedia may be more comfortable with it and some guides look really ugly without it. -- Mason11987 (Talk - Contributions) 10:29, 27 February 2007 (CST)

Userboxes
I've seen a lot of userboxes being created. So here's a few questions about how we deal with them. Many are created directly on people's userpages, which doesn't cause problems. However, many of these would be commonly used and would benefit from being turned into templates. We could do what wikipedia did, or we can pick our own way of doing things. We could create a Userbox namespace, but that could cause problems if that means that we "officially" support them. Another option is to put all userboxes as subpages of Template:Userbox, so something like Template:Userbox/Firefox (or even Template:Userbox:Firefox since it would look better as a template inclusion). Another option is leaving them in regular template space, and having them marked with Category:Userbox. -- Prod (Talk) 21:52, 6 February 2007 (CST)
 * I think that we should just stick with one userbox template which has flexibility, and so it can be used on people's user pages, with the right variables plugged in to customise it. I would oppose having a large number of userboxes (wherever they are) as they would be unnecessary (because all you need is one with flexible variables), and take up a lot of namespace space (i.e. be messy). --DrBob (Talk) 00:16, 7 February 2007 (CST)

Questionable/pornographic games
Things like Leisure Suit Larry: Magna Cum Laude, Playboy: The Mansion, and Do You Like Horny Bunnies?. Do we allow pictures? Do we have a warning on them? Do we allow them at all? -- Prod (Talk) 21:55, 6 February 2007 (CST)
 * I believe we should follow the Wikipedian uncensored rule, but we should have a disclaimer notifying users that it is a pornographic game.  bibliomaniac 1  5  00:15, 7 February 2007 (CST)
 * I agree with Bibliomaniac15. I think we should emulate Wikipedia, and allow useful pictures, but anything excessive should be removed. --DrBob (Talk) 00:17, 7 February 2007 (CST)
 * I think we have to model ourselves after Wikipedia as much as possible, but perhaps we can provide a means of ingenuity about this. We have DOM-based article tags. I'm sure we could do Ajax-based image hiding similar in for to how popups works.
 * For instance, we could create a template that blanks the image with a X and instructs the user to edit a page such as User:Username/Age18 and fill in a "true" value that the ajax will check before showing the image in the template. This allows those who want to see images to see them and prevents harm to anyone who doesn't want to see the images. Just a thought.  ech  elon  00:27, 7 February 2007 (CST)
 * Then again, that requires user registration. That might be too much to ask?  ech elon  00:28, 7 February 2007 (CST)
 * YouTube requires confirmation to view videos flagged as objectionable and I think creating an account may be part of that requirement, so I don't see creating an account as being too huge a barrier. Perhaps, though, it should be the whole guide that's blanked, since many of these games will have equally explicit text. It's also tidier than having 20 instances of blanked out images on a single page. This could be simply achieved by placing a template in the ToC, which is then inherited by all pages in that guide via the All Game Nav. GarrettTalk 02:15, 7 February 2007 (CST)
 * Currently, the AGN works so that when the page is loaded, the ToC is collapsed, and doesn't load at all if the user doesn't have js enabled (as opposed to the MapleStory/Skill desc which loads first, then shrinks). Something like that could perhaps be used. -- Prod (Talk) 00:32, 7 February 2007 (CST)
 * Actually, now that I think about it, unless the sex acts are actually interactive (e.g. Hot Coffee) what purpose would images serve? It might be useful to have thumbnails for a summary of unlockable h-scenes or something, but other than that I'm not sure what purpose they'd serve. GarrettTalk 02:20, 7 February 2007 (CST)
 * The only thing I would propose as far as a policy would be to say that no questionable images appear on the front page of the guide. It's just like a magazine cover.  The cover has to be presentable and acceptable to the public, but if you know what you're about to view and choose to look inside, then all bets are off.  Procyon 08:55, 7 February 2007 (CST)
 * Agreed. It might be an idea to make an "age 18" template to put on the front cover to warn minors, but I think censoring it is too far. If people are going to ignore an "age 18 only" notice, they're also going to bypass any other measures we put in place, and short of asking for a credit card number, there's nothing we can do to stop that. All that restrictive measures would do is to make life harder for people who are legitimately allowed to view such content. --DrBob (Talk) 10:59, 7 February 2007 (CST)
 * Images would serve to demonstrate gameplay (not all are adventure games..though most are). I would say we have the warning on the main page, and prevent any explicit language/images on the main page, but allow "anything" (relevant to gameplay) on subpages. Perhaps we could also add a 18+ category for images, incase we do decide to do some kind of hiding for them (easier for bots). -- Prod (Talk) 11:34, 7 February 2007 (CST)
 * I think this the best course of action. Nothing should be hidden, but there should be a banner stating that the game is rated AO and the content that makes the game rated AO may be on subsequent pages, and that should be enough in my opinion. -- Mason11987 (Talk - Contributions) 22:41, 8 February 2007 (CST)

Just an idea, why can't we use this to stop vandals putting their pictures on the site. We could put this template on all new images and have an admin (or a user with a few months experience) remove it when it has been checked for porn. If a user wanted to see the image straightaway then they could change the flag to True for Unchecked Images so they can see them.

I am new to the site so if this is a bad idea, let me know

Rocky 04:01, 8 February 2007 (CST)
 * I think that would be too time-consuming and inconvenient, as 99.9% of images uploaded are legitimate. We usually catch vandals pretty fast, so I don't think it's an issue. --DrBob (Talk) 06:46, 8 February 2007 (CST)

Just curious, does Google adsense program not put restrictions on the content of websites that are allowed to join the program? -Afker 02:06, 28 February 2007 (CST)
 * Hm. Unfortunately, Google is rather vague on the matter: "Sites displaying Google ads may not include ... Pornography, adult, or mature content". Now I'm guessing they're meaning sites actually focussing on marketing such material, but, then again, it's open to interpretation. GarrettTalk 02:55, 28 February 2007 (CST)
 * Might as well ask for specifics, how would you contact them? -- Mason11987 (Talk - Contributions) 08:42, 28 February 2007 (CST)
 * The general consensus from what I could find elsewhere is that pornography is sexually explicit materials designed to cause sexual arousal. Are guides can very easily be set up to avoid being labeled "pornography" under this definition. -- Mason11987 (Talk - Contributions) 08:47, 28 February 2007 (CST)
 * Um, within the limits of text, yes. But one can argue that any image with nudity would cross the line, which is my concern. -Afker 14:21, 28 February 2007 (CST)
 * Perhaps, but until we get a clearer response, there isn't anywhere we can look but within the limits of text. To be fair, one can argue that the showing of some leg is crossing the line.  I don't think it'll be an issue. -- Mason11987 (Talk - Contributions) 14:35, 28 February 2007 (CST)

Following Wikipedia: Implementing nofollow a good idea?
Seeing how we are trying to get StrategyWiki based off Wikipedia's effective policy, what do you all think about having nofollow in our external links?--Dan 09:23, 7 February 2007 (CST)
 * To be honest, I tried to follow this discussion but I'm still not clear on the benefits that it provides. A lot of this pagerank stuff goes over my head.  Could you concisely lay out the pros and cons of this decision to make it easier to debate? Procyon 10:16, 7 February 2007 (CST)
 * Basically, a site gets ranked by search engines (for a large part) on the number of links to that site from others. This encourages certain unscrupulous people to spam other sites with links to their own (or a client's), to boost their own pagerank. If a link has a special "nofollow" property (relationship, actually) on it, search engines won't count that link as contributing towards the pagerank of the linked website, and so the incentive for people to spam sites with such links is anulled. I would strongly support putting nofollow on external links for precisely this reason. --DrBob (Talk) 10:57, 7 February 2007 (CST)
 * For the past few months, we've only had like 2 or 3 useless links put on the site. I don't think the nofollow tag is useful unless we start getting spammed.  By having followable links to other sites, it gives the good sites a better rank, and they will potentially link back to us, helping with our rank.  So, for the moment, I'm against the nofollow tag. -- Prod (Talk) 11:31, 7 February 2007 (CST)
 * Seconded for the same reasons. -- Mason11987 (Talk - Contributions) 23:05, 7 February 2007 (CST)
 * I think it would be best to be preventative here. If people start spamming StrategyWiki, they won't stop. We should make sure they know that spamming won't do them any good before they even start. --DrBob (Talk) 01:42, 8 February 2007 (CST)
 * No. There is no reason to have nofollow.  It would only hurt us.  Nofollow means exactly that, spiders aren't supposed to(yet some still do anyway)that link. Wikipedia is huge, google knows to spider them.  Nofollow will hurt getting our pages indexed.  Even if you could put it only on outgoing links, our outgoing links consist of abxy, dsmeet and actual relevant pages.  When we get a large amount of spam THEN we can think about this.


 * Not that it would change anything. People spam wikipedia for the traffic.  We'd have the same case if we got to the point of that much traffic for it to be worth spamming anyway.  And people that are spamming that would actually cause any damage would be using bots (or large amounts of indian labor) in that case they'd be targetting wiki's in general and whether we have nofollow or not wouldn't matter to them.--ConfusedSoul 21:55, 8 February 2007 (CST)

Transiki pages with large number of revisions
I've managed to write something that will allow me to export pages from wikipedia/wikibooks that are longer than the 100 revision limit. If needed, please leave me a message. This is only in the case where a regular Special:Export wont work. -- Prod (Talk) 20:11, 8 February 2007 (CST)

Pokemon sprites: Every one from every version, or latest only?
Now that I've taken on the daunting task of getting the P:R/B/Y guide off of the ground, I realize that I would like to present pictures of the Pokemon throughout the guide. The questions is, which sprites should I use? The way I see it, there are three choices: The point about using only the latest is nice cuz we only need to upload 386 pictures instead of every single sprite ever made. The only con is that we'd be using graphics from one version of the game for the sake of another, but it seems to go against certain principles of completeness. Anyway, I wanted to put the matter up for debate and get people's thoughts. Procyon 22:55, 8 February 2007 (CST)
 * RBY: use the original black and white images since the guide is primarily for Red & Blue, and these were the sprites used by the game.
 * GSC: use the colorized version of the original 151 Pokemon, since Yellow had colorized Pokemon, and... well, you know... color is better.
 * Advance/DS: use only the latest version of the graphics. This has a couple of pros: they're nicer to look at and we only need to maintain one copy of any Pokemon (the latest) instead of three or more different versions.
 * Note that R&B had color versions... at least when using the Super Gameboy adapter attached to the SNES. --Notmyhandle 23:23, 8 February 2007 (CST)
 * I would say, go with the best version of each series (yellow in this case). I don't see why we would have to upload all the images, as there are only a few important pokemon that are useful.  Most of the other info can be outsourced to ind...bulbapedia. -- Prod (Talk) 00:18, 9 February 2007 (CST)

