StrategyWiki:Staff lounge/2007/March

Policy Question
Is it against policy/rules to post a link on your userpage to something beneficial to you; i.e. a game like outwars, or your own personal website? --Notmyhandle 19:53, 1 March 2007 (CST)
 * If we're following wikipedia policy, as long as you don't break any laws, do whatever you want in your userspace. -- Prod (Talk) 19:56, 1 March 2007 (CST)
 * Yeah, I've been encouraging Snesmaster not to advertise his websites everywhere but his userpage, where I told him that was encouraged. So have at it.  Procyon 20:24, 1 March 2007 (CST)

Boxart Question
I was wondering, what is the general concensus on boxart images here? I've seen some of the boxart, such as that for Final Fantasy XII, and the image... looks a little weird (which I commented on the pages talk page), and at some point or other I'm going to upload a better image for it, but what about PAL covers? Do you include those too, as there is a large portion of PAL gamers and games out here, and some of the PAL covers are more aesthetically pleasing than some of the NTSC or Japanese covers. It's a minor point, but I've discovered from my time at Wikipedia that edit wars have started over less :-P


 * See Hyper Street Fighter II and Namco Museum Battle Collection for examples on how to handle that. Procyon 08:09, 2 March 2007 (CST)


 * I have FFXII that I lent to soemone, I may be able to get a better shot of it when I get it back, although I'd like to see the PAL art. -- Mason11987 (Talk - Contributions) 09:41, 2 March 2007 (CST)


 * Why not have animated .GIF files for the boxart that rotate through the different versions? I agree that (in the case of Final Fantasy games especially) alternative PAL artwork often looks much better.LeftHandedGuitarist 12:38, 2 March 2007 (CST)


 * Absolutely not. Animated GIFs should be used sparingly, and only for sprites, or complicated maneuvers that aren't easily explained.  Any of the box arts can be featured as the "primary" art in the infobox.  The remaining images should be included in a gallery on the front page.  Procyon 13:37, 2 March 2007 (CST)


 * I agree with Procyon. Animated GIFs are just a bit over the top for something that mundane.  A gallery is a little more clean and presentable.-- Duke  Ruckley  15:04, 2 March 2007 (CST)
 * I think the game with the most boxarts currently is Capcom vs. SNK 2. --Notmyhandle 18:54, 2 March 2007 (CST)
 * Er... have you looked at Pac-Man??? ^_^;  Procyon 19:27, 2 March 2007 (CST)
 * O_O I'm speechless... Wow. --Notmyhandle 19:33, 2 March 2007 (CST)
 * Golden Axe seems to be catching up! -- Prod (Talk) 23:18, 2 March 2007 (CST)
 * Hey, that's not fair :( I didn't include all of the compilation games that Pac-Man was included in on his page (like all of the Namco museums).  If I did, it would get ridiculous. Procyon 09:28, 3 March 2007 (CST)


 * Anyways, the PAL boxart pretty much boils down to this, 'cept it has the usual 'playstation 2' and stuff on it. I think it looks a lot cooler, and is in line with most of the other Final Fantasy title covers, it keeps a bit of a consistancy in the series, but that's just my opinion.--Froglet 03:17, 3 March 2007 (CST)

Userbox
I've got a way to make our userboxes into Wikipedia style see here, can someone with a little more experience help me put this into a template please--Rocky   ( Talk Contributions ) 08:26, 4 March 2007 (CST)
 * Sure thing, how does Template:Userbox sound?; by the way, don't be so impatient - most of us are in different time zones, we don't get paid for this and we are busy with other stuff all the time so just wait for a response next time (like you messaging Proc). --Notmyhandle 16:50, 5 March 2007 (CST)
 * Hey will you look at that, it already exists! --Notmyhandle 16:50, 5 March 2007 (CST)
 * Check out Wpuserbox. --Ryan SchmidtTalk - Contribs 17:15, 5 March 2007 (CST)

Sorry, I didn't mean to come across as impatient but thanks anyway--Rocky   ( Talk Contributions ) 00:53, 6 March 2007 (CST)

Expansion Games, addons, not separate
For games like Diablo II and Diablo II: Lord of Destruction, the game is simply modified; much like WoW and the Burning Crusade and Everquest with all of its expansions (I think).

The game is however, isolated from its expansion pack, so LoD players can play with D2 players on Bnet. The problem though is redundancy, since Diablo II/Act I will be the same for Diablo II: Lord of Destruction with minor changes related to the various advantages included in LoD. So, should the Diablo II/Act I page be modified to include the expansion pack like Garrett did with that one game with the Raven... Gothic II? Or should two separate pages exist? --Notmyhandle (talk • contribs) 22:51, 7 March 2007 (CST)
 * Diablo II/Act 1 should be modified to include LoD stuff, and then the appropriate LoD page should be redirected to it (or linked in some other way — perhaps through transclusion). --DrBob (Talk) 01:21, 8 March 2007 (CST)
 * The method I used for Gothic II: Night of the Raven would be the easiest; transclusion allows Header Nav to still link to the expansion itself (with the parent method, all pages but the first instead link back to the original game), but the problem is you have to create transcluded versions of every page. Using sidebars like I did for Gothic II/Chapter 1: The Menace could work well, depending on how much new content is to be covered on the page (Gothic II has a lot, so it gets a bit messy). The advantage of using an image header rather than text is it's immediately identifiable and you don't have to keep putting "LoD changes" or whatever in the sidebar. GarrettTalk 01:40, 8 March 2007 (CST)

