StrategyWiki:Staff lounge/2015/March

Beyond my knowledge
I was working on this page:

http://strategywiki.org/wiki/Warcraft_III:_Reign_of_Chaos/Night_Elf_strategies

and I noticed that there were a bunch of claims that are factually incorrect. For example, Archer + Hippogryph -> Hippogryph Rider is irreversible, Priests are a powerful defensive unit in any situation, Wardens do not exist until the expansion. However, I don't know enough about the game to evaluate the overall strategies and am unable to say whether they still work, or don't work at all. I made some notes for now, but am unable to proceed. Suggestions?VictorInThePacific (talk) 05:50, 1 February 2015 (UTC)


 * This is the nature of working on collaborative projects like a wiki. You have to make a decision on what you think is the best way to approach the problem.  Some things I do in this situation are:


 * 1) Play the game and try the suggestion to determine how factual it is and either ammend, remove, or improve upon it based on my findings,
 * 2) Contact the original author who wrote the strategy in the first place to get clarification.  Of course that's only useful if the author is still active and responding to comments,
 * 3) Conduct online research through Google or other video game information sites to see if you can find anything to backup or support the claims made on the page.
 * 4) Go to a forum that contains other experts on a game, reference the page in question, and ask them for their thoughts on the content.
 * As the current primary author of the guide, you are the resident WC3 expert, unless there are any other expert players on the site that we're not aware of. When you're uncertain whether to remove or update content on a page, the best fall-back plan is to raise the topic for discussion on the talk page, and simply wait to see if anyone responds.  The chances that they will are somewhat low, but it never hurts to try. Ultimately, if you are not knowledgeable on a subject, it is best to leave the content alone.   Pro  cyon  15:23, 1 February 2015 (UTC)

Thanks. Tally-ho!VictorInThePacific (talk) 03:25, 2 February 2015 (UTC)

Can I get some help uploading images, please? I have tried to follow the instructions, and I have to say that the existing instructions are written for experts, but not for beginners. Anyway, I spent a lot of time trying to figure out the instructions, and when I finally thought I had figured them out and attempted to upload an image, I got the following error message: Error creating thumbnail: Invalid thumbnail parameters Now, I am not sure whether the image did get uploaded or not. It really isn't clear, and the uploading instructions don't mention thumbnails. Also, how can I see whether my image got uploaded without scrolling through hundreds of pages and thousands of files? The image is a drawing I made (War3RoC Sylvanas-base.png). ThanksVictorInThePacific (talk) 04:15, 13 February 2015 (UTC)
 * It seems you did it right, but the server is having some trouble with it. I'll have to look into it. It could be because the image is too large, so would it be possible to upload a smaller size (this one is 4000x4000)? -- Prod (talk) 04:42, 13 February 2015 (UTC)


 * Please scale screenshots to something like ~1280x1024 - that is a typical War3 resolution and will be nice on the server. I recommend PNG files, and then upload them to tinypng.com, then re-download them and their file size will be smaller. And for the record I am a long-time Blizzard player (from the old SNES games, Warcraft 1-3 + TFT, WoW, Stacraft 1 & 2 + expansions, Diablo 1-3 + expansions). I've beaten the War3 campaign fully once, and I was working on the first part of the human campaign's guide here last time I picked it up. My favorite thing on war3 was the custom games, so I'm not pro at versus, but I understand the strategies enough to help you. -- 00:55, 14 February 2015 (UTC)


 * Here's what I do.:

-- 00:55, 14 February 2015 (UTC)
 * 1) First, I save the screenshot as a PNG. If it is too big, use a program like GIMP or Picassa to resize it.
 * 2) Upload it to tinypng to optimize it/lower the file size. Download the new file (if necessary, change the new file name to something like oldFileName_small.png)
 * 3) Go to http://strategywiki.org/wiki/Special:Upload
 * 4) Select Source: filename (the first circle button, it may already be selected).
 * 5) Click 'Choose File', in the pop-up find your file, then click Open. The upload page will now show the path/filename and maybe a thumbnail on the right.
 * 6) The destination filename should be something clear like 'War3RoC LevelName Map.png' (the name 'War3RoC Sylvanas-base.png' was fine, good job).
 * 7) In the summary, just put a link to the game, like Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos, and say it is a screenshot, then put the two necessary categories: and  . If it is a map, it is probably not a screenshot and viceaversa (unless it is a screenshot of an in-game map). Like-wise, the diagrams and maps categories are supposed to be exclusive from one another, but it's no big deal - pick the one you like.
 * 8) Click "Ignore any warnings" checkbox.
 * 9) Click "Upload file"
 * 10) If you lose track of your edits, please review your list of contributions, here (you can find the link to your contributions at the top right of StrategyWiki, on any page, if you are logged in): http://strategywiki.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/VictorInThePacific

Again, thanks for the information, although it will take me some time to process it. I will be continuing this discussion, but for now, just 2 points: VictorInThePacific (talk) 04:13, 14 February 2015 (UTC)
 * I know nothing at all about pvp play beyond what I have read, and I will never have any personal experience at that. Accordingly, you probably know a lot more than me about it, so would you mind having a look at the pvp strategy sections. For one thing, it seems to me that all of them are based on things that did not exist before TFT, and so would be more appropriate to be placed there. Or not, because most W3 players today probably use the expansion. I expect that this is probably a low priority.
 * I feel that there would be some value in having beginner's instructions for images. What do you think?

Worked like a charm. Thanks again. Now, how do you you feel about modifying the image upload instructions to include a section that would allow a trained monkey such as myself to do it right the first time? I would be prepared to work on that. Also, would it be possible to change the process to tell the monkey after the attempted upload either or something like that? :) VictorInThePacific (talk) 04:04, 16 February 2015 (UTC)
 * Amazing! You actually did it right. Beginner's luck!, or
 * Epic Fail! Can't you do anything right?
 * I'm not particularly in favor of altering the image upload text extensively at this time, as it seems to suffice for most people, and it's really just a question of doing it often enough until you become comfortable with the process. Expanding the text won't necessarily make uploading images easier, and could potentially confuse matters further.  The process itself is not overly complicated, we just have a lot of guidelines because we're a rather image-heavy wiki and we do our best to impose order on an otherwise chaotic issue.   Pro  cyon  02:33, 17 February 2015 (UTC)

I am about to make extensive additions to this page: http://strategywiki.org/wiki/Warcraft_III:_Reign_of_Chaos/Dissension However, even in its present form, I don't think it should be a stub. I think it needs an administrator to change that?VictorInThePacific (talk) 04:21, 21 February 2015 (UTC)
 * If you feel it doesn't need the stub tag anymore, feel free to remove it. -- Prod (talk) 05:09, 21 February 2015 (UTC)

I wasn't suggesting that you (plural) modify the instructions. Rather, I was thinking that I would do most of the work. I do feel that the instructions can be made a lot clearer for rank beginners. Of course, someone who has uploaded images a couple of times will not have any difficulty, but people who aren't familiar with the process might either do it wrong, which means you have to clean up after them, or they will just give up, in which case you would never know.

I claim that I can write something that you will think is better than the current version. This is one of my fields of expertise. I wouldn't make any changes to the website, but send you a pdf for consideration. If I did this, would you at least look at it, or would you reject it out of hand? VictorInThePacific (talk) 07:13, 22 February 2015 (UTC)


 * If the changes aren't too major, go ahead and update the page directly, no need to pdf anything. If you think there's a lot of changes needed, maybe make a page in your userspace and draft the new content.  You can then link people to the page for review. -- Prod (talk) 00:16, 26 February 2015 (UTC)
 * I agree with Prod. You can set up what you'd like to propose on a page like User:VictorInThePacific/Proposal, and let us know when you've finalized the design.   Pro  cyon  01:08, 26 February 2015 (UTC)


 * We have room for extensive instructions here: Guide/Images. I think it would be fine if we just put a small sentence saying, 'Need help uploading? Read here.' with a link. -- 22:03, 3 March 2015 (UTC)