Prod, you gave me an idea. How hard would it be to export all of the images here for us to use as well? I don't want to externally link to their images, I'd rather they be local. But the images are needed in a couple of places (like mentioning which Pokemon can be found where, and who you might fight against). I mean, we are the death of plain-text guides, right? Might as well live up to that reputation. Procyon 09:45, 9 February 2007 (CST)
 * User:File Upload Bot (Kernigh) took care of them for the MapleStory/Monsters, so it should be possible to partially modify for bulbapedia. -- Prod (Talk) 10:05, 9 February 2007 (CST)
 * If you take a look at Pokémon Red and Blue/Pallet Town, you'll get a rough idea of what I'm going for. Obviously, a) those images sizes are bad (too much white space), b) I don't want to link to an offsite image, and c) I would prefer to use artwork instead of sprites since artwork is not game specific.  So Prod, if you think that Kernigh could do that for us, I would be most greatful.  Thanks! Procyon 13:01, 9 February 2007 (CST)
 * That's a great idea, but what about renaming? If we want to change the filenames (e.g. appending Pokémon, or adding a space between the number and the name) it's best to sort that out now. AFAIK Kernigh's bot can rename before uploading, so that should all be fine. GarrettTalk 18:30, 9 February 2007 (CST)
 * I'm all for renaming. There should definately be a "Pokemon_" prefix to each file.  Then a template could easily be made for both the picture and the Bulbapedia link.  So we should end up with filenames like "Pokemon_001.png", "Pokemon_002.png", "Pokemon_003.png", etc.  And they should obviously be categorized together.  Let me know if there's anything that I can do to help.  Procyon 20:11, 9 February 2007 (CST)
 * You should probably try getting in contact with Kernigh, he seems to be most active at Wikia. He took care of the whole image moving thing, so he would be the one to ask about any of this stuff. -- Prod (Talk) 20:32, 9 February 2007 (CST)
 * Bah... I'll do it myself. You know, I should be able to code a Perl script for a bot myself, but I'm just too lazy to figure out how to do it right now.  I'll pull the images over as I need them. Procyon 21:25, 9 February 2007 (CST)
 * The pictures uploaded already probably need to be renamed. To be totally correct, they need the acute accent above the "e" in Pokémon. I've already fixed the category they were in to be like this. --DrBob (Talk) 05:27, 10 February 2007 (CST)
 * Wouldn't it be easier not to have the accent above the "e"? Specifically, when someone is attempting to use one of the images, it would be easier just to type an "e" than having to go find the accented "e" and copy/paste it or using the alt shortcut (which I can never remember).  In the end, its more efficient and I'm pretty sure there isn't anything else that is already pokemon without the accent.-- Duke  Ruckley  12:10, 10 February 2007 (CST)
 * Just for reference, the alt shortcut for é is Alt+0233. --Ryan SchmidtTalk - Contribs 15:38, 19 February 2007 (CST)
 * Or Alt+130 --Notmyhandle 16:15, 19 February 2007 (CST)


 * Or if you use an english keyboard Alt GR (the alt right of the space) and e Rocky [[Image:Rally-X Rock.png|15px]]  (talk) 08:52, 22 February 2007 (CST)

Easy game addition
Check out this new page UI from the TV Wikia:

http://tv.wikia.com/index.php?title=TV_Wiki:Sandbox&action=edit

I was thinking that the options they have there could be translated here to make things very easy. We can create a template that we can link to from the UI to preload the page with the game infobox and AGN and other things. It's a relatively minor change difficultly wise but I think it would be very useful, what does everyone think? -- Mason11987 (Talk - Contributions) 18:38, 11 February 2007 (CST)
 * Me likes. I can only see it working for company, main page and ToC articles, since all others are customized. --Notmyhandle 19:15, 11 February 2007 (CST)
 * That can increase spamming of new games/companies/etc. We can use the New game template though. -- Prod (Talk) 20:15, 11 February 2007 (CST)
 * Can someone explain subst, perhaps in the Guide? --Notmyhandle 20:34, 11 February 2007 (CST)
 * I like. Definitely would be an interesting addition if it can be technically managed without open heart surgery of MediaWiki.--Dan 22:35, 11 February 2007 (CST)


 * Trying it out, just go to any redlinked article and click the button to test it out. (and don't make the article just to make this link blue :-P) -- Mason11987 (Talk - Contributions) 01:03, 12 February 2007 (CST)
 * Nice. I've changed the colours to make it slightly easier on the eyes (although it still needs improvement), and changed the text to make it more descriptive. --DrBob (Talk) 05:52, 12 February 2007 (CST)
 * Works great. Now we just need company & ToC.  Can the colors be modified by the skin?  Because on Blue Cloud it should be the commonly used purple (as seen in the lower left of any page) with a font color that stands out on top (maybe just black). --Notmyhandle 08:43, 12 February 2007 (CST)
 * I'll set up the company one, but what exactly do you mean by a ToC page? Is there a standard I can look to for this that I'm not aware of?  I'm also sure it can be modified by skin, but I don't know CSS well enough to implement it myself, so we may need Garret or DrBob to do that (or anyone who can obviously). -- Mason11987 (Talk - Contributions) 09:05, 12 February 2007 (CST)
 * Company set up, feel free to tweak. -- Mason11987 (Talk - Contributions) 09:18, 12 February 2007 (CST)
 * I set up the toc, but it needs MediaWiki 1.7+ since the BASEPAGENAME variable doesn't exist in 1.6. -- Prod (Talk) 10:45, 12 February 2007 (CST)
 * Echelon? Garret? Dan? :) -- Mason11987 (Talk - Contributions) 19:41, 12 February 2007 (CST)
 * nvm, Echelon's to-do list has that on there :). -- Mason11987 (Talk - Contributions) 20:04, 12 February 2007 (CST)
 * So how do we edit those pages? And the game one needs the ratings parameter in the infobox, since it's required and will appear even if it's not in the code. --Notmyhandle 20:18, 12 February 2007 (CST)
 * The game one does not need the "ratings" parameter, as it's been superseded by the individual ratings parameters such as "ESRB". --DrBob (Talk) 03:21, 13 February 2007 (CST)
 * Look down VVVV, preload is what goes in the box when you click the button, instructions is what is shown above the box. -- Mason11987 (Talk - Contributions) 20:26, 12 February 2007 (CST)

Also, links of interest (sorry I didn't list these earlier):
 * MediaWiki:Newarticletext
 * New game: preload - instructions - what it looks like
 * New guide page: preload - instructions - what it looks like
 * Company: preload - instructions - what it looks like
 * Toc: preload - instructions what it looks like


 * Until we upgrade the server I'm going to insert "REPLACE THIS" for every instance of BASEPAGENAME so that the template can be used (I would find it useful). --Notmyhandle 19:48, 14 February 2007 (CST)
 * Added new guide page (as it seemed inevitable and useful for easy guide making), also, would you want to write instructions for the TOC preload? It's the red link, you can do it in the form of the other instruction pages. -- Mason11987 (Talk - Contributions) 08:50, 19 February 2007 (CST)

Is it possible to add something generic to the summary, like Auto New game or something? -- Prod (Talk) 11:37, 20 February 2007 (CST)
 * I don't... think so... -- Mason11987 (Talk - Contributions) 23:21, 21 February 2007 (CST)

Keyboard buttons
I've finally got User:Blendmaster/keyboardtest, and have created kbd for use in guides needing PC keys. I finally realised that we needn't use background images: we could just use borders! Now all we need to complete the controls for PC game guides is some images for the mouse and its buttons. --DrBob (Talk) 04:06, 13 February 2007 (CST)
 * Can we perhaps put in a switch statement so that you can use up and it'll put the up arrow? Simply for ease of use.  OR... I can throw on the charinsert that they have at wikipedia... -- Mason11987 (Talk - Contributions) 08:13, 13 February 2007 (CST)
 * That's a good idea. I'll do the switch statement, if you give us a (cut-down) charinsert. :-) --DrBob (Talk) 08:32, 13 February 2007 (CST)
 * There are two additional versions that we need. The first is the entire 9 button numpad, the second is the triangular representation of the numpad/arrow keys (left, up above down, right;4, 8 above 2, 6). --Notmyhandle 17:52, 13 February 2007 (CST)
 * Er, what? The keypad can be done by just putting the numbers into the template, and the arrow keys are done, are they not? --DrBob (Talk) 17:57, 13 February 2007 (CST)
 * Well, I guess we could just do that. I was thinking of an actual representation to show the four or nine keys in the shape the are seen on the keyboard; like the 9 appear within a sqare, and the 4 are within a triangle where left is to the left, then down and up are vertically aligned and right is to the right.  Maybe you could post the code so that if someone wanted to (me) they could mimic the border style and create a table to create this illusion of an image.--Notmyhandle 18:06, 13 February 2007 (CST)
 * It's not simple to find the up/down/right/left arrow character, so that's why I was wondering if a switch thing could be added for those (and it seems it has, or maybe it was always there, either way... niiiice, so you could do those easier since they will be used extensively I believe. I don't think there is a need to display the entire 9 key numpad in the template. you can easily create a template to do it if you need to, although I'm not sure what the purpose would be, to show, here is how you do that and the arrows. -- Mason11987 (Talk - Contributions) 21:06, 13 February 2007 (CST)

789 456 123


 * The problem is that it won't work when using bullets, like on any normal controls page. I'll just make a mini image for it.--Notmyhandle 23:30, 13 February 2007 (CST)


 * Press up to shoot him.
 * What won't work with bullets? It just did, or are you referring to the numpad?  If so I don't see the need to display the numpad, they do know what one is. -- Mason11987 (Talk - Contributions) 00:33, 14 February 2007 (CST)
 * Well I feel the need for unity so removing all text in place of images is better than a mix. As such, I just came to the conclusion that tables might be a good solution (alignment, etc.); I'll be experimenting with that tommorow (today for some of you).--Notmyhandle 00:40, 14 February 2007 (CST)
 * I'm with Mason11987 on this; where would you possibly need to display the entire numpad? Could you provide an exemplary link please Notmyhandle? (Oh, and Mason11987, I added the switch in after you asked for it. :-) ) --DrBob (Talk) 05:40, 14 February 2007 (CST)
 * Like here. --Notmyhandle 21:43, 15 February 2007 (CST)
 * That's fine how it is. --DrBob (Talk) 04:57, 16 February 2007 (CST)


 * Two failing cases:
 * Solution? -- Mason11987 (Talk - Contributions) 10:46, 27 February 2007 (CST)
 * Just wrap the character in nowikis: * ;. GarrettTalk 13:35, 27 February 2007 (CST)
 * Many thanks, I should have thought about that... -- Mason11987 (Talk - Contributions) 13:58, 27 February 2007 (CST)
 * Just wrap the character in nowikis: * ;. GarrettTalk 13:35, 27 February 2007 (CST)
 * Many thanks, I should have thought about that... -- Mason11987 (Talk - Contributions) 13:58, 27 February 2007 (CST)

List Counter
Is there some way to automatically count the number of bullets on the page? I want to request this feature within MediaWiki if it is not available, just wondering if you guys know since finding a place to post things on the mediawiki wiki is very difficult. --Notmyhandle 21:07, 13 February 2007 (CST)
 * Interesting, gotta ask... why? -- Mason11987 (Talk - Contributions) 00:32, 14 February 2007 (CST)
 * Oh, and you request features on bugzilla, I can find a link for you if you can't. -- Mason11987 (Talk - Contributions) 00:32, 14 February 2007 (CST)
 * MediaWiki's Bugzilla replete with overlord bug. --DrBob (Talk) 05:42, 14 February 2007 (CST)
 * Well it would come in handy for automating things like the statistic on the main page of how many level 4 articles we have. Stuff like that; it would be really useful on list pages on Wikipedia, where I first had the idea (for instance, # of games made by a company or # of cities in a state, with the number at the top of the page). --Notmyhandle 11:39, 14 February 2007 (CST)

Game Rankings
Do you think we should include (optionally, perhaps) a table that shows what the videogames are ranked (i.e. by gamepro, game informer, and such)? --Ryan SchmidtTalk - Contribs 18:12, 14 February 2007 (CST)
 * It's probably a nice addition to the infobox. I'd vote yes. --Notmyhandle 18:28, 14 February 2007 (CST)
 * I don't see why not. We could keep a metarating in the infobox too. I vote yes as well.  ech elon  23:27, 14 February 2007 (CST)
 * I have somewhat mixed feelings about this. We're a site for guides not reviews.  If you want to know how good a game is, try any one of those sites, it's what they're there for.  On the other hand, ABXY would be perfect for this kind of info (if it wasn't down).  -- Prod (Talk) 23:43, 14 February 2007 (CST)

I think we should just add an average rating. There would be too much stuff if we added all these reviews.  bibliomaniac 1  5  23:47, 14 February 2007 (CST)


 * Well, we could just make a list of approved rating boards (magazines/websites). I think it would also provide information that might be somewhat hard to come by otherwise (having a subscription for example).  It's also useful in that people would have a broader sense of a game before trying it out (most guides here come from fans, NPOV is what we want right?). --Notmyhandle 00:10, 15 February 2007 (CST)
 * Gamestats compiles reviews from everywhere, we should just list theirs. -- Mason11987 (Talk - Contributions) 01:47, 15 February 2007 (CST)
 * I'm not too happy about doing anything like this. As Prod says, ABXY would be better suited to this, and if we start doing things like this with SW, we're opening a rather large can of worms in the wrong direction. I would be OK with a small link to Gamestats in the infobox, though. --DrBob (Talk) 04:44, 15 February 2007 (CST)
 * I agree with DrBob, in the sense that this can cause some problems. Since every article is completely editable, if some hater came along and decided to lower the scores by some value, or initially report them incorrectly, it will take some effort on someone's part to verify the accuracy of each change.  Likewise, someone else could artificially boost them, and again, someone would have to be on top of verifying the reported scores.  Anytime someone disagrees with a subjective score, not everyone will have the maturity to abstain from changing it.  Don't say it won't happen... Procyon 10:08, 15 February 2007 (CST)