Something funky going on here...
Have a look at Move Lists/Capcom/CVS2. I'm not sure about the rest of you, but what I see is at some point, in the middle of M.Bison's move list, the templates just seem to stop working. If I take one of the characters whose list occurs below M.Bison's, and move them up above Ken's, it appears fine, and Kyosuke's move list messes up instead. It's making me think that there's some hard-limit on template usage per page. Is that the case? Will that page need to be broken up in order to appear properly? Or is there some other way to fix the cause of this problem? Thanks everyone. Procyon 12:21, 13 March 2007 (CDT)
 * Check the source, it says "WARNING: template omitted, pre-expand include size too large". -- Prod (Talk) 12:48, 13 March 2007 (CDT)
 * I think the answer is to transclude the documentation for cade from a sub-page of the template, so that the size of cade is kept down. That's what MediaWiki's complaining about. --DrBob (Talk) 13:07, 13 March 2007 (CDT)
 * Seems to be fixed now. -- Prod (Talk) 13:34, 13 March 2007 (CDT)
 * Wow, awesome job guys, thanks so much. Procyon 14:10, 13 March 2007 (CDT)
 * I suppose this could potentially be a problem on all of Blendmaster's templates where he laid out examples for users, although the likelihood that any page will exhibit the same problem as CvS2 is extraordinarily small. I just wanted to bring up the possibility, but I suppose it's best to deal with it on a case by case basis.  Procyon 14:13, 13 March 2007 (CDT)

PAL vs. NTSC
Okey dokey, I wanted to start the guide for a game called Another Code: Two Memories, so I looked it up on Wikipedia and found that in America it's called Trace Memory - which do we go with? Personally I think that Another Code sounds better, but I'm horrifically biased because I've got the European copy of the game. Another mind-bending consideration is that the European title is the literal translation of the Japanese, and I see that there's a discussion about this issue on wikipedia. -Froglet 04:14, 27 March 2007 (CDT)
 * Okay, I've just started the page, see what I'm doing here (I'm sure somebody out there will be happy that I even added redirects, boxart and categories, I really am getting better at this :-P)--Froglet 07:26, 27 March 2007 (CDT)
 * Nice job Froglet. Yeah, it really doesn't matter too much which name the guide is presented under, as long as the redirects exist, and that the redirects are given the proper categories as well so that players who are looking up all of the DS games that we have guides for, can find the title that they know the game by.  Which title actually hosts the guide isn't as important as users being able to find it.  Procyon 09:13, 27 March 2007 (CDT)

I agree with Procyon that it doesn't really matter all that much, but unfortunately (as you can see with the Wikipedia article), other people do care. There will probably be a case in the future where this becomes a problem, and I feel that it might be a good idea to set up some sort of policy now. I'm of the view that a game should be called by whatever the more common name is, when there is a dispute. In the case of Dark Cloud 2 from the wikipedia article, it is currently called Dark Cloud 2 because it is more commonly known as that between English speaking users (Americans and Europeans). I'd be interested in hearing others' thoughts on this, as it is actually a very important policy that we should set up before it becomes a rather large problem. As for Another Code: Two Memories... You've done a great job with it, so I don't think there should be any problems at least for a while.-- Duke Ruckley  09:21, 27 March 2007 (CDT)
 * The official (unwritten?) policy is to name by official name of the game (bad grammar and all). If there is more than one official name, the most commonly known name is to be used (google war?).  With games where those are almost equal, flip a coin! (I don't think it really matters, as long as the redirect has categories).  -- Prod (Talk) 09:49, 27 March 2007 (CDT)
 * And I'd rather not see SW sink to that level of bureaucracy if it can be avoided. I think it comes down to who ever is motivated to start the guide first.  If a European wants to start a guide for a game whose name happens to be different in America, then so be it.  As long as the categorized redirects are in place, all we're talking about is a bunch of letters that go in front of a backslash.  I think it becomes more important to wikipedians because there is generally only one page per entry, so people have a greater stake in the name that gets chosen as the most prominent. Procyon 09:59, 27 March 2007 (CDT)
 * Agreed with Procyon. Unless one name is much more commonly used (globally) than the other, the one which is used should be the one chosen by the original guide author. --DrBob (Talk) 10:54, 27 March 2007 (CDT)
 * Fair enough. Keep in mind though, that as StrategyWiki gets larger and larger, we'll be forced to become more and more bureaucratic unless we make these discussions policy.  If it becomes policy that the original author chooses which name to use, then it'll be easier to work out any problems that arise down the road.-- Duke  Ruckley  15:07, 27 March 2007 (CDT)
 * I put what I got was the consensus of this discussion into the naming policy. Please revise it if it is incorrect or in need of revision. --Ryan SchmidtTalk - Contribs 20:18, 27 March 2007 (CDT)