Help! I uploaded 9 images today, but I made a bunch of syntax errors. The files did get uploaded. I omitted the  codes for some of them, and I may or may not have fixed that. I seem to have omitted the War3RoC before each of the filenames. How do I fix that? Thanks. Sorry.VictorInThePacific (talk) 04:52, 15 March 2015 (UTC)
 * They were also miscategorized, which is now fixed. -- Prod (talk) 05:08, 16 March 2015 (UTC)

More mistakes when uploading images. I uploaded 12 images today. I made a typo in the main category. Instead of Warcraft, I used WarCraft. I repeated that 8x until I caught the error. How do I fix that? I also made a typo in the filename for File:War3RoC NE2map-a.png. It should be File:War3RoC NE2-map-a.png or File:War3RoC NE2-map-a2.png. This is a replacement for the old file, which contains a content error. I tried "moving" the file to the correct name, but was not permitted to do so. I also tried "uploading a new version", but was not permitted to do so. Incidentally, the "upload multiple files" page (http://strategywiki.org/wiki/Special:UploadWizard) is not working. Sorry for the trouble.--VictorInThePacific (talk) 04:02, 23 March 2015 (UTC)


 * Go back to each image, click edit at the top to edit the description/categories. Fix the typo. -- 16:45, 23 March 2015 (UTC)

Template Editing Help
I was thinking of converting some of the other Pokémon guide pages over to use Pokemon trainer, but that template does not support any games other than Ruby, Sapphire, Emerald, FireRed, and LeafGreen. I tried to go and edit it, but the wikitext seems very complex and I don’t want to mess anything up. Does anyone have any ideas on how to accomplish this? Thanks! Wjk (talk) 21:06, 16 February 2015 (UTC)


 * State formally what you propose to change and we'll add it to the template. Which games would you like to add?  Don't say "all of them."  Specify which series you want to work on, and we'll add parameters for them one at a time.   Pro  cyon  02:33, 17 February 2015 (UTC)


 * Wjk, the best thing to do is use Pokemon trainer as a base for a new template. You are welcome to do sand box testing in your personal space until you come up with a good name for the new template. E.g. you can copy the template code to User:Wjk/Pokemon template and mess with it there. You can try and think of your template as a base for other pokemon games, too. For example, I can help you make a generic template that acts as the base for the others. What you need to supply are the variables between games, or gens. This allows us to customize each template (the ones to be used on the pages) to work for the specific cases of each game group/gen. Trying to make one template for all Pokemon games sounds absurd. We have enough trouble (as in, it takes a lot of time and effort) trying to make templates fit all versions of the same game. -- 01:00, 4 March 2015 (UTC)

Console categories - should they have Header Navs?
Ok, so this donned on me when I was looking at Category:Wii and Wii/Wii Channels. Yes, the second page is a sub-page of the category's redirect, so that in itself is an oddity. However, this is a scope related issue: -- 00:55, 4 March 2015 (UTC)
 * 1) First, the oddity: should we move Wii/Wii Channels to :Category:Wii/Wii Channels so it is an actual sub-page?
 * 2) Should we add Header Nav, in some form, to consoles so that consoles can have their own table of contents to include sub-pages and offer additional 'guides' for the console?
 * 3) If we have 'guide' content for consoles, should we explicitly exclude information about hacks and mods? I am a fan of hacks and mods, although I have never done them myself. I have played on a modified console before, and am hoping to try out Project M's mod of Smash Bros. Brawl some day (albeit that type of info could be included in a page for Project M or as a sub-page for Brawl). This brings up a general question - if we include GameShark codes and the like, memory leaks, etc. how is this any different? I don't think it is. Organizing it is another issue.
 * It _should_ be on the main Wii page, but that would get ridiculously long. It's not a category, so putting it in the category namespace wouldn't make sense.  I think that's kinda the discussion we had when this page was originally made.  However, some of our series pages have subpages, so maybe we should revisit the concept
 * Consoles don't really need guides. The Header Nav should only be on Games, so I feel it should be even removed from the GUIDE.
 * I'd rather we get rid of all non-official content, including hacks, mods, GameShark codes, etc.
 * -- Prod (talk) 05:04, 16 March 2015 (UTC)
 * Codes on-par with Gameshark are actually acceptable, per Lewis Galoob Toys, Inc. v. Nintendo of America, Inc., with the statement that using them amounts to just skipping pages in a book or fast forwarding - and no different than entering a cheat code on a more modern game. Also, some manufacturer's embraced some of them (e.g. Sega, who requested that it shouldn't work with games with a save feature.) Hacks and mods for modern consoles are different, usually intended to disrupt a multiplayer game rather than actually helping you progress through the story. Of course, it's impossible to avoid all non-official content.  For example, Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth becomes unplayable at one point without a third-party patch, and the developers aren't around to fix that game breaking bug.  --Sigma 7 (talk) 04:06, 17 March 2015 (UTC)
 * For the codes, it's not about legality, but about usefulness/completeness. Most of those devices provide all the codes you need, so listing it here is pointless.  And once you learn how they work, there's essentially an unlimited number of codes possible. But perhaps this should be a thread on its own. -- Prod (talk) 05:29, 17 March 2015 (UTC)

