StrategyWiki talk:Community Portal

This talk page is for discussion of general community issues. To start a new thread, insert a new subheading above the rest. ''Resolved threads removed one day thereafter. You can find them in the history.''

Discussion archives:
 * Issue 1 - Early SW issues.
 * Issue 2 - Wikibooks, Google Adsense
 * Issue 3 - Discussions from Feb/Mar. Read if you're new! Good stuff!

Spoilers?
How far are we going to go to protect people from spoilers? I'm asking because of the confusing vagueness that's been injected into the Resident Evil 4 Chapter 2-1 boss fight - it reads badly, in my opinion, to be that deliberately vague to protect someone from discovering something they've already encountered in-game. As I mentioned on that article's Talk page, I think that when you're reading a walkthrough it's reasonable to expect some of the events to be given away - that's part of the reason you're reading it after all. Otherwise, we might as well totally remove every in-game event from context with a bullet-point list of "go here; rotate this; go here; shoot" and so forth, to prevent anyone from learning anything about the plot before they play it. The reason we've resorted to multi-page guides, apart from the better formatting and loading times it offers, is that people can read only the bit the're interested in, without going too far ahead in the plot. Why should we sanitize the actual walkthrough itself beyond that division? --aniki21 08:07, 24 January 2006 (PST)
 * I'm a bit confused, as I haven't played this game before. Does it reveal information that would be a spoiler? As you can see in the Zelda: Ocarina of Time guide that I'm working on, there are quite a few "spoilers"--see this for an example. I believe if someone reads through the guide with as they would a strategy guide that they buy in stores, that they won't have a problem with spoilers. Sure, our guides will reveal things, but only after they have occurred in the game. Sometimes it is not required for us to do so, but often it is necessary. That's my opinion, anyway. We can always judge on a per-game basis. Should we make policy concerning this? --Echelon 19:24, 27 January 2006 (PST)


 * I love the format that theforce.net took with spoilers for the Star Wars movies. You would need to highlight sections of the text to have it appear. Just looking at the page which had a white background would have the "bad stuff" contained in white characters. Highlighting it would make the text appear. A great effective way of hiding information but having it still be accessible without needing to go to a different page. --Mpython 5:36, April 21, 2006


 * While that works, I don't know that it is ideal, it needs to be really obvious to the reader that something is hidden. Also, those replaying the game don't likely care about spoilers so it's maybe not the best idea to force spoiler selection every single time. I like the idea behind Wikipedia's Dynamic navigation box template], with that it's obvious that something is hidden. GarrettTalk 15:23, 21 April 2006 (PDT)

Weekly/Monthly SQL dumps
I'd like to do SQL dumps of StrategyWiki every so often so that we ensure that the content of this wiki lives on regardless of anything that happens. With anyone able to freely download the wiki's database, I feel that we would be fully living up to the GFDL. Do you guys agree with this?

Secondly, if we do plan to offer downloads of the database we'll have to figure out the logistics of how to do so. For security reasons, we'll need to make sure tables such as the ones for users and sessions are not included--we don't want password hashes falling into the wrong hands. In addition, offering the downloads may prove to be a large bandwidth problem if many people decide to download it--this may be a false dilemma, but I'd prefer to plan for that scenario now rather than later. What if we only offered the database downloads to the top contributors of this site to oversee and do it in a rotating manner?

In addition to the database, we'll have to do the same for images.

What are your thoughts to all of this? Is it even necessary? --Echelon 21:06, 20 January 2006 (PST)


 * I'd love to see this.
 * Brainscatter 15:30, 9 February 2006 (PST)
 * Sounds like a good idea, and that top contributors part is definitely good. <("<) Alex (>")>
 * I would also love to see this, I would download the database when i could. Woofcat


 * I'm going to start providing these now that StrategyWiki has gotten some press. If you have any suggestions on how I should do that, leave me a note. --echelon talk 17:39, 21 April 2006 (PDT)
 * Why not offer it in a bit-torrent to save on bandwith costs? --Naz Drala talk 06:14, 26 April 2006 (EST)
 * That's definitely the most cost-effective method. However whoever's got the original will need to have theirs sharing nearly 24/7 to ensure it's always available. GarrettTalk 16:47, 26 April 2006 (PDT)

Art/Screenshot of the Week
Feel free to suggest. Upload all of your candidates and post them on the talk page for Main_Page. --Echelon 02:47, 8 January 2006 (PST)

Is there an easy way of taking screenshots of games on a gamecube? If so, how?


