StrategyWiki talk:Community Portal

This page is for discussion of general community issues. To start a new thread click here. Resolved threads are gradually archived; see the archives box below.

Key Issues:
 * License
 * Articles to delete
 * Others to be added...

Notes for Echelon
In clearing some of the older discussions, I found a few things that I forgot to implement. I'm listing them here so I won't forget again.


 * 1) SVG uploading support
 * 2) Investigate and implement Open Source FLV uploads and Open Source panoramic screenshots by the end of the summer.

--echelon  19:28, 20 June 2006 (PDT)

Intro Pages
Since consensus has been reached, I think this should be put into action and be made official in some way. And I have already done the Z:OoT guide so I think they should all be changed as long as it causes the benefits that this change is supposed to cause. Namely better organization, and navigation. -- Mason11987 (Talk - Contributions) 20:48, 19 June 2006 (PDT)
 * Just go to Special:Whatlinkshere/Template:Cover and you'll get a list of all the pages still using the cover template. --DrBob (Talk) 22:53, 20 June 2006 (PDT)

Requests for help in articles
As I've been going through sorting out categorisation issues, I've found quite a few articles have their own non-standard requests for help, pointers to the editing guidelines, and lists of contributors. I think this is quite poor; it takes the attention away from the article itself, and isn't standardised. Articles like this should be using the wip template, but perhaps it isn't helpful enough to persuade potential contributors to improve the page? Regardless, I think articles like this and this (at the bottom) should be changed and standardised. --DrBob 12:37, 27 May 2006 (PDT)


 * I think that your concern is valid, and that it could scare people away from our wiki. We could devise a standardized "work in progress" template that, with careful wording, explains that the present guide is a work in progress and directs users to the talk page to discuss the guide's proper creation. Perhaps something that looks like the box at the top of the OoT guide, but with much better and clearer wording. echelon [[Image:Ocarina.gif|...]] 22:17, 15 June 2006 (PDT)


 * I would agree with that. Perhaps it should be part of the Template:wip template? --DrBob (Talk) 22:48, 15 June 2006 (PDT)


 * That works for me. The wip template needs a little beefing up though, perhaps some more text and a link to pages that explain the editing process as well. A border wouldn't hurt either. echelon [[Image:Ocarina.gif|...]] 00:31, 16 June 2006 (PDT)


 * I've done the work on the wip template, but I haven't been able to link to pages on editing technique yet, as we either don't have them, or I don't know where they are. :-( --DrBob (Talk) 10:09, 16 June 2006 (PDT)


 * The wip and stub templates look nice, but why an icon and big box for the spoilers template? It seems kind of unnecessary. Well, I made some icons for the wip, stub and a possible wikify templates in svg. They are here. I think they do a better job then the stock tango templates like the raincloud and paintbrush thing, but they aren't the best. Any comments/complaints on them before i upload? --blendmaster 18:35, 23 June 2006 (PDT)


 * Your icons look great, but I'd make the body of the stub star a little darker (more visible). The spoilers template has an icon and a big box to make it highly visible. We don't want people stumbling into spoilers sections when they don't want to, and we've got to cater for people with all sorts of levels of visibility. --DrBob (Talk) 19:02, 23 June 2006 (PDT)

New collaboration of the week
May I suggest that we get everything categorised as a collaboration of the week? Half the games don't have any categories, and the other half aren't fully categorised. One major thing which needs to be done is to add multiplayer or single player categories to every game (either, or both; depending on what the game is like). If this goes ahead, it should be added to the main page. --DrBob 07:11, 30 May 2006 (PDT)
 * DrBob, categorization would be made much simpler if template:infobox.new enabled inputing multiple genres in the value.  I'm trying to learn wiki markup language as much as possible, but there are a few things I don't quite understand.  Right now, I'm stuck on how the arrays are structured.
 * (^--That was Filthy Swine. Please sign your comments in future.) Whatever's put into the page's Template:infobox (or Template:infobox.new) template doesn't categorise it; it just links to the specified page. Categorisation is performed by putting links at the bottom of pages (note the lack of preceding colon). This includes a page in the specified category, and is what I was talking about. Of course, if you add a category to the bottom of the page, chances are that it should also be linked to in the appropriate place in the Template:infobox, but for that we just use comma-separation, and that's why Template:infobox.new won't work, because in its present state it only allows a link to one category for each heading. --DrBob 01:35, 31 May 2006 (PDT)


 * I'd have to agree with DrBob. It's a clever idea but it doesn't allow multiple values. Another way to streamline would be a template that expands to Category:Whatever Category . However a major problem with both of these methods is that the infobox is often on a subpage, meaning the automatic categories would be categorising the wrong page. GarrettTalk 04:31, 31 May 2006 (PDT)

Image Categories
I finally got my wish and now we have a dynamic home page, but unfortunately I didn't forsee the next problem with it: we've run out of images. Not uploaded images, mind you, just images ready to be used. This is bad, as it makes us look empty, irresponsible, lazy, etc. The obvious reason is that users aren't updating the front page; which is not unexpected. But I suspect another as well: lack of organization on our parts.