Character bar is missing from the edit screen
I'm using Whale, and I can't find the extra characters, like the arrows and degree symbol. Were they intentionally removed? Flufftailer (talk) 19:50, 21 March 2015 (UTC)
 * Unfortunately, when we updated to MediaWiki 1.24, it seems that something broke with our CharInsert gadget. I've tried to get it working again, but it may be broken until we update to 1.25 (which is a few months away). You have to enable it from the gadgets section of your preferences. All the relevant scripts should be visible to anyone (Special:Gadgets links to the relevant scripts) if someone has an idea why it isn't working. -- Prod (talk) 00:27, 22 March 2015 (UTC)

Malicious advert on site
For the past week or so, the site has been completely disabling my browser (and operating system, which forces me to turn my computer off and back on again); at first I had no idea why it was doing this, but when I saw "Waiting for cm.g.doubleclick.net ..." in the status bar when the system locked yesterday, I realized that one of its advert hosts must have become compromised around last week. As with the case of "vip_117[1].swf" a few months ago (but the Norton Antivirus protected me from that), I do not know what the advert in question is for as the system always locks before it actually loads - but it has become seriously annoying, especially when about to save a page (as I cannot always back up what I write in Notepad)! If anyone else has been suffering this problem, it is not the site itself that is compromised; it is the advert provider " cm.g.doubleclick.net ". Namcorules (talk) 17:00, 27 March 2015 (UTC)

Changing File Name
Quick question, how does one change a file name / request a file name get changed? I saw it at some point if you try to upload a similar image, but I can't find it and I don't think trying to upload the same image again to find the link is the best idea. It's incredibly minor, but if there's a way to fix it, I'd like to. Thanks! Shadow0144 (talk) 14:11, 31 March 2015 (UTC)


 * When you view the page for an image, there is a "Move" button at the top of the page. You should have permission to click it, and rename the image by moving it to the name that you would like it to have.  If there is a checkbox about leaving a redirect behind, please uncheck it, as we don't redirect image names.   Pro  cyon  14:26, 31 March 2015 (UTC)


 * Sorry, I'm not seeing a Move button anywhere.

http://strategywiki.org/wiki/File:#file, right? Shadow0144 (talk) 14:44, 31 March 2015 (UTC)
 * It's at the top of the page, alongside "edit", "history", "watch", and such. -- 14:59, 31 March 2015 (UTC)


 * I don't believe I have the required permission because the only buttons I see are File, Discussion,  View, Edit, History, and Unwatch. Shadow0144 (talk) 15:39, 31 March 2015 (UTC)
 * Ah, it seems you need to be autoconfirmed to be able to move pages. That happens automatically when you've made enough edits, and been a member for long enough (I think it's a week). -- 15:48, 31 March 2015 (UTC)


 * Oh, I see. I'll just wait for it to pop up then. It's a very minor thing anyway. Thanks! Shadow0144 (talk) 15:51, 31 March 2015 (UTC)