 * Well, either a TV capture card or a GameCube emulator. The one costs money and the other's buggy, so take your pick. GarrettTalk 14:30, 22 April 2006 (PDT)

Licencing: CC-BY-SA instead of GFDL?
Hi,

May I inquire what was the reason to go with the GFDL as a licence instead of a Creative Commons licence such as cc-by-sa?

Thanks, Nyenyec 15:17, 21 April 2006 (PDT)


 * Well the biggest advantage is that content from other wiki sites (Wikibooks, [Gameinfo], etc.) can be copied here because we all share the same license. However I wasn't here at the time of the decision so the reasoning may be more complex for all I know. GarrettTalk 17:11, 21 April 2006 (PDT)


 * GFDL is Wikipedia-compatible, and that was a huge factor. We wanted to remain compatible with the largest collection of open content game information, guides, etc. We want to promote a working relationship between the projects.
 * Initially I almost considered something of a proprietary dual license that I termed a "community license"--we would place the content under the GFDL and also give the StrategyWiki organization--which isn't even an entity yet--full rights to all submissions. That was intended so that we would have the option of changing to any new or better open media license of the community's choosing in the future without being locked into GFDL exclusively. Basically, all content would still be licensed under the GFDL, but there would also be the option of choosing another license later by community vote. I scrapped that idea because it was too complicated, and I feared it would make users apprehensive.
 * If and when we gain traction, however, we may be able to ask the community what they think of a relicense or dual license, or even this "community license" that I just talked about. Of course if we decide to do this, the application of it would NOT be retroactive unless we can find the permission of those authors who have submitted work. I would be fine with having all of my work relicensed, and several other StrategyWikians might as well. Others may not, however. Or we may not be able to find them all. Anything we couldn't relicense could be either tagged or rewritten.
 * We are in an early enough stage to shake things up, but we'd have to have a community consensus. After this Digg thing, I'd like to see what happens to the community. Will it grow stronger? Will we gain more help? Once I have a fuller view of this, we'll probably put this and other issues up for debate. --echelon talk 17:27, 21 April 2006 (PDT)

Sidebars
I think that a prudently limited variety of sidebars could be useful in adding to the readability of StrategyWiki. I've added a trial page to display and discuss them. Template::Sidebar2 is based on a design by Mr Wallet, and I thought that it looked pretty cool. --echelon talk 19:44, 21 April 2006 (PDT)
 * What you have there looks really good, and I agree that we need to fix the readability of SW insome articles. Both designs look very nice and pretty much do exactly what the descriptions say. Cosmo 08:54, 27 April 2006 (PDT)

Wikibooks bans game guides!
Check out this Staff Lounge posting. After much debate and indecision, the final decision has been made. I've put us forward as a potential new host (and, really, it's only between us or the less-shiny Gameinfo). This may be just the kick-start StrategyWiki needs, but it is a LOT of content to suddenly acquire. Thoughts? GarrettTalk 03:53, 22 April 2006 (PDT)


 * Wow! Seriously wow! This is probably the best shot we've gotten so far in gaining support. We really absolutely need to use this to our advantage. It must be stressed that our wiki is already geared towards game guides and that would be a more natural home for Wikibook's guides than Wikia's Gameinfo. We have a much more polished presentation and are 100% tailored to guides. Not only do we stand the chance to gain a lot of new content in this, but we also stand the chance to gain a lot of new supporters! This is so excellent! --echelon talk 04:22, 22 April 2006 (PDT)
 * Thanks to this move, I showed up :). I'm hoping to help in that transition (I did quite a bit to SM64 and Super Mario world as well as the FFVII guides there :). Mason11987 17:46, 24 April 2006 (PDT)


 * After checking this out, I wonder what would be the best way to handle this. We could simply copy and paste the pages over, but then we lose the page histories. It was also suggested to do a database dump then combine it with the StrategyWiki database. That wouldn't break anything, would it? Are there tools to do that elegantly? What other pros and cons can you think of, and which would be the best route in your opinion? --echelon talk 04:35, 22 April 2006 (PDT)


 * Merging the databases shouldn't cause any problems, but having said that I've never seen it done. The slower but safer way would be manual and thus more controlled uploading via Special:Import. You can see what the imported histories and their users will look like on this history page and also Special:Contributions/Everlong. Not only does the username link instead to the contributions (just like for an anon IP), the contributions page doesn't even offer a link to the userpage, further emphasising that the user isn't actually here. However Wikibooks has currently disabled history exporting which means you can't just use their Special:Export to get the dumps.
 * I think the only real problem with merging databases is knowing what page is part of what book. Not all guides use the subpage convention yet so are spread all over everywhere. In some ways I wonder if a better way would be to compose a master list of all guide pages and then assign them to users, who would then sift through their copies of the latest dump and find them.
 * This would all be SO much easier if Wikibooks allowed history exporting. Hm. Maybe it could be temporarily turned back on for the period in which this move is to take place... I'm not saying a full merge doesn't make sense, but it basically means you alone are sifting through thousands of pages to pick out the game guides. GarrettTalk 05:17, 22 April 2006 (PDT)