 * I think having an optional parameter in the game infobox that is the gamestats ID number would be useful, if you want to put it in, you put it in, and it'll show a link to the gamestats stuff, gamestats catalogs what many other sites/magazines put for rankings so that would be useful and NPOV. -- Mason11987 (Talk - Contributions) 18:06, 15 February 2007 (CST)
 * Actually there are quite a few of those sites around. GameStats, GameRankings, MetaCritic, etc.  If we can get our own reviews on ABXY recognized by any of these, that would help a lot with attracting new users.  For the moment, I would suggest we go with either gamerankings or metacritic.  They seem to be more popular. -- Prod (Talk) 22:57, 15 February 2007 (CST)
 * AH, didn't know that, never seen those sites. Gotta check them out, and if they provide a more complete coverage then they should be used for this, as gamestats still has a very large following. -- Mason11987 (Talk - Contributions) 07:36, 16 February 2007 (CST)

Game Ratings, required?
Within the infobox, I don't think ratings should be required because non-commercial games never have a rating and we have plenty (the number will grow of course) of articles already that cannot recieve an answer beyond "N/A" or "unrated." --Notmyhandle 22:56, 15 February 2007 (CST)
 * The problem with that is that there would have to be a most ridiculously complex qif to determine if all the rating fields were empty, in order to hide the ratings row. --DrBob (Talk) 04:55, 16 February 2007 (CST)
 * Yeah, so I'm gonna do that, give me a minute. -- Mason11987 (Talk - Contributions) 07:21, 16 February 2007 (CST)
 * Done, enjoy :). -- Mason11987 (Talk - Contributions) 07:31, 16 February 2007 (CST)
 * As I said, that's one big qif. Nice work Mason11987. :-) --DrBob (Talk) 08:19, 16 February 2007 (CST)
 * Well yeah, when we have every rating system under the sun it's bound to happen, thanks :) -- Mason11987 (Talk - Contributions) 09:02, 16 February 2007 (CST)

Comments in Template:New game?
Considering the issue raised above by Mason made me think of one solution that might ease the pain of new users forgetting certain steps. The New Game template and corresponding button was, by far, the biggest step in the right direction. I would propose that we go one step further and add  to the template so that a user can see all of the steps that we are asking of users. So the first comment might be, "Please read the strategywiki guide if you are new." Then there would be comments like, "please fill out the infobox" and, "please provide some categories", and then some general things like, "Introduction goes here," and "Table of contents goes here, just edit the TOC page, not this thing..." I'm being very general for the sake of the usual readers, the proper language would have to be ironed out.

The only caveat to this is a fair amount of useless info being stored repeatedly in the database if no one bothers to clear the comments out when they are saved. (And in that sense, perhaps the last comment in the template should be  and see how well that gets paid attention to.)  I also wish the template would consider the name of the page you are starting when you push the button so that all of the name of the game tags would be automatically filled in. I don't know how hard that would be. Anyway, just a thought. Procyon 12:54, 16 February 2007 (CST)
 * I don't think this would be useful. I can almost guarantee that the comments would be left there to rot, or that people who don't know wikimarkup might even remove one of the delimiters and mess up the page completely. Instructions like this are best put in the text above the editing box (temporarily forgotten the page name for this, but it's linked to in the original discussion). Your last point may be possible once we upgrade (I don't really know :-P ). --DrBob (Talk) 14:06, 16 February 2007 (CST)
 * Couldn't we just automate it to remove the comments, or is that not possible... kinda like how works... --Notmyhandle 20:34, 16 February 2007 (CST)
 * Um.... I don't think so. I also don't think comments would be that useful.  We can always improve the instructions shown above the edit box. -- Mason11987 (Talk - Contributions) 01:48, 19 February 2007 (CST)
 * What about bot usage? Removing comments sounds like it would be simple. --Notmyhandle 02:32, 19 February 2007 (CST)
 * It would be fairly simple for someone who had a bot, and it would only need to be run through all the new New articles that don't have a "/" in them. Not having any idea how to make a bot or operate one leaves me with little more to say though. -- Mason11987 (Talk - Contributions) 08:37, 19 February 2007 (CST)
 * Yeah, but it gets tedious to run bots, and nobody would ever remember. I think it would be cleaner to move all the inline comments out into the header box (which looks nice now :-D ). --DrBob (Talk) 12:43, 19 February 2007 (CST)
 * True, true, and what do you mean exactly?
 * The bot is easy enough to write (simple find/replace) but it means you can't have comments in the page at all. It's not a big problem, but it could be. -- Prod (Talk) 12:54, 19 February 2007 (CST)
 * Well, if it simply removed the exact comments left over that would be best, although you being the bot guy, it's all your call really. -- Mason11987 (Talk - Contributions) 15:31, 19 February 2007 (CST)

Edit summary
Whats with having to summarize every single time you contribute? It is extremely bothersome. 0-172Talk to me 00:16, 17 February 2007 (CST)
 * I think it's so that other editors don't have to trawl through your edits and compare them to the current edition - it just saves time.--Froglet 18:35, 16 February 2007 (CST)
 * It's also just good practice. I'm all for the policy, however, I would like it if it wasn't required for a preview. Procyon 18:43, 16 February 2007 (CST)
 * I'll look into disabling it when you're previewing. --DrBob (Talk) 02:54, 17 February 2007 (CST)
 * Same here - writing 'expanded', 'spelling' or 'AGN' isn't that troublesome - just appreviate it down to a few short phrases or a short sentence.--Froglet 18:54, 16 February 2007 (CST)
 * I think it's incredibly irate that a javascript window is displayed if I don't include a summary. Is there any way we can make the notification friendlier?--Dan 19:35, 16 February 2007 (CST)
 * That does make sense, but it can become annoying. What if you make a minor/small change (or any change for that fact) and you cannot easily describe your change as a summary? Also I agree with Dan. I am not a big fan of the javascript window either. Lunar Knight(Talk - Contributions) 20:12, 16 February 2007 (CST)
 * If you cannot easily describe your change, just put "Cleanup". I cannot think of a better way to force people to use summaries than using a JavaScript popup; anything else would be non-modal, and could (and would) easily be ignored. --DrBob (Talk) 02:54, 17 February 2007 (CST)
 * Is it a big enough issue to need such a thing? We have an option in our preferences "Prompt me when entering a blank edit summary".  We don't need it to be forced. -- Mason11987 (Talk - Contributions) 01:39, 19 February 2007 (CST)
 * It makes a sysop's life so much easier if there are edit summaries in recent changes, and if summaries aren't forced, people won't write them. Please tell me if you think the JS could be improved usability-wise. :-) --DrBob (Talk) 12:45, 19 February 2007 (CST)
 * I do understand that, but if our ease in doing our sysop job is increased at the expense of writing guides as usefully as possible then I don't think it's worth it. Although I use monobook so I've never even seen this implementation so it doesn't really effect me.  But I'm going to have to bring up the point that wikipedia doesn't have this, and they function well enough.  My suggestion would be to have the preferences option about this selected by default and then users who are more accustomed to this system can turn it off if they like.  -- Mason11987 (Talk - Contributions) 15:27, 19 February 2007 (CST)
 * Is it possible to just disallow the commit and put a message (in big red letters) near the comment box (and set focus to the comment box)? Just to note, MediaWiki 1.9 (or maybe 1.10) add some automatic descriptions for simple things ('Replaced page with 'blah blah, 'Redirecting to 'some page, 'Blanked page'). -- Prod (Talk) 12:50, 19 February 2007 (CST)
 * We can put a stronger notice near the summary box very easily, I think that would be the best option. -- Mason11987 (Talk - Contributions) 15:26, 19 February 2007 (CST)
 * How is that different from a message box, apart from the fact that a message box is more likely to get noticed? :-P --DrBob (Talk) 12:30, 20 February 2007 (CST)
 * Well, it's less annoying, and doesn't require an extra click, and doesn't actually force you to put in an edit summary, just makes it known that you should and it's easier for others if you do. So it's pretty different actually.  Also, the popup doesn't even differentiate from an edit to a section where the editor added no summary, or  one that was added individually, for example, my edit summary for this was loaded with the default "/* Edit summary */" text.  I still don't think an popup box would be good though. -- Mason11987 (Talk - Contributions) 10:00, 21 February 2007 (CST)

Bringing this up again
I still contend that this isn't a very good idea, and now that it's been brought to monobook it actually effects me. See my comment above. -- Mason11987 (Talk - Contributions) 18:58, 25 February 2007 (CST)
 * Better? --DrBob (Talk) 14:17, 26 February 2007 (CST)
 * Fantastic, is this on bluecloud as well? And could it be ignored if you press save a second time, after getting the message?  Cause sometimes when doing mass-repetitive edit works, it's much easier to leave one summary and leave the rest blanks, but double clicks on save page would be reasonable and not much of a hindrance. -- Mason11987 (Talk - Contributions) 15:05, 26 February 2007 (CST)