The Image list is incredibly hard to read, and pretty much never tells you anything you need or want to know. After going through a thousand .gif's of maps for one game that I don't even know the name of looking for game artwork, without knowing what I was clicking on next due to non-descript filenames, I devised a solution.

Images need categories too. They could be any of these: screenshots, game artwork, map, box art, or item. This could help out those who choose front page images out a great deal. There should also be a field when a file is uploaded to add the name of the game it came from, so that when someone goes through the Image list they can see that "such and such image is from this game and is this type." Perhaps even a search function could be implemented, so that users could search for specific categories/games/systems.

I just wanted to know your guys' thoughts on this. I hope that was coherent. Cosmo let's chat
 * I would agree with categorising the images, but I can't see the necessity for hacking MediaWiki to add stuff to the image upload system. We could change the language strings to encourage people to name images responsibly, and encourage them to link back to the game for which the image has been taken, but hacking MediaWiki's too much. Personally, I've been prefixing all my images for Counter-Strike: Source with "css_", to separate them from everything else, and it works nicely. :-) --DrBob 14:15, 2 June 2006 (PDT)


 * I was unaware doing some of that would require hacking MediaWiki, so I suppose some of that is now out of the question. I've also named my images things like "mf-bleh" or "metroidfusion-file" to seperate them. Cosmo let's chat

Another possibility is using an external image rotator so there's a different picture every time you visit, however that of course doesn't allow captions. GarrettTalk 15:22, 2 June 2006 (PDT)


 * I can't figure out how to get the captions working on the front page anyways! XD Cosmo let's chat
 * OK, check out this image. Thanks to an obscure MediaWiki feature thumbnails are able to be automatically generated and sourced by this outside rotator. The images have to be manually added to the rotator, BUT the rotation time can be set for as little as a minute or as long as a week. However the lack of captions or hyperlinks is still a setback to this method. GarrettTalk 16:08, 2 June 2006 (PDT)

Well, you CAN categorize images. We have a a system of image galleries at sporewiki shown here which rely on categories. The same can be done here, just make the naming the same as the game. If there is a game guide for Zelda: Ocarina of Time then create a Category:. Zelda: Ocarina of Time images that all of the images related to that game are placed in. You can create other categorizations with maps and such by just adding them to Category:Map images or anything like that. It creates a fairly easy to view display so you can fine the good ones easily. And of course the cats can have categories as well. That would be quite a task, but starting off a basic sorting program for images is a good start. -- Mason11987 (Talk - Contributions) 18:55, 2 June 2006 (PDT)


 * That would be really helpful, but we would need a lot of people to help us categorize everything... I wonder if we could send out an email asking users to come back and categorize any images they uploaded? Cosmo let's chat


 * Aniki21 has started already without waiting for anybody. :-P He's using Category:Character art (character renders, etc.) and Category:Game art (covers, posters, etc.). I think these are reasonable enough to be made official. --DrBob (Talk) 11:31, 6 June 2006 (PDT)


 * Perhaps a more neutral "Game images" cat would be better? Just tossing it out there. -- Mason11987 (Talk - Contributions) 20:04, 6 June 2006 (PDT)


 * That's a bit ambiguous to me. 90% of the images we're uploading will be game images. --DrBob (Talk) 23:01, 6 June 2006 (PDT)
 * True, but I meant more along the lines of "images" instead of "art" for stuff like that? Like map images, or character images.


 * Maybe Category:Game art should be Category:Cover art or Category:Game covers... Game art just seems a bit ambiguous to me.--Dukeruckley


 * I still think we should just use something like screenshots, game artwork, map, box art, or item for categories. It would be precise and easy. Cosmo let's chat


 * The categories suggested as follows could be sufficient, with just enough so that we can distinguish what things are with no redundancy:
 * screenshot
 * sprite
 * model (3d character, enemy, etc models--the opposite of "sprite")
 * texture (would we use it enough to warrent it?)
 * artwork
 * boxart
 * photo (for pictures of CDs, cartridges, consoles, or accessories)
 * map
 * diagram (created to aid in understanding; these can be graphs, charts, etc.)
 * character (a further subcategory of 'screenshot', 'sprite', 'model', or 'art'. These include PCs