How to transfer
Well, as I've said on IRC the Wikibooks tech guys have refused to re-enable history exporting. However today I found MWDumper, a simple command-line tool that (among other functions) can extract pages from an XML dump based on a filter list. It should be easy to make a full list of pages and then let it crawl through the database dump over lunch or something. After some tinkering it works perfectly. The only slight shortcoming is that the filter file is case sensitive, so it skips anything that has an incorrect capital. GarrettTalk 04:09, 23 April 2006 (PDT)

OK, check out Wikibooks Import List. This is a list I'm gradually compiling in a format MWDumper can understand. Images will have to be handled manually. GarrettTalk 04:49, 23 April 2006 (PDT)


 * I see that you are importing the San Andreas Wikibook here. So far I think I have moved about 70% of the material to Strategy Wiki. I know that it's quite important to have the histories of each page but I have edited each page as I moved it (added the bottom navigation, editing spelling/typos and sometimes changed formatting). This would take a long time to get all the pages back to the standard they are now. Is there anyway to just move the history of each page and keep the edited page intact?


 * I also see that you have copied the first page of the San Andreas guide from Wikibooks and inserted it instead of the previous front page with the reason "moving related sites down, our own content takes priority". Just wondering what that meant because the first page was only our content and had an info box and proper naivgation? Jackhynes 13:48, 23 April 2006 (PDT)


 * That message was because I imported the San Andreas page as a test, forgetting we already had it! Because my edit over there was slightly newer it took precedence. Importing doesn't overwrite anything though. Any time a Wikibooks edit is newer it's easy to open the history and revert to a revision there (as I've just done, now you've pointed that out). GarrettTalk 14:15, 23 April 2006 (PDT)


 * Cheers Garett, that was just what I wanted to here - now I hope all the pages are older! Else I'm gonna have a lot of checking the newer edits then reverting! Jackhynes 14:29, 23 April 2006 (PDT)

Merge system pages?
Right now we've got, for instance, Xbox 360 and Category:Xbox 360. If they were merged it would make a lot more sense, as you wouldn't be going back and forth between the two, and it would also promote the page being less like a Wikipedia article and more like an intro into that system's guides. Thoughts? GarrettTalk 23:54, 23 April 2006 (PDT)


 * Now that MediaWiki:BlueCloud.css is enabled, we can make the expanding category we discussed in IRC a possibility. Would that require any additional modifications to the hard copy of the theme's css, though? --echelon talk 23:41, 24 April 2006 (PDT)

Screenshots
What is the situation on screenshots. For one reason or another I know wikipedia doesn't like having a lot of screens in a page, but I think having plenty (although not a huge amount) of images in a guide is extremly useful. Is there some legal restriction which caused wikipedia's stance which is related to the GNU FDL license that you share with them? Or is it a site-specific decision?

I'm just wondering because I recently saw about a dozen (small) GTA images uploaded which will be used on a guide I presume, and I was thinking that I might want to break out my Super Mario World and throw in screenshots for the tricky parts of the game, and that's just one example. Since FFVII will probably be imported I won't be able to do a lot with it (although I did have several edits to it at wikibooks :)), but there are a bunch of other games I already saw that I could add to. And maybe I can help you guys structure the site a little better?  I've had experience on a SporeWiki.com where I am a Bureaucrat, and when I first arrived there I completly revamped the organization scheme, so I think I can helpful in that as well.  But I'm particularly interested on your ideas on screenshots, so let me know. Mason11987 17:55, 24 April 2006 (PDT)


 * Wikipedia's screenshot restriction was centered around the very touchy concept of "fair" use for educational purposes. A strategy guide is generally considered stronger fair use than an encyclopedia as the whole work is basically showing how cool the game in question is. As long as the screenshots have a clear purpose and aren't just to look pretty it should be fine. Anyway it's good to have others with experience around. Besides, I don't see any company complaining against fansites hosting quadrillions of images... :) GarrettTalk 19:53, 24 April 2006 (PDT)


 * Awesome, thanks for clearing that up :). Mason11987 12:27, 25 April 2006 (PDT)