Template Ab
So I created Template:Ab (Arcade Button) in hopes of simplifying the move list pages, since they take forever when writing them. So far I've made a generic copy of the Gc template; the problem is some of the Arcade Button images have only two words in the file name, whereas the template is set up for 3 word file names (Arcade-Type-Specific.png vs Arcade-Specific.png). Is there some way we can set up a case to specify? For example we could do for images like  and  for images like. Thoughts? If anyone can do this for me, I'd really appreciate it. --Notmyhandle 18:50, 19 February 2007 (CST)
 * Crap, I'm sorry Notmyhandle, I thought you knew about Template:Cade. I had been meaning to get around to all of the fighting game pages and convert it over, but I never got around to it. Procyon 19:17, 19 February 2007 (CST)
 * Welp, might as well throw a delete notice over there. Hah. All this time I'd done it completely by hand.  No wonder I haven't finished the Capcom vs. SNK 2 list yet. --Notmyhandle 19:28, 19 February 2007 (CST)
 * Additionally, why do you use reversed file name syntax? You use the second pipe for the third part of the file name whereas I switched the template syntax in Ab so that you basically wrote the file name, Ab|Stick|Right for example.  The reverse stuff is kinda weird...  --Notmyhandle 19:33, 19 February 2007 (CST)
 * I didn't write the template, Blendmaster did, but he hasn't been able to contribute for a while now. I don't really think there are many pages utilizing the template yet, so you could change it to the way you would like with minimal impact. Procyon 19:38, 19 February 2007 (CST)
 * Cade also needs to be modded to allow the use of [[Image:Arcade-Plus.png]]. I was thinking that maybe we would use Template:Plus instead, since it would reduce the strain of loading so many images since it loads like 500 of those arcade-plus.pngs whenever the page is loaded right?  Changing to a text alternative seems like it would help... What about that?  And I'll go ahead and focus on modding cade. --Notmyhandle 19:40, 19 February 2007 (CST)
 * Actually Notmyhandle, it's not the reverse, it is cade|Stick|Right. And there is a Template:plus, as well as a Template:( and a Template:)  Procyon 19:43, 19 February 2007 (CST)
 * Whoops, I was wrong about the name. Procyon 19:45, 19 February 2007 (CST)
 * Im talking about replacing instances of the image with Template:Plus, I know it exists, that's why I suggested it. Text instead of images is all I'm suggesting.  --Notmyhandle 19:50, 19 February 2007 (CST)
 * Just a notice about loading, it doesn't actually load each individual image for every instance, it loads up each unique image once and caches the image for use throughout the page. So in a worst case scenario, it would have to load 63 unique images, and no page really uses every single one. Procyon 19:56, 19 February 2007 (CST)
 * They're <2kb as far as I can tell, kind of a non-issue even with that kind of numbers. -- Mason11987 (Talk - Contributions) 20:07, 19 February 2007 (CST)
 * Can you guys help me fix the template? For some reason it adds an endline character or something, an invisible break tag and I don't know how to fix it. --Notmyhandle 20:22, 19 February 2007 (CST)
 * made very small chagnes, not sure if it fixed anything, are you looking on Move Lists/Capcom/CVS2? As that looks quite good as is.  I'm also about to work on making the TOC more compact. -- Mason11987 (Talk - Contributions) 20:35, 19 February 2007 (CST)
 * Well I fixed it, and reduced overall template code significantly by removing redundancies. Still don't understand why the problem existed. --Notmyhandle 20:41, 19 February 2007 (CST)
 * I saw those changes, very nice. What do you think of the new TOC I set up? -- Mason11987 (Talk - Contributions) 20:54, 19 February 2007 (CST)
 * Whoever has access to bots, can you replace every arcade image with the cade template? --Notmyhandle 20:48, 19 February 2007 (CST)
 * Forget it, that's way too much parsing for a bot to do properly. It's going to take elbow grease, and good old Find & Replace. Procyon 20:50, 19 February 2007 (CST)
 * If you need a hand I have nothing to do right now, I could take care of it. -- Mason11987 (Talk - Contributions) 20:54, 19 February 2007 (CST)
 * Gosh Mason, if you really don't mind that would be great, but in all honesty, I would consider it a very low priority in comparison to some of the cleanup tasks that DrBob has on his list. But if you want to go ahead, by all means, please do.  P.S. that TOC is awesome! Procyon 21:07, 19 February 2007 (CST)
 * Eh, it's not really that big of a task. I consider myself quite good at the find and replace :).  Would have worked first test out, if I didn't try to do shorthand  and other lower case leading things.  It should be good now though.  I'll take another look at bobs list in a few. -- Mason11987 (Talk - Contributions) 21:19, 19 February 2007 (CST)
 * Actually I've been wondering about that whole backwards thing. Just to note, all the button templates follow that backwards style. -- Prod (Talk) 22:04, 19 February 2007 (CST)
 * Well this one doesn't XD Btw, MOVE LIST COMPLETE YAHHHHH --Notmyhandle 22:07, 19 February 2007 (CST)
 * So, what exactly needs to be changed? If it's easy enough to put all of it in one regex, it shouldn't be too bad. I'd rather not take more than one pass since there are quite a few move lists. -- Prod (Talk) 23:35, 19 February 2007 (CST)
 * The template is basically perfect; I mean it uses cases for simplification but if new files are added the template doesn't even need to be updated to be able to use them. So if you meant what needs to be replaced, well images.  And I'm not sure but should every image be placed within the case statement of the template?  Is that a bad thing?  There aren't that many more to do anyways.  --Notmyhandle 00:50, 20 February 2007 (CST)
 * I think you misunderstood my question. I'm asking what needs to be replaced on the pages? Change Image:Arcade-???-???.png to what? I want to see if it's simple enough for my bot to handle. -- Prod (Talk) 00:59, 20 February 2007 (CST)
 * Changing Image:Arcade-(A)-(B).png to or simply  . -- Mason11987 (Talk - Contributions)
 * That's what I did on one page, althought I didn't realize how extensive the move list thing had gotten. -- Mason11987 (Talk - Contributions) 10:45, 20 February 2007 (CST)
 * Changing [[Image:Arcade-(A)-(B).png]] to is easy enough, worrying about special cases of when to ignore (A) is a little more troublesome.  Looking at the template there also seem to be some which are [[Image:Arcade-(A).png]], which I assume would go to {{cade|(A))). I'm thinking something like "[[Image:Arcade-(.*?)-(.*?).png]]" to "{{cade\|\\1\|\\2}}, and then a second time with "[[Image:Arcade-(.*?).png]]" to "{{cade\|\\1}}".  If anyone has an idea on how to merge those two regex's that would be good :). -- Prod (Talk) 23:11, 20 February 2007 (CST)
 * It's already done! Like I said the template is basically perfect.  It allows shortened versions to be called, I.e. {{cade|Max}} and longer such as {{cade|Button|3xPunch}}.  See the code for yourself.  The one thing thats debatable is whether or not to place every image within the case statement to remove the whole Button/Stick usage parameter that was originally used and is in the filenames of some images... I don't know whats best, but many are already in as I've said. --Notmyhandle 20:58, 20 February 2007 (CST)
 * So, you're saying there aren't any pages using the images without using the template, and none of the previous uses of the template broke due to the change (I'm too lazy to go searching right now)? -- Prod (Talk) 23:11, 20 February 2007 (CST)
 * No, the template works but has only been used within the Capcom vs. SNK 2 movelist. There are many more pages that need to be converted; i.e. Street Fighter and its successors. --Notmyhandle 23:53, 20 February 2007 (CST)
 * What he is saying is that every use of [[Image:A-B.png]] can now simply be replaced by {{cade|B}} so there is only one situation to deal with.  -- Mason11987 (Talk - Contributions) 09:56, 21 February 2007 (CST)

infobox glitch
Check out the top of Gothic: Collector's Edition. I didn't add a rating (as I couldn't find one) and doing so mysteriously added whitespace above the template. Additionally,  itself now isn't working (see BS The Legend of Zelda). I assume this has to do with Mason's recent tweaks but what I thought should have fixed it didn't. GarrettTalk 20:12, 20 February 2007 (CST)
 * Heh, I saw the page, and tried to fix the template before even seeing this note here :P. It was due to the lack of the comment line I think, since that gets rid of a line break (I think >.>).  Oh well, fixed now. -- Prod (Talk) 23:11, 20 February 2007 (CST)
 * Yay!  still doesn't work, though. GarrettTalk 03:25, 21 February 2007 (CST)
 * Ah, my mistake. I thought all uses of ratings had been superceded, but this is obviously a situation where it makes sense to use that tag, my mistake... fixing... -- Mason11987 (Talk - Contributions) 09:51, 21 February 2007 (CST)
 * Fixed. -- Mason11987 (Talk - Contributions) 09:53, 21 February 2007 (CST)

Endorse Firefox?
I just took a moment to check something out. Rocky reported having trouble with the layout of the tables on one of the Pokemon pages in Internet Explorer. Being a staunch Firefox user, I figured I should look at StrategyWiki, for the very first time, in IE6...

OMG, the lack of png transparency support is hideous. And a few of the table layout choices just completely bust. It was to the point that I was kind of ashamed of my own work when viewed through IE6. Now, I don't know how many users (readers or editors) use IE6, and whether IE7 addresses some of these problems as, clearly, I don't use it. But I would like to propose that we, as a site, make some kind of statement such as "Looks best in Firefox" or something to that effect. How does everyone feel about this? Procyon 11:04, 21 February 2007 (CST)
 * "Looks best in Firefox" sounds a bit too much like "Looks best in 32-bit colour at 640x480". :-P We should strive to make the site work in IE, but not too hard. I think a bar at the top of the page saying "Why not use a better browser such as Firefox or Opera?" should be at the top of the page if the user is viewing in IE. It shouldn't be too intrusive though, as many people are forced to use IE through no fault of their own. --DrBob (Talk) 11:38, 21 February 2007 (CST)
 * Alternately we could use the Firefox+Google Toolbar button and earn money from people making the change through us... considering the troubles abxy has been having, the money could really be put to good use buying more RAM or whatever it is the server lacks. GarrettTalk 13:10, 21 February 2007 (CST)
 * That's a very good idea. I like it a lot. :-D --DrBob (Talk) 17:12, 21 February 2007 (CST)
 * Png works just fine for me in the Pokedex so it may just be IE6. I'm going to go on a spree to fix stuff that doesn't work in IE.  Starting with the archive template at the top of this page.  (I miss FF2.0's spellcheck...) -- Mason11987 (Talk - Contributions) 14:18, 21 February 2007 (CST)
 * Yeah. One of the widely-advertised features of IE7 is its correct treatment of modern images compared to IE6. ;-) --DrBob (Talk) 17:12, 21 February 2007 (CST)
 * Another reason firefox is great is due to the addons. The Ressurect one is particularly useful. If the sw crashes due to whatever, you can still see a few of its pages (albeit an earlier version of them). I used it a lot to view walkthroughs during the december downtime and the digg effect. --Ryan SchmidtTalk - Contribs 15:15, 21 February 2007 (CST)
 * The Png transparancies vary from image to image; see compared to the others (left click, right click, etc.). --Notmyhandle 17:33, 21 February 2007 (CST)
 * Isn't there some magical Javascript hack that gets transparent PNGs working in IE6?--Dan 17:44, 21 February 2007 (CST)
 * Here. --DrBob (Talk) 01:29, 22 February 2007 (CST)
 * Here's a better one. --DrBob (Talk) 01:36, 22 February 2007 (CST)
 * Can you implement it?--Dan 17:03, 22 February 2007 (CST)
 * Never mind, I threw it into BlueCloud.js (although I'm a little tempted to throw it on the main page...)--Dan 09:46, 23 February 2007 (CST)
 * We don't all use bluecloud :). -- Mason11987 (Talk - Contributions) 12:48, 23 February 2007 (CST)
 * Better? :-) --DrBob (Talk) 16:08, 23 February 2007 (CST)

List of stuff that doesn't work the same in IE.

 * Mediawiki code for  will push a  to the full width of the screen, I replaced the one in Template:Archive with -- Mason11987 (Talk - Contributions) 14:23, 21 February 2007 (CST)

IE 7

 * Div style float widths cannot exceed 99% in total; will create a second row if so (see game categories to the left for example). --Notmyhandle 17:30, 21 February 2007 (CST)

IE 6

 * External links and bulbapedia links show up just the same as ordinary links (in-site.
 * You have to highlight the stub template to see the words (usually)
 * Small .png's have a black background if they are reduced in size (e.g my rock in my signature, hopefully it looks better in FF)Rocky [[Image:Rally-X Rock.png|15px]]  (talk) 11:47, 22 February 2007 (CST)
 * You sure about that? It's small, and there isn't very much transparency in it.  So it may just look like it has a black background.  Either way... it doesn't look better in FF :). -- Mason11987 (Talk - Contributions) 15:07, 22 February 2007 (CST)


 * Maybe, would that apply for every image in the Pokémon Artwork category and the star of the stub template, anway my rock does look good, it does :"] Rocky [[Image:Rally-X_Rock.png|25px]]  ( Talk Contributions ) 13:48, 23 February 2007 (CST), does this look better in FF

Firefox
Just noticed this minor thing, Rocky   ( Talk Contributions ) 16:19, 22 February 2007 (CST)
 * male and female signs ♀ and ♂ look worse on firefox in edit mode
 * You can configure the edit font in Firefox through Tools -> Options -> Content -> Advanced... -> Monospace. You can change the font and the font size.  Sizing Courier New to 16 makes the symbols look somewhat better, although still small.  Lucidia Console is slightly better. Procyon 17:43, 22 February 2007 (CST)

External links: what is the criteria?
To be honest, I feel bad for User:Snesmaster after reading his remarks on the LOZ Talk page because I moved his external link from the main page to there, and gave him a final warning about external links. My primary concern was that every single one of Snesmaster's contributions seemed only to have the intention of plugging his map site. He hasn't contributed anything else but links to his site, and that seems (to me) like a kind of abuse. But now I feel kind of bad, based on what he is saying, and I'm not sure what the procedure should be. Do we have a defined policy on external links? I know that Echelon has a philosophy (which many of us share) that SW should be all inclusive, and should not have any need for external links, in so far as game content is concerned. Official homepages, trivia, and specialized topic pages seem accepted too, but Snesmaster's links don't seem to fall under these categories. Procyon 21:04, 21 February 2007 (CST)
 * They should be available until a SW version exists or is included in the site (external links). Snesmaster's images should be uploaded if he wants them affiliated with SW; maps are going to be huge and they ARE allowed on SW. --Notmyhandle 21:17, 21 February 2007 (CST)
 * Btw, I'm a big fan of your work. --Notmyhandle 21:19, 21 February 2007 (CST)
 * (edit conflict)Personally, I think we should try to be a standalone website. And the way we have our main pages set up, external links sections look somewhat messy (below a long toc, and people are likely to miss it; above the toc and it also looks bad).    The images, if possible, should be uploaded to sw (assuming he holds the copyright) since they fit within what is useful.  Actually the MapleStory guide has a fair number of external links, many of which are very useful for people playing the game. -- Prod (Talk) 21:21, 21 February 2007 (CST)
 * Look at what time of game it is though Prod. MMOG's often have spinoff communities and sites that yes are very beneficial (for example Thottbot.com for WoW players). --Notmyhandle 21:31, 21 February 2007 (CST)
 * Another cause for concern is the fact that the page he's linking to (which happens to be his own) is full of Paypal links so that people can contribute to him for his work. Now, I agree that his maps are extremely high quality, and very well done (if not somewhat busy for my tastes), and his work would serve as nice contributions to the site.  But there certainly couldn't be any indications for paypal contributions on any of it.  (It also raises a fundamental question of how to present oversized maps, which is why I went to the trouble to break the overworld up in to parts, but one problem at a time.) Procyon 21:46, 21 February 2007 (CST)
 * He posted a link to his site what, 5 times? The one I checked had a tiny image for paypal at the bottom...  Uh we have ads too hahaha.  I don't think he's causing much of a problem, and he should directly link to a specific image where appropraite rather than broadcast the whole page for what seems like blatant advertising. --Notmyhandle 22:19, 21 February 2007 (CST)


