StrategyWiki:Staff lounge

__NEWSECTIONLINK__

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

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

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

Backward compatibility
Currently, there is a consideration to add all platforms that a game is playable on to its infobox. This includes platforms that offer backward compatibility (for example, all PS4 games can be purchased on the PS5's digital storefront, even though those games were not made for the PS5). The question then becomes how to handle this for platforms that offer limited backward compatibility (for example, the original DS and DS Lite models could play all GBA games, but this feature was discontinued with the DSi). Any thoughts? -- Wario Talk 19:01, 7 May 2021 (UTC)
 * I think we should cover this information, but with BC being inconsistent, we would need some kind of clarification. I think the easiest solution is a template like ps5 in the infobox, which links to the  section on the relevant system's page, which can go into how BC is supported on that system. The infobox could look something like this:
 * |systems=PlayStation 2,
 * A related question would be purpose-built backwards compatibility like Super Game Boy, which allows you to play GB games on SNES. I think it supports everything that Game Boy supports, but some games have "special features", like special borders and colour schemes. Would these count as supported systems, or BC? -- Prod (talk) 19:42, 7 May 2021 (UTC)
 * Still hoping to get more feedback on this one. -- Prod (talk) 00:22, 12 September 2021 (UTC)
 * Now with syslist, perhaps we can have bclist? -- Prod (talk) 23:06, 30 July 2022 (UTC)
 * I'm thinking the best course of action is probably having a  parameter in the infobox with a bcsyslist template. This way we can modify the layout in the future (either show it with the systems, or as a separate row), and we can have more unique categorization options for each system. -- Prod (talk) 02:41, 8 August 2022 (UTC)

Category:Guide-specific images
The term "images" is fairly limited, as we often store all kinds of files for some games. Including videos, text, and potentially even xml files. I've created Files to standardize the contents of the sub-categories, but I feel we should update the name at the same time. Should we switch to the term "Media" or "Files". For example: Perhaps even remove the "-specific" term and simplify to Category:Guide files. MediaWiki has both Media and File namespaces. -- Prod (talk) 20:03, 14 July 2022 (UTC)
 * Category:Diablo images -> Category:Diablo files or Category:Diablo media
 * Category:Guide-specific images -> Category:Guide-specific files or Category:Guide-specific media.
 * Files. Media generally both through mediawiki and also as a general statement generally implies audiovisual content while Files implies a broader range of all file types. I would move to Files by guide, personally, if not Guide files. It could be contrasted to a files by type or files by license organization, in a more consistent way. Trig - 06:20, 17 July 2022 (UTC)
 * Interesting idea. Base category would be Category:Files by guide, with the sub-category being Category:Diablo files. -- Prod (talk) 01:00, 18 July 2022 (UTC)
 * I'm in favor of losing "specific." Maybe it's just the way I've been using the site all these years, but what files do we host on this site other than images?  I haven't seen videos, text, or XML files uploaded to the site.  Perhaps I missed it?  Are there examples of such files?  How do we integrate anything other than images into guides?  I know for videos, people use the YouTube template.  I'm not clear on what problem this solves.   Pro  cyon  00:45, 18 July 2022 (UTC)
 * Special:MediaStatistics gives full details, but we also have text and xml files. I'm hoping in the future we can upload data files and have mw:Extension:External Data fill in templates with the data. -- Prod (talk) 00:56, 18 July 2022 (UTC)
 * I believe there are a few Mario and Luigi series videos on the site, and I have seen a good number of txt files both for the site as a whole and for supporting a few games. While I personally would prefer we steer away from txt and xml, I think there is a large case to make for video or even possibly audio files being uploaded to the site (video puzzle solutions, tough segments, audio cues, audio for musical challenges like zelda instruments or music games). Animated GIFs/animated files (apng rise up) as a whole is also a gray area of is it an image or what is it. It might not be the most pressing of issues, but I think it could be made a little more consistent with other forms of organization. Trig - 06:13, 18 July 2022 (UTC)
 * I've begun the switchover to sub-categories being like Category:Diablo files. I'm still not sure about Category:Files by guide vs Category:Guide files, but we can change that easily by updating Files.
 * Using File in the descriptions will automatically add it to the correct categories, and my bot will create/delete the file categories as things get migrated over. -- Prod (talk) 00:26, 10 August 2022 (UTC)

short review
Dear Staff lounge, how do I write a short review to post on Strategy, I need step by step instructions from the Main page, hope you can help as I'm new to this thanks Robert.
 * Responded on Rabtherave's user talk page, but in short, we don't offer video game reviews on this site.  Pro cyon  17:50, 20 July 2022 (UTC)

This category should be split up into more specific categories. At least the following: Any others? -- Prod (talk) 17:29, 28 July 2022 (UTC)
 * Local multiplayer
 * Local co-op
 * Local splitscreen multiplayer
 * Local hotseat multiplayer
 * Online multiplayer
 * Online co-op
 * MMO
 * Local splitscreen co-op, and maybe instead of "multiplayer" it should be "versus" or "PVP". Also it would be good to have a modelist template. -BrownDerby (talk) 19:21, 28 July 2022 (UTC)
 * I'm still a bit concerned about the "co-op" term at all. It's really useful to know which games have a co-op mode, but a game has to have multiplayer in some form to allow it, so I'm not sure it exactly fits in with all the other options. Perhaps it should only be a single option that says "yes there is some form of multiplayer co-op".
 * Single player
 * Email multiplayer (Civilization)
 * Multiplayer (Contra)
 * Hot-seat multiplayer (Super Mario World)
 * Split-screen multiplayer (GoldenEye 007)
 * Online multiplayer
 * Massively multiplayer online
 * Co-op
 * -- Prod (talk) 20:24, 28 July 2022 (UTC)
 * Going by this list, it looks like the "coop" designation is orthogonal to the rest. Coop describes the relationship between players, while the rest are how two players share the experience.--Henke37 (talk) 08:12, 11 August 2022 (UTC)

Delete all
As the various rd based templates are disappearing, nothing will be categorized by the days of the year. It makes sense to delete all the day sub-categories like. This leaves the redirects, like January 1. Simplest would be to delink and delete them all. Does anyone see any potential uses for these pages otherwise? -- Prod (talk) 00:09, 10 August 2022 (UTC)
 * Honestly no, these categories rarely helped unless someone wanted to know what games were released on their birthday. I did wonder if a month/year category would be interesting, but probably only for people who religiously chronogame like I do, and I have other sources for that information.  I say let 'em go.   Pro  cyon  01:07, 11 August 2022 (UTC)