 * I'd definitely think that as long as the screenshot is relevant, and you don't overdo it, it'll fall under Fair Use. Hell, people have even done video walkthroughs - those're what, 24 screenshots per second? --aniki21 03:14, 27 April 2006 (PDT)

Diff reader
I assume this is just for the default style (at least I hope so), but the "diff" reader is really hard to make out. Could there be some kind of highlighting scheme for that? Like wikipedia now has? It'd seem like something that was just missed by whoever made this style, and it would be extremly useful to have, thanks Mason11987 17:56, 24 April 2006 (PDT)


 * Yeah, that's a slight flaw in the skin. Until a MediaWiki: page is assigned to it it isn't easily fixed. I told echelon about that so I assume he's going to get that done at some point. And then it should be easy to work out how Wikipedia does it and just re-shade it blue or something. GarrettTalk 20:00, 24 April 2006 (PDT)


 * MediaWiki:BlueCloud.css is now imported by the default theme. --echelon talk 23:38, 24 April 2006 (PDT)
 * Nice, thanks, different styles are cool, but I like having something I'm more used to as an option :). Mason11987 12:27, 25 April 2006 (PDT)


 * Fixed the diff viewer. It was missing from the css file completely--what a huge feature to go without! --echelon talk 23:47, 24 April 2006 (PDT)


 * Haha, Awesome, thanks again, much easier this way, that's being responsive.


 * Great. You should do the same for JS; that would allow easy addition of tweaks like that show-hide template. However the redlinks are now... red, rather than the previous purplish tone. Is this deliberate? GarrettTalk 23:51, 24 April 2006 (PDT)


 * Those would be a huge plus to have for a strat guide. Mason11987 12:27, 25 April 2006 (PDT)


 * Is the javascript now working properly? I imagine we can introduce all kinds of useful scripts into the guides. We're not just limited to the show-hide template. The same now goes for CSS classes. --echelon talk 13:42, 25 April 2006 (PDT)

The Photoshop Wiki
haha, I love making new sections...

It appears that when I set my style to Monobook to try to get over that issue mentioned above I get an image that makes me believe I am on the photoshop wiki...this is quite ood.

http://strategywiki.net/w/skins/MonoBook/Header.jpg

That's what I see. Another thing to note. And if there is a more appropriate place for me to list things like this then Community issues, let me know. Mason11987 18:00, 24 April 2006 (PDT)


 * Heh, yeah, I already pointed that out on IRC. :) I think echelon uploaded it by accident, or something. GarrettTalk 19:57, 24 April 2006 (PDT)


 * Total accident!! --echelon talk 23:18, 24 April 2006 (PDT)


 * Fixed. :) --echelon talk 23:41, 24 April 2006 (PDT)


 * Perfect, tsk tsk for style "borrowing" lol. Just playing.  Thanks for the fix. Mason11987 12:27, 25 April 2006 (PDT)


 * Actually, the person who did both the designs is a good friend of mine. He just never got around to launching the other wiki, which was going to be his project. --echelon talk 13:38, 25 April 2006 (PDT)

Proposition
I propose that all of the Game System, Game Genre, and Game Company categories contain ONLY games that fall within those categories, but they may also contain subcategories, such as Companies withing console categories, although that may or may not be a good idea. that would basically mean that then Xbox Article would not be in Category:Xbox. Where would it be you ask? It should be the category itself, it should have some text about the console, but not a large amount (people don't come to a game guide wiki to hear about when a console was made after all. A "for more information" link could be in the category page itself that links to it's wikipedia page.  This way we don't end up getting "Hardware", or "Specs" or "Xbox Live" articles within the Xbox categories (and similar analogies to other categories) when it really should just be a listing of game guides.

Furthur more, although this may be more extreme. I think that there should be no article in the main namespace that is not a game guide besides the Main Page. Everything about Strategywiki should be in the StrategyWiki namespace, and anything else should just be small amounts of text describing categories.

I think this would allow the wiki to even moreso focus on what it needs to do and I personally would have no problem doing a bunch of the manual moving (and redirecting of articles like Xbox to articles like Category:Xbox). It just seems odd that there is a list of 20 games for guides, then an "Xbox" article.