 * We should be the best source of all game related material. His material is the best (so it's been said) but we can't actually have it here.  In order to still be a source of the best game related material we must link to it if it's not possible to actually have here.  As long as the site is not directly hindered by ads I don't see how our desire to remove it because of that can supersede our goal of being the best source.  If they are as good as it's been said, and we cant' actually have them here, then we should make them as accessible as possible (such as having a link to the map of an area underneath the section talking about it. -- Mason11987 (Talk - Contributions) 00:10, 22 February 2007 (CST)
 * Indeed this should be our temporary policy while heading for the goal of collecting our resources. --Notmyhandle 00:20, 22 February 2007 (CST)


 * I don't mind directly linking to the page that has the images for the game like http://www.nesmaps.com/maps/Zelda/Zelda.html instead of http://www.nesmaps.com I do have some ads on the main page, but the individual map selection screens for individual games only have a small Paypal donation button at the bottom and a link to a free image viewer from Google just incase the user wants to save the images and use a separate program to view them and does not have one.
 * I do hold the copyright on these maps and I give permission to anyone who wants to link to them, or upload them and use them directly on this site if a way is figured out for supporting larger images and flash .swf files. The only request I have is that the copyright information not be removed from the maps.  Snesmaster
 * What do you mean it doesn't support large files, yes it does; upload the Zelda full overview map. The problem with flash files is that they contain code... potentially harmful. Also, the image itself should be linked; not like: here's a compendium of info, but like:here's an image of so & so...  --Notmyhandle 16:57, 22 February 2007 (CST)


 * Forgive me, I don't know the programming of Strategy Wiki that well. You say it supports the larger images.  I have maps ranging in file size from 20 KB up to around 1 Megabyte.  Does it let you put it on a page at full size?  If so please let me know or show me where I can find an example of how to do this.  Thanks.  If this is the case I will just place my maps directly in Strategy Wiki and it will solve the question about external links.  I also think the way maps are linked to should vary depending on the game.  For example if a game has 20 maps would it make sense to have 20 links to each individual map, or one link to a page that lets you pick from the 20 what map you want to see?  Snesmaster
 * The problem is, if the image is very wide it will go offscreen and create a horizontal scrollbar. See Mega Man 2/Metal Man. scrolling map allows for the map alone to have scrollbars. Having said that, in some cases (such as the LoZ maps) cutting the map up into chunks and explaining each works better. GarrettTalk 20:13, 22 February 2007 (CST)
 * Never knew we had such a template, cool. If we go along with external links for maps, the links should obviously go directly to the map in question, such as in the overworld section, it have a link to the overworld map. If we could get his swf file in a scrolling map kind of thing on that page, then all for the better, but if not, we should link to the image, as I contend that having an overworld map of that quality offsite is significantly better then not having any quality overworld map onsite. -- Mason11987 (Talk - Contributions) 08:41, 23 February 2007 (CST)
 * I like to see pics in full, so after uploading all you need to do is link to the actual image and not its strategywiki page (although the link is contained there as well). --Notmyhandle 20:47, 23 February 2007 (CST)
 * Why not show large images as thumbnails (or slightly bigger, say 200-250px) on their relevant page. Then readers can click on the small image to view it at full size. This keeps the site from looking untidy as huge maps will be too big for smaller screens and make the guide look terrible. --RamonSalazar 14:07, 24 February 2007 (CST)
 * I wonder if he'd be at all willing to GFDL license his work? If not, maybe we can buy his work from him... There's no question that his maps would be an incredible asset to StrategyWiki; he did a superb job in making them, so I'd really be grateful if we could use them here.  ech elon  02:39, 25 February 2007 (CST)
 * What is GFDL? You can check out the Super Mario Kart Strategy Wiki Page.  I have uploaded the maps I did for Super Mario Kart there and placed them in useing thumbnails.  I give permission for anyone editing pages to upload the maps I have made from my websites http://www.SNESMaps.com and http://www.NESMaps.com  The only condition is that no changes be made to the maps, and the copyright information be left in the maps.  I am willing to give my work freely to this site, however donations are always welcome.  Let me know how this sounds. Snesmaster
 * GFDL (Stands for GNU Free Document License) is a copyleft "some rights reserved" license that the vast majority of StrategyWiki is currently licensed under. You can view it here, or just click on the little symbol on the bottom of every page. --Ryan SchmidtTalk - Contribs 10:07, 25 February 2007 (CST) (Beats himself on head for forgetting to sign)
 * Your stipulations fall in line with GFDL, except for the fact that you want them to be unchanged. While I doubt they will be changed.  By releasing your content under GFDL it IS able to be edited by anyone.  Just for informations sake. -- Mason11987 (Talk - Contributions) 18:18, 25 February 2007 (CST)
 * I'm not willing to give up that right on the maps to allow anyone to edit them. However if someone feels a special need to edit one they can request permission and depending on how they want to edit it I may grant permission.  What I am giving is the permission to place my maps on this site as long as the copyright information remains intact.  --Snesmaster 20:00, 26 February 2007 (CST)
 * I just want to be clear about this matter, because it is important. By agreeing to use StrategyWiki, and contribute content to the site, you are implicitly agreeing with the GFD license, which stipulates that a user can modify your work in accordance to the rules established by GFDL.  The counter-point to this is that are supposed to leave all previous credits in tact, meaning any derivative of your work had better include your name on it, or they are the ones in violation of GFDL, not you.  In other words, if someone chooses to modify your work (which, as Mason pointed out, is extremely unlikely), I had better be able to identify you as the originator of the work.  But it's important that you are aware of this.  Procyon 20:39, 26 February 2007 (CST)
 * That being said, if you upload an image here, anyone can legally download the image, modify it, and re-upload it here. Of course if you are the original uploader it will always show your information in the version list and on the image: page if you put it there.  Again, it seems unlikely this will happen, but it is the reality of having an open-source platform like we have here at strategywiki.  Anyone can update and improve on content, and the community decides if that update is useful or not. -- Mason11987 (Talk - Contributions) 21:39, 26 February 2007 (CST)
 * I don't have a problem with that. I was just worried about someone making some small change and then taking credit for creating the whole thing.  Thanks for clearing that up for me.  Also I assume someone would not have the right to download a map I uploaded and then sell it or make money from it.  Is that correct?  And I would still have the right to sell my versions of the map if I ever decided to do so at a later date, such as publishing a book with maps I have created and selling it.  --Snesmaster 17:24, 27 February 2007 (CST)
 * You are correct in assuming that they cannot sell your maps for money (hence the "Free" in GNU Free Document License). As for selling them yourself, you'll be able to sell the ones not released under the GFDL (i.e. the ones on your site), but you cannot sell any versions released under the GFDL, such as the ones on SW. --Ryan SchmidtTalk - Contribs 17:32, 27 February 2007 (CST)
 * Does that mean if I place a map on SW that is also on my site, I loose the right to sell it because a version of that is now the same as the one on my site was released to SW? Or does that just mean, if someone modifies one I release on SW that I can't sell that modified one? --Snesmaster 17:40, 27 February 2007 (CST)
 * I think the best way to think about it, is that once you upload one of your maps to SW, it becomes a different and seperate entity from the identical map that you may have on your site. In other words, the maps on your site are completely yours to do whatever you want with them.  Once you upload a version of them to StrategyWiki, they are a distinct version that is part of the collaborative nature of this site, and may or may not undergo transformation.  So don't think of the maps on your site and the maps you upload here as one and the same.  (To be technically and legally precise, you would never be able to see a book of your maps without Nintendo's permission unless they were strictly maps that were devoid of any Nintendo created images.  Companies like Prima have to pay Nintendo a licensing fee in order to reprint material from their games.)  Procyon 17:53, 27 February 2007 (CST)
 * Nope, barring issues with Nintendo (of which there would be many) you can sell images you upload here freely. In fact, if you upload an image here, or someone else uploads an image here, you can sell THAT.  GFDL does not mean it can't be sold.  It means if it is moved elsewhere it must retain the contributors, as well as a copy of the GFDL, I'm also fairly certain that the content has to be open-format.  This means that I can take info from wikipedia, and put it on my site, and charge people to read it, as long as I correctly attribute the contributions.  At least, that is how I understand it, Garret may know more.  You don't lose any rights on your creations by putting them here, except that the copy that you put here is yours as well as everyone elses.  Your own copy, on your site, is yours fully. -- Mason11987 (Talk - Contributions) 18:02, 27 February 2007 (CST)
 * Thanks for clearing that up. It's a bit confusing, but I think I got it now.  --Snesmaster 18:15, 27 February 2007 (CST)

Large scale collaboration on Super Smash Bros. Brawl's release
We all know that Super Smash Bros. Brawl is going to be a landmark game on the Wii. I see it as an opportunity for StrategyWiki since many walkthrough writers will be scrambling to get their guide out before others and keep quality decent. StrategyWiki has a great opporunity here, in that if a list of StrategyWiki's contributors whom can assure they will be buying SSBB is kept, we can coordinate a large scale collaboration on the SSBB guide upon it's release. In the same way that the Ocarina of Time walkthrough was made the first large scale collaboration for being such a landmark game requiring such a landmark walkthough, many people will be looking for a well-rounded SSBB guide. If done timely, we will gain ground quickly against competing walkthroughs due to our main advantages and attract many wary users looking for an SSBB guide. What do you all think?--Dan 14:15, 22 February 2007 (CST)
 * One benefit for OoT is that it was an older game, so lots of people had "access" to it. However, it will be big for sure.  If anyone gets it, and is willing to put other projects on hold, that would be great.  Of course, perhaps we could contact Nintendo about some "evaluation" copies :D. -- Prod (Talk) 14:19, 22 February 2007 (CST)
 * I'm in, definitly, will be buying it the day it comes out, and will be out of school for the summer (obviously), so I'll have plenty of time to work on it. I suggest setting up structure and as much as possible before the game comes out.  I'm gonna work on some stuff now if possible. -- Mason11987 (Talk - Contributions) 14:20, 22 February 2007 (CST)
 * I'm in, too. I should be done with Twilight Princess by the time it comes out. Btw Prod, how do you propose we get some "evaluation" copies, or were you just kidding? --Ryan SchmidtTalk - Contribs 15:04, 22 February 2007 (CST)
 * I'm sure he was just kidding. We don't review games, so there's no reason they would give us that even if we were able to contact the person who could do so.  -- Mason11987 (Talk - Contributions) 15:06, 22 February 2007 (CST)
 * Mostly kidding, but as a niche (for the moment) fan website, we would probably end up putting their name on the front page, potentially getting them more sales. Then again, most of the people here are already gamers who will already know about the game, and a bit of advertising in a "saturated" market won't really help much.  Also, if there is any chance of it, I would love to get a free copy :P. -- Prod (Talk) 15:12, 22 February 2007 (CST)
 * Oh no doubt, if we can find out who there is to ask, I'd be all for giving it a shot, can't hurt you know? -- Mason11987 (Talk - Contributions) 15:13, 22 February 2007 (CST)
 * (edit conflict) I set up a list of those editor's interested in the guide on it's talk page, this is so the new flow of editor's will know there are other's checking in on the guide that they can ask about things, or fill in on changes, or new ideas. -- Mason11987 (Talk - Contributions) 15:13, 22 February 2007 (CST)
 * Is your apostrophe key permanently stuck down today? :-P Anyway, this sounds like a good idea. --DrBob (Talk) 15:49, 22 February 2007 (CST)
 * Wow...what a disgrace... -- Mason11987 (Talk - Contributions) 09:15, 23 February 2007 (CST)
 * Strictly as a very nostalgic aside, this was my work in the "way back when" days. It was fun to do.  Procyon 18:25, 22 February 2007 (CST)
 * Very nice; I remember when I got the Nintendo Power issue with previews for the game, was so psyched. --Notmyhandle 18:39, 22 February 2007 (CST)
 * Can't direct link to GameFAQS :). -- Mason11987 (Talk - Contributions) 09:15, 23 February 2007 (CST)
 * Follow the link, then type www.gamefaqs.com in the url, then hit back and it should have auth'd you correctly and you'll be able to see the page. --Notmyhandle 12:32, 25 February 2007 (CST)

collaboration
Greetings. I'm the current sysop of a gaming wiki called AliceSoftWiki. Our wiki focuses on the Japanese computer games produced by the company Alice Soft, and well as related lore and products. We also run under the GFDL, so if you guys are interested in making your own guides for Alice Soft games, you can start from stuff we already wrote instead of starting from scratch. Although I am more contemplating along the lines of having StrategyWiki directly linking to AliceSoftWiki articles for guides on the Alice Soft games.

I'd like to know how the regulars here feel about that, and/or if anyone else have any other ideas of how our two wikis can collaborate. - Afker(talk) 02:42, 23 February 2007 (CST)


 * I'm surprised no one else responded yet. I took a look at your site, and it's pretty cool.  Obviously, by covering only Japanese games from one developer, it's very much a niche site, and one that is extremely unlikely to receive coverage at StrategyWiki, as the users here generally focus on Japanese games that have been translated into English, or can be played by English speakers.  So from that standpoint, you provide a service to a few select games that we are unlikely to cover.  On the other hand, among the few games that I did examine on your site, there isn't much of a walkthrough associated with any of the articles, so if I wanted to play one of those games (much less get a hold of one of them), your site (as it exists at this moment) wouldn't be of much help for anything other than background information.  Please correct me if I missed anything.  So I see one pro and one con.  I'd like to see how everyone else weighs in on the subject, but thanks for getting in touch with us.  Procyon 07:43, 23 February 2007 (CST)


 * Games that we have walkthroughs for currently (that are at least 80% complete): Sengoku Rance,  Rance 3, Tsumashibori, Kickikuou Rance, Rance 1
 * Games that we have guides teaching people how to play the game (our users are often people who canNOT read Japanese, otherwise they'd be using the many detailed Japanese walkthrough sites out there): Daikuji (in a messy state), Mamatoto, Beat Angel Escalayer, GalZoo Island
 * With our wiki just started one year ago, and with Alice Soft releasing on average around 3~4 titles per year (for the past 18 years, since 1989), it'd be quite a while before we actually catch up to the point of decent walkthrough coverage of ALL 60+ Alice Soft games. But at least we are making walkthroughs faster than Alice is making games, so at this rate one day we will eventually get there.  Additionally, our goal is more than to just provide walkthroughs, but also help people understand how to play the game, help people understand the world and character and stories of these Japanese games, so unfortunately walkthroughs might not receive full attention all the time (if ppl can't figure out HOW to play the game, it's pointless to tell them they gotta kill a dragon hidden somewhere to get to the next level).
 * Hopefully I have meaningfully and sufficiently addressed most of your concerns. Let me know if I missed anything! (-:  -Afker 15:31, 23 February 2007 (CST)


 * If you see my statement in the external links section. We are striving to have the best stuff here.  If we can't get the best here physically, then we should link to it.  If we can't get the best here legally, then we should use it as a guide to write a new guide that we can legally host here.  Your wiki sounds like it would have neither of those problems.  Albeit, I haven't looked at it, but if it's a mediawiki with the GFDL, it wouldn't have those problems.  That means if there was content there that we wanted to use, we would simply do an export/import to preserve the GFDL and bring it here, as we have with wp, and wikibooks. -- Mason11987 (Talk - Contributions) 09:13, 23 February 2007 (CST)
 * Eventually StrategyWiki will have its own; less external links = better and since you're GFDL then your info might get jacked as well. --Notmyhandle 20:50, 23 February 2007 (CST)
 * "Jack" sounds like such a negative word ^^" AliceSoftWiki was intentionally chosen to be GDFL, so stuff from there being used here is completely ok with us. -Afker 02:57, 24 February 2007 (CST)
 * I came across your site just yesterday. Looks very interesting. We don't currently have any established method of linking to an outside guide instead of our own, but then again these are comparatively obscure games that will obviously receive far more updates on your wiki than here. Hm. Maybe I should think about this when I'm wider awake. :) GarrettTalk 03:40, 24 February 2007 (CST)

The wiki looks good, and I don't think japanese only games would get as much coverage here (I think the only ones so far were by NHN). On the company page, put an external link, and on the specific game pages.....something will have to be figured out. Perhaps a wikipedia type box, or just an external link. -- Prod (Talk) 17:29, 24 February 2007 (CST)

I've started Sengoku Rance as a pilot page, testing the waters on formatting and stuff. Once we get that one throughly flushed, we can use that article as a model of how other similar ones should be formatted. Later tonight I'm gonna research on what the Japanese software rating system is called, and add that to the game info box template. Can interwiki-links be setup for AliceSoftWiki? That way I can easily explain what JAPAN is by interwiki linking it to our article, instead of creating an external link (which looks uglier and I usually don't like full URLs in wiki-code). -Afker 17:49, 24 February 2007 (CST)

rating system

 * Isn't it just CERO? -- Prod (Talk) 17:56, 24 February 2007 (CST)
 * Hmm... Alice Soft is not listed as a member of CERO. And the CERO symbols don't look familiar to me at all.  Maybe CERO is just an organization instead of the organization that rates videogames and computer software in Japan?  I'll do a little more research when I get home tonight, including check the game boxes of my Alice Soft games... -Afker 18:29, 24 February 2007 (CST)


 * I have a feeling that most adult-only games are simply never rated, and are directly advertised as adult-only games. Afterall, incorrectly labeling a game as Adult Only will probably cause it to lose more potential sales than any positive effect it may have. So the difference between whether a label saying "Adult Only" is certified by an established organization or is self-proclaimed seems to be moot.  I've also checked the box of Sengoku Rance, and saw no rating information on it, except the words in red saying "People under 18 cannot purchase this software". -Afker 22:34, 24 February 2007 (CST)


 * Allow me to eat my words. I've found a sticker on the side of the box that shows the organization that certified the 18+ rating.  Let me find out more about it... -Afker 02:08, 25 February 2007 (CST)

merger proposal

 * DrBob and I have been discussing this new opportunity that you have brought to us, and I believe our community's consensus is that they are interested as well. However, what DrBob and I see in your offer is a new possibility--something I would like to propose to you now and that I hope you will carefully consider: would you guys like to become a part of the StrategyWiki project?
 * I know you guys have put a great deal of work and effort into your wiki, and I also realize that it is a project that has a lot of energy going for it. However, I would like you to think for a moment what would happen if your guides were located (and not localized) at StrategyWiki. You'll get a larger group of avid and hardcore gamers looking at your guides and becoming involved in them. The already prevalent Japanese traffic you receive would also be boosted by that which we too receive. Instead of your content existing redundantly and fragmentedly here, there will be one supreme copy (one of our foundation's key tenants, if you will). By making this a combined effort, together we can build an all-encompassing guide to gaming. That's what our goal was when we set out, and we'd love if you could make yourselves a part of it.


 * While this would mean leaving Wikia for StrategyWiki, I think our eager attitude is something that you guys can feed off of. Your content would not just grow here, but thrive here. Your content would become a deserving part of a massive project to encompass all of gaming. You'll have our talent, our resources, and our support.
 * Hope you like our offer. Let us know what you think!  ech elon  01:15, 25 February 2007 (CST)


 * The idea has passed through my mind before. I have a few questions/reservations related to this subject:
 * GuildWiki.org is currently, without a doubt, the single best wiki for the game GuildWars. While it has a core team of trust-worthy and dedicated SysOps, the server and domain name are all under one single person's care.  If one day that person decides to stop paying for the server/domain and just quit, or if he gets killed in a car accident, the entire wiki gets screwed and none of the dedicated SysOps can do anything about it.  Years of edits from countless contributors will simply vaporize.  On the other hand, Wikia is run by an organization, it's finances and contracts are with an organization instead of an individual, and I feel I can fully entrust all my contributions with them, without fearing the (unlikely) sudden-shut-down scenario that GuildWiki can be in danger of.  Right now, I'm not familiar with the organizational structure of StrategyWiki.  Who handles the finances, takes care of the domain and server contracts, etc.  I don't want to put my eggs in a basket without knowing how resistent the basket is against car accidents etc.
 * Image policy independence. AliceSoftWiki currently adopts a image use policy that is stricter than conventional fair-use in the United States.  Specifically, users are not allowed to upload screenshots of the game, unless those screenshots were released by Alice Soft on their own homepage.  This policy is chosen because I am a great fan of Alice Soft, and I greatly respect their hestitation in granting a "foreign language (relative to Japanese)" website the right to freely use screenshots of their game.  If all other issues are addressed and the AliceSoftWiki is to fold under StrategyWiki, I would strongly like to able to preserve this policy for Alice Soft games, again out of respect for Alice Soft.
 * AliceSoftWiki is not just a wiki for strategies on AliceSoft games. We also provide background info, world lore, and misc trivia for AliceSoft games.  Within the AliceSoftWiki, we can directly created articles for each character, nation, location, item, major event etc using their name as the article name, with very rare need of some form of disambiguation.  However, on StrategyWiki, if I were to create an article on the nation of Leazas, I would probably be forced to name it "Rance series/Leazas" or "Rance series:Leazas".  Almost every informational article will need to be prefixed by the name of the game (or game series) it primarily appears in.  This makes linking greatly cumbersome, and resulting in the need to pipe pretty much every single link.  This would be a significant con against merging.
 * AliceSoftWiki is not just about AliceSoft games. We also (plan to) document the OST CDs, card games, character figurines, and other associated items and events related to AliceSoft.  Some of these might not specifically related to any particular game or game series at all.  I am not sure if those types of articles fit in StrategyWiki at all.
 * While it is possible of only putting the walkthroughs on StrategyWiki, and leaving everything else on AliceSoftWiki, many of the walkthroughs work best by having direct links to background information articles, so users who cannot read Japanese (which is the primary target for our wiki) can quickly look up who the heck a particular obscure name refers to. While this can still be implemented via inter-wiki links from SW to ASW, it feels like a different kind of fragmentation that is even less natural (compared to only have a basic informational page on SW, and point the walkthrough to AliceSoftWiki).
 * These are the stuff that spring to my mind when I contemplated on the possibility of folding under StrategyWiki. I'm looking forward to ideas or responses that may address some/many/all of these, or alternate ways we can gain similar benefits you've listed while staying with wikia.  Thank you for the invitation. -Afker 02:01, 25 February 2007 (CST)
 * I'll try my best to answer your questions:
 * I know that Echelon and Dan both have server access, but I don't know who the domain name is under. The funding for the wiki shouldn't dry up anytime soon (thanks to Google AdSense), and I highly doubt Echelon will just decide to abandon this project.
 * Just include a link to AliceSoft's image policy on the image pages and let those that actually contribute to the content of the games know about the policy by putting a link (or just writing it down) on their talk page.
 * You can just name the page Leazas or whatever as long as there is no actual game with that name, just make sure to categorize it into the Rance Series or whatever category it would fit under. Alternatively, we could make a separate namespace for informative articles, but I don't know how much support that would have (comments, anyone?).
 * 4., 5. See above comment. Another way would be to have the articles in AliceSoftWiki and just link there, but that kinda defeats the purpose of merging. Ryan SchmidtTalk - Contribs 16:05, 25 February 2007 (CST)