This may be not worth the effort, but I think it would really be beneficial for the site, but then again, I've only been here a very short time, so maybe this has been talked about and I have no idea. If so, let me know ;) -- Mason11987 (Talk - Contributions) 12:57, 25 April 2006 (PDT)


 * As an example, I turned articles like Microsoft, into Category:Microsoft System, and put all of M$ systems inside of that category, that way you can see info on microsoft, but the major purpose is to get you to the game you are looking for. It's not about M$, but about the fact that they make systems, that have games, that have guides, that peopel are looking for.  If I went to far with this, let me know, I can undo it without too much effort.  If you like the idea, then we can change things like Xbox into Category:Xbox the same way. -- Mason11987 (Talk - Contributions) 13:20, 25 April 2006 (PDT)
 * A good plan, but isn't the "System" part a little obselete (i.e. use simply Category:Microsoft)? GarrettTalk 13:46, 25 April 2006 (PDT)
 * Actually, that is a much better idea, and I will change whatever hasn't been. -- Mason11987 (Talk - Contributions) 15:55, 25 April 2006 (PDT)

Comments from a Wikibooks User
Your flagship page, Zelda: Ocarina of Time, has a few formatting issues-I would make the introductory page the table of contents, or perhaps combine it with your little intro page, as it is you have to scroll back up to the top to navigate anywhere, same thing applies to the walkthrough, forcing them to navigate to a new page is kind of annoying.

I've worked on the FF6, Chrono Trigger, FF7, and Quest for Glory wikibooks, the first three are fairly complete content-wise but could use some more media and tables to flesh them out.

If the Wikibooks are going to be exiled here, we'll have to see what we can do. The advantage wikibooks had was that it's a sister project to wikipedia and a natural place to look for more detailed information or for people wanting to add to the general body of knowledge. At the moment, your website is the second google hit for strategy wiki, behind an encyclopedia entry for the site itself. If you want to attract people you'll need a lot more content, particularly on recent games, and attract people willing to contribute over the wiki format.

It'll probably take some advertisement and cross-polination across all the other sources for game guides to try to promote this format. The best thing you could do would be to tie it in to Wikipedia directly to redirect people looking for more info, but that may not be likely.--BigCow 13:53, 25 April 2006 (PDT)


 * So you're suggesting Template:All Game Nav be repeated at the bottom? That's a good idea (although it will need some formatting changes, or possibly even a separate closing template). As for advertisement, once the Wikibooks content is in full lockdown both its pages and Wikipedia's will be changed to link to mirror(s). Right now this is the only wiki I'm aware of that's intending to fork the content (barring complete forks like Wikibooks.net, which will likely purge their copies at some point anyway) which means we'll get all the incoming Wikipedia attention. The only downside is we don't get a pretty sidebox in the external links section. GarrettTalk 16:38, 25 April 2006 (PDT)


 * Not only that, but the idea of an intro page to get to your content is an annoying one. The introduction pages for the guides themselves and the walkthrough pages don't really serve a purpose, and should just be merged with the table of contents so they can navigate whereever they want after clicking a guide.--BigCow 09:47, 26 April 2006 (PDT)


 * Less clicks are always better. -- Mason11987 (Talk - Contributions) 11:46, 26 April 2006 (PDT)


 * The idea of the cover page was that it was more like a print strategy guide, but yeah I guess it's mostly for looks and not usefulness... still, this is a major enough change it will need a vote or something, or at least some more feedback from others. GarrettTalk 16:14, 26 April 2006 (PDT)
 * A page in a strategy guide is very different than a page on the web. A chapter in a strategy guide could be a single web page, since a web page can span multiple pages of text and images. Your walkthrough pages actually do a good job with this, but you don't need an intro page before you see the actual content, you should scroll down to see the table of contents rather than clicking through it.


 * I'd be up for putting it to a vote or getting some more feedback, particularly since you want to use this book as the standard.--BigCow 17:53, 26 April 2006 (PDT)

Input needed
Input needed in three places: Category talk:Nintendo DS, Category talk:Game Boy Advance, and Category talk:Game Boy. -- Mason11987 (Talk - Contributions) 17:02, 25 April 2006 (PDT)

Categorization
As can be seen by anyone who is watching the RC, I am a fan of categorization. I think it would be best if we had 3 root categories for the actual content here which will be interconnected. Category:Game System, Category:Game Genre, and Category:Game Company. They'll be connected because some game companies will make game systems (and therefore the game system will also be a subcategory of the game company who makes it [NES is a subcat of nintendo for example]). Now, we also have a lot of uncategorized categories like VTech or Commodore (and yes, I do realize they will almost never be used) which are "console makers". I'd like to categorize them, as well as the nintendo, sega, sony, M$, and other console makers into some category which would encompass all game system makers. I don't know what to call it though, so I thought I'd throw it out there. Console makers isn't really applicable because I want people who only made handhelds to be on there too, maybe "system makers" but that sounds retarded. So what are your thoughts? -- Mason11987 (Talk - Contributions) 10:43, 27 April 2006 (PDT)