 * I'm going to append to some of Ryan's responses.
 * echelon can answer this best.
 * I understand you are doing it out of "respect" but may I simply ask why?  Don't you think giving fans the best "legal" information about AliceSoft Games is the most important thing?  Screenshots are fair-use and that is perfectly legal.  I personally think that using fair-use images (as in screenshots) actually helps the company whose games you are taking them from.  Freely use, and "fair use" aren't exactly the same thing, and them being hesitant to grant completly free use on images is reasonable, but I doubt they'd be concerned about fair-use.  I personally do not think it'd be a good idea to be putting different image copy write restrictions for different games here.  And if the games were put here, I think we'd be doing our readers a disservice if we didn't allow fair-use images on these guides.  It's no disrespect to the makers of those games of course, it's just to provide the best possible information.
 * There would only be an issue when the pages with those names already existed here. If the character or location names were the same as a game name we have here (or will later get here) then the game would have to supercede the accompanying article.  Like wikipedia's spore article.  The biological item is more important so it has the article and the game gets the parenthetical title wp:Spore (video game).  If your character article was the same as a character article here, there would simply be a disambiguation page that searchers would find.  This is unlikely to be a common issue, as those are japenese games with japenese sounding names.  So I wouldn't be surprised if there were only a few of them.  Otherwise they could have the same titles they already have.  All in all, I don't think this would be a major issue.  All of the background content for the games can be here and are within our scope.
 * I don't know if this fits quite in with our goals, but you said you "plan" on doing this, so it may be only a minor con for a merge instead of a major.
 * If the content helps the player with the game with information about anything in the game, it belongs here and would be welcomed and would grow here.
 * -- Mason11987 (Talk - Contributions) 18:36, 25 February 2007 (CST)
 * From what has been said by Afker, since they want such an "in-depth" view into the company's everything, their separate wiki serves it's purpose better than merging....but not by much.
 * I think Dan has access to the server and everything like that as well.
 * The image policy is fairly restrictive, and I don't think it's that necessary, for the same reasons that Mason11987 stated. If they do complain (under DMCA or something similar) they can easily be taken down.  Anywayz, a few screenshots helps get people interested in a game.  Too many screenshots also tends to weaken the fair use argument, so it's not likely that we're going to put images of everything in the game.
 * This is the main reason why I think it's better to stay separate. The main namespace is for games, companies, series, or anything that globally applies to all games.  Some things could be put under the series pages (similar to the Wii/Wii Virtual Console page) though you can get collisions when the game name is the same as the series name.  Then again, that could be avoided with disambiguations.  Mildly annoying, but can be lived with.
 * As a SW person, I would be more interested in people sticking to this site for guides, though giving users access to all the other information is definitely important. I'm somewhat against having the interwiki link in the AGN, but it's the best way to display the info without copying it all over.
 * Overall, it would be great if you could bring over all the info, but I don't think all the info is within SW's mission. If we can transclude between wikis, that would be great.....but I highly doubt that is possible. -- Prod (Talk) 19:09, 25 February 2007 (CST)

Look at how our other guides are made. If some story detail is necessary for playing the game it's in the guide itself. If it isn't, it's instead a link to Wikipedia or some other site. A Characters page here could focus on their gameplay-related behaviour, while Wikipedia-esque sidebars link to AliceSoftWiki for any non-gameplay information.

Some fan wikis, while comprehensive when it comes to character and story info, deliberately exclude walkthroughs from their scope (Zelda Wiki.org, for instance) and instead rely upon external links for game help, so it is quite possible to, just like Wikipedia, have comprehensive information about the games without offering help with the games. In fact, not having to have gameplay details on character pages could actually make things easier if a character's abilities and behaviour varies widely between games. GarrettTalk 19:46, 25 February 2007 (CST)


 * Indeed, the articles on AliceSoftWiki is designed with that issue in mind. Character abiliities, town stats etc are all in respective game's guide articles, whereas the character articles and town articles etc covers the general characteristics and/or histories, and deliberately leaving out stats that vary from game to game. -Afker 19:53, 25 February 2007 (CST)

Thank's for all the responses up to this point. I'm still reading and thinking and considering. I want to respond to everything at once after reading more people's responses. Though I want to clarify on point 1 a little bit: Among other things, I want to know how resistent StrategyWiki is against unfortunate car accidents. Take AliceSoftWiki for example, if I die in an car accident, other contributors can carry on, and if a SysOp is needed, Wikia can appoint some active user on AliceSoftWiki. If the 12 highest ranking people in Wikia all die in a car accident (12 simultaneous accidents distributed across the world), Wikia as a company/organization will still exist, and it should not affect the operations of AliceSoftWiki. On the other hand, even though GuildWiki has a dozen good SysOps and a few beaucrats, it only take one single car accident to kill one individual (cuz the domain/server etc are all registered under him, as opposed to an organization) for GuildWiki to essentially die (when the contracts expire). So among the things I want to know for #1, is how resistent StrategyWiki is against random car accidents etc. Not that I wish or predict anything bad, mind you. I just don't want to risk my work vaporizing because some drunk driver decides to run over a respected and crutial member of the wiki. Alternately, if StrategyWiki does periodic dumps of the entire wiki and put the backup somewhere accessable by multiple people (and how many). -Afker 19:53, 25 February 2007 (CST)
 * StrategyWiki is a living and breathing organization. While I can't say this is true for the present, we are seeking to colocate our servers in Atlanta sometime within the year. This means that at least three of our staff members will have access to the hardware when we upgrade our servers. Currently Dan Joumaa (ness), Matt Merkey (PowerMatt), and myself have root access to our dedicated server. Phil Withnall (DrBob) and Nick Howell (FrenchToast) have access to limited portions of the server, though I certainly have no problem with getting them hooked up with root access either. The domain names are accessible by myself, Matt Merkey, and Ian Szewczyk (roamzero). Overall, the most important aspect of our organization is that we are not going to stay "just a wiki". We are actively working on growing Abxy into a social networking platform for gamers, and our second generation software will debut sometime closer to when we have new hardware. I fully intend to build our organization into an open and independent media powerhouse within the gaming, and ultimately, technology industries. It seems like a large goal, and as I have learned we must take every day step by step, but this does not mean we do not have contingencies in place. (Though you certainly ask a good question!) Dan and Matt actively work on the server when I am not around, and it is quite often that upgrades are made without my direct involvement. Though it may be likely that the full breadth of my future aspirations for this organization would die with me should such a morbid and unfortunate occasion occur, I doubt that any information would be lost and I certainly believe that this wiki alone is more than capable of thriving without my involvement.  ech elon  20:25, 25 February 2007 (CST)
 * MediaWiki 1.9.2 was released earlier this month. Since you'll be making backups when you get around to installing it that would be a good time to offer public dumps (minus the user tables and other sensitive data), or at least get them to me/Procyon/Prod/etc. GarrettTalk 20:57, 25 February 2007 (CST)

Page Errors
Uh, has anyone seen The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess lately? Messed up images, ToC section with a giant Edit text on the left. Actually all pages are like this... --Notmyhandle 22:45, 25 February 2007 (CST)
 * The giant edit boxes are due to new CSS in MediaWiki 1.9. The images should be fixed now though.  ech elon  22:50, 25 February 2007 (CST)
 * There are actually a few CSS concerns now (return of the red links, etc.), but I can't deal with them tonight.
 * (  ech elon  22:52, 25 February 2007 (CST)
 * Is it possible to make the edit boxes smaller like they were before the upgrade? The new ones are kind of distracting...-- Duke  Ruckley  15:31, 26 February 2007 (CST)
 * http://strategywiki.org/w/skins/BlueCloud/index.css needs to be edited to add "float: right;" to the span.editsection rule, as well as changing the "font-size: 1em;" in that rule to "font-size: 0.8em;" (or 0.7em). I can't do this myself at the moment, due to lack of softwares. --DrBob (Talk) 11:05, 28 February 2007 (CST)
 * User:Garrett/Sandbox is really messed up. It also demonstrates that hotlinking no longer works (which was a fairly useful trick). GarrettTalk 13:07, 26 February 2007 (CST)


 * See here for another problem with previews.--Rocky [[Image:Rally-X_Rock.png|25px]]  ( Talk Contributions ) 15:16, 26 February 2007 (CST)

I offer SW a Vision

 * I opened discussion for what will likely be a large section of the community portal to here. A copy of Afker's message is there, and you can respond there.  Hope this will keep the discussion running smoothly and still make the Community Portal readable for other topics. -- Mason11987 (Talk - Contributions) 08:28, 26 February 2007 (CST)

Apologies ahead of time if I sound arrogant. I usually don't notice I offend people until I see their reactions (no matter how much I pay attention to how I word things). Even if you get offended, I humbly ask that you at least read the last 2 paragraphs, to see what my main point is. The intermediate paragraphs can be summarized as:
 * 1) Why compete against GuildWiki?
 * 2) If GameFAQs ever goes wiki (and I'm surprised that they haven't), how can you compete against them?

Consider the game Guild Wars. There exists a wiki, GuildWiki (part of the gamewikis network), that is unquestionably the current best resource for Guild Wars. It has the following advantages:
 * The wiki format of GuildWiki allows for multiple editors
 * One game, one guide
 * GuildWiki ensures that the guides remain open
 * There are no more "plaintext" guides

So, why is StrategyWiki trying to create its own walkthrough for Guild Wars? With GuildWiki already having an overwhelming headstart, everyone who is anyone in the guild wars community is going to pay attention, and contribute, to GuildWiki. There is no way StrategyWiki's walkthrough on Guild Wars can catch up to be 10% as good as Guild Wiki, unless Gravewit (the guy behind the gamewikis network) gets killed in a car accident and the contracts expire so that two years of contributions by thousands of people vaporizes.

Even if GuildWiki were licensed under GFDL (it's not, it's under the CC-BY-NC license), and StrategyWiki manages to get a hold of a dump of the entire GuildWiki (minus personal user information), importing all that information into StrategyWiki will still make the guide on StrategyWiki inferior, in a sense, to GuildWiki.

You see, the very fact that the walkthroughs for every single game on StrategyWiki shares the same wiki-space, puts limitations and flexibility on what it can do. The fact that the game Guild Wars gets its own independent wiki-space on the gamewikis network gives it room to be better than any walkthrough that can be hosted on the current form of StrategyWiki.

Even if you ported all GuildWiki articles over (which you can't), and add necessary (Guild Wars) disambiguation (or put them under Guild Wars/), so that you have 100% identical information as GuildWiki has, when an avid fan of Guild Wars thinks about whether he should contribute to StrategyWiki or GuildWiki, I bet the bigger Guild Wars fans will choose GuildWiki, simply because it's themed, and is dedicated to Guild Wars, and they won't have to include the extra words "Guild Wars" in the names of 99% of the articles. Most of them won't know (or care) the difference between GFDL or CC-BY-NC, or your bigger visions.

Any set of articles for the game Guild Wars, hosted on StrategyWiki under its current structure, is going to be intrinsically inferior to GuildWiki.

Here is how I, an outsider, sees StrategyWiki as: I see it as a site that wants to become a GameFAQs.com that has only one guide for each game, uses pictures and richtext, and is open for collabrative editing. If I want help with a random game and I don't know where to begin, I would probably go to GameFAQs first, and your vision is to replace the role of GameFAQs by providing guides of higher quality (GameFAQs' current structure makes it intrinsically inferior to StrategyWiki). A noble vision, but limits the guides and prevent some of them to become the best guides that could exist for some of the games. Additionally, if GameFAQs ever decide to go wiki (with a copyleft license), you will be almost instantly defeated because they are already better known and have developed a bigger user base. StrategyWiki will no longer be different.

Last 2 paragraphs starts here

 * Please respond to Afker's message here. -- Mason11987 (Talk - Contributions) 08:28, 26 February 2007 (CST)

I offer SW a vision: Become a hub, a portal, a place where everyone goes to find where the best open guide for any game is located at (which may or maynot be on SW). The game Guild Wars has GuildWiki, so you just point everyone who come here to look for a walkthrough for Guild Wars to Guild Wiki, and never worry about making one hosted on SW. The game Foo Bar has several extensive guides on the internet, but none of them are in an open (wiki with copyleft licensing) format, so StrategyWiki developes its own at  http://strategywiki.org/w/Foo_Bar . Later say Foo Bar come out with a total of 3 sequals, all highly connected, and the world view and lore has become greatly enriched, and you create a "sub-wiki" at  http://foobar.strategywiki.org  for the entire Foo Bar game series. You will still have wiki walkthroughs for games, and you can win over Foo Bar fans as contributors (against other encompassing walkthrough sites that also decide to go wiki) because there is a dedicated Foo Bar sub-wiki hosted at strategywiki.

Hack the mediawiki software to allow displaying of "local recent changes" (say, on Foo Bar Wiki only) and "global recent changes" (across ALL sub-wikis and the central wiki on the strategywiki network). Attract community of gamer fans by giving the games they love enough space to call home (by having themed sub-wikis for games that are connected and have more freedom in article creation/naming), not hotel rooms. With that, issues 3~5 regarding the merger offer for AliceSoftWiki can all be resolved by having a  http://alicesoft.strategywiki.org . I offer the vision to you freely, and hope that if things work out I might have some subliminal advantages when negeociating about issue 2 regarding AliceSoftWiki. d-: -Afker 06:04, 26 February 2007 (CST)

Language Categories
I think there should be categories for games of other languages, Japanese, Korean, Spanish, German, etc. Opinions? --Notmyhandle 19:22, 26 February 2007 (CST)
 * Are you meaning for guides in other languages, or for games only released in those languages? Anyway, it could get a bit confusing: many games are released in various languages, so if we don't bother tagging those released in several languages they'll have to be hunted for in the regular ways. GarrettTalk 19:28, 26 February 2007 (CST)
 * Yeah I see how its a bad idea. --Notmyhandle 19:44, 26 February 2007 (CST)
 * On another note, I am going to create ja.strategywiki.org and ko.strategywiki.org before the end of the semester. I think they'll definitely work out due to our substantial Asian traffic.  ech elon  16:23, 28 February 2007 (CST)

RFA
I think a page to request adminship is an obvious point towards where this wiki is heading. The scale is already growing fairly large, and if it isn't here t already, there will come a point where Echelon, DrBob, and Garrett will not be able to spot all the great users that would be useful to have as admins themselves. So I think having a place to nominate other users as well as yourselves for adminship would be especially useful. Now I don't personally think we have too few admins, but why not give those who would be useful with new buttons the ability to use them? This was spurred on by Ryan Schmidt's comment on Echelon's talk page. Of course we'd have to set up some criteria, in general I think the criteria should be quite lenient (as even sysop actions can be undone) but since it should probably be a community discussion anyone can set their own criteria. Just like on WP, a Bureaucrat can close the nomination and make a decision based on the community consensus. What are thoughts on this? -- Mason11987 (Talk - Contributions) 18:04, 27 February 2007 (CST)
 * We will definately need it sooner or later, so definately set it up. Though we have to come up with a de-adminship at the same time.  Best idea would be to follow wikipedia's policy, since it seems to work fairly well for them. -- Prod (Talk) 17:15, 27 February 2007 (CST)
 * Me likes, but Mason, cmon, sign your posts, at least hit the little button! --Notmyhandle 17:30, 27 February 2007 (CST)

Site Changes
Whats with all these changes to the site? The (+120) thing on the recent changes? The enlarged and moved edit buttons? Lunar Knight 13:27, 28 February 2007 (CST)
 * lol, you've been away for a while ;) We upgraded to the latest Wiki code, and a few new features were added (like the character edit count, the +120 you referred to).  It also broke a few minor touches.  They can all be restored eventually, but only someone with access to the files, and the time to look into it, can resolve the few remaining issues. Procyon 13:54, 28 February 2007 (CST)
 * I think I've posted resolutions to all the issues people've reported, but I can't do anything with them at the moment, as I've misplaced the software I need for server access. :-P --DrBob (Talk) 14:52, 28 February 2007 (CST)
 * I don't favor the rather large and repositioned edit buttons. I havn't been away for a while, I guess this is the first time I've noticed. :-P -Lunar Knight 15:46, 28 February 2007 (CST)
 * DrBob, we'll talk tonight about getting you server access again. (I also need to yell at talk to Dan to restore SCP access.) As for the big ugly edit buttons and the blinding red links, that'll take a few CSS patches to solve.  ech elon  16:31, 28 February 2007 (CST)
 * If you've got time tonight, I've put the CSS patches up in the various bug reporting threads here and in the staff lounge. --DrBob (Talk) 16:57, 28 February 2007 (CST)
 * I think the bugs are squashed now except redlinks, but that requires a PHP fix.  ech elon  23:38, 28 February 2007 (CST)
 * Edit links are still large and in charge on the left. GarrettTalk 00:24, 1 March 2007 (CST)
 * Nope they aren't, small and on the right. --Notmyhandle 00:25, 1 March 2007 (CST)
 * Dump your cache.  ech elon  01:03, 1 March 2007 (CST)

Wikia Hosting

 * Note: I moved this from my talk page to allow for more visibility to the community.  ech elon  16:51, 28 February 2007 (CST)

Hi Echelon. I saw on StrategyWiki talk:Community Portal that you are having problems with the hosting costs. If you'd like to move to free hosting at Wikia, please let me know. It would save you a lot of expense and allow you to focus on the content here rather than dealing with the technical side of maintaining the wiki. Angela 11:51, 28 February 2007 (CST)
 * Free hosting necessarily comes with some limitations, what would those be? -- Mason11987 (Talk - Contributions) 12:15, 28 February 2007 (CST)
 * I doubt that she will troll Echelon's talk page for a response, so it's doubtful that you can get your question answered here. Anyway, I was under the impression that since we implemented adsense, we were pretty much in the clear as far as that goes, even making enough money to upgrade to a better server.  Any news on that front Echelon? Procyon 12:57, 28 February 2007 (CST)
 * It's possible, I see strategywiki as a site that could do quite well, and wikia is for-profit, they pay for hosting but get the adsense money. So if we did end up huge, and we went under wikia, it'd be easy money.  This is all purely buisness speak here, I don't want to assume intentions. -- Mason11987 (Talk - Contributions) 14:05, 28 February 2007 (CST)


 * Hi Angela, thanks for visiting us. Now that we have implemented Adsense, we are making roughly double our monthly expenditures; our earnings are further augmented by Abxy's income. (Abxy is our social networking that is both a sister site and joint project.) This means that for right now we're in the clear--we're actually back on track for raising funds for a colocated server. Although we appreciate your business offer and we certainly respect the company you and Jimbo have built, I believe we are for the moment doing a good job at running and marketing StrategyWiki. For clarification, I'll give you the basis for my thinking:
 * As a CS major I must say one of the biggest thrills I get is from managing our server. (I'd even argue that I'm better at management than guide writing!) While we did have to implement ads on StrategyWiki as primarily a cost-recovery measure, this is only because Abxy is experiencing a small identity crisis of sorts. Pending a few changes to our direction, Abxy should again pay for all of our expenses as it did in the past, hopefully enabling us to go colocated and clustered by this summer. (The thought of having our own hardware, especially clustered machines, thrills me to no extent!)
 * Secondly, our organization intends to become a small force in the gaming sector, and the things that predicate this shift are really starting to fall into place for us. We're not just about building a strategy guide wiki, but rather providing all sorts of services to gamers--and user-driven content isn't restricted to the domain of wikis. Hence this is the reason we have our social networking platform and future projects along the same line and principle. We may or may not interconnect these services by extending MediaWiki, and as we grow this becomes more and more of a feasible possibility since the AuthUser system can quickly be adapted to each new version of MediaWiki through the use of our increasing human resources. I should clarify that we have not made a firm decision on whether or not to connect StrategyWiki, Abxy, and our other services, but it is a real possibility that is quite often brought up in our staff meetings.
 * Thanks again for stopping by Angela. I'm sure that we'll continue to discuss your offer, but I am agnostic to the idea of joining Wikia at this point as it's simply not the direction we want to go. Nevertheless, thanks for making note of us and tell Jimbo hi!  ech elon  16:19, 28 February 2007 (CST)
 * There is no reason to join wikia. Nor will there ever be. --ConfusedSoul 20:12, 28 February 2007 (CST)

Thanks for your response Echelon. Let me know if the situation changes and you're no longer able to support the site through adsense on your own. Also, if there is content that you don't welcome here, such as fanon about the games, feel free to let people know that Wikia can provide them a space for that. Angela 17:24, 1 March 2007 (CST)

Requests for adminship/Ryan Schmidt
Everyone's attention to the above please. :) -- Mason11987 (Talk - Contributions) 14:30, 1 March 2007 (CST)
 * There's a little bit of an issue concerning this Mason. I don't think anyone here would actively oppose Ryan's nomination for adminship, but it's very likely that people (such as myself) will neither be in favor of supporting him, nor opposing his nomination.  In other words, I abstain because I don't have enough of a strong feeling either way.  We need to come up with a criteria upon which a user is promoted.  Is it simply a matter of yeas versus nays?  Or does there have to be a strong enough consensus among all admins?  In other words, there are 11 sysops, so does he need at least 6 supporters?  If there were 5 supporters and no one opposes, is he promoted or is he not?  Do Bureaucrat votes count more than sysop votes?  Just curious.  Procyon 15:12, 1 March 2007 (CST)
 * With wikipedia, they would rather give everyone admin privileges since everyone should be allowed to contribute, as long as they understand the policies. This means that there are over 1k admins right now.  On the admin page they state "From early on, it has been pointed out that administrators should never develop into a special subgroup of the community but should be a part of the community like anyone else."  They just can do some of the more difficult to undo tasks.  For the moment, admins=regulars, as in we tend to be on here helping out with everything.  As the site grows, the number of sysops will definately grow.  And this is a vote for anyone to support/oppose, not just admins.
 * The way I see it, there are two general voting methods that could work:
 * You count the number of supports and the total votes, and if the supports are over half of the total votes (rounded up), then the consensus is "yes"
 * Each support adds a point, and each oppose takes off a point (undecided doesn't add or remove points). If the points total up to more than half of the total votes (rounded up), then the consensus is "yes"
 * I'm personally in favor of method 2, but, as this is a community thing, I'll leave it up to the community to decide which one (if any of the above) to implement, or suggest new ideas. --Ryan SchmidtTalk - Contribs 16:18, 1 March 2007 (CST)
 * Actually, after reading what Prod had to say, I'm more in favor of supporting Ryan now. As for how we determine the promotion, it sounds like it should simply be democratic yeas vs. nays since it's open to everyone on the site (and there's no true way to determine what the representative percentage of users voted.) Procyon 16:29, 1 March 2007 (CST)
 * From the Requests for adminship/Front matter page, (can someone post it I forgot what it was, StrategyWiki:RA?) it says, "At the end of that period, a bureaucrat will review the discussion to see whether there is a consensus for promotion." Thus only Ech, Dr. and Garrett can decide who becomes admin.  The nomination however is only meant to open the discussion of the person for adminship, to weigh the pros and cons of the person and to see if they would even be useful.  Bureaucrats, is this right?  --Notmyhandle 17:00, 1 March 2007 (CST)
 * It's RFA, and that's a good point. It's a discussion, not a vote.  Final decision is up to the person who has to power to promote (Bureaucrats).  -- Prod (Talk) 17:06, 1 March 2007 (CST)
 * How it works at WP and how I think it should work here, is Bureaucrats determine if their is consensus, then simply act on that consensus. If most people think it's a good idea, then go through with it.  I understand your first comment Proc, and that's fine, that's why there is abstain.  My feelings on sysops is just as WP feels, since we don't really ever rely on votes, sysops only real purpose is to have more effective tools to deal better with cleanup and problem-users (of which we've had a surprisingly small number as far as I know).  My criteria is, if I don't not trust the user with the tools, and I believe they are here enough to make their ownership of them worthwhile, then give it to them. :) -- Mason11987 (Talk - Contributions) 17:54, 1 March 2007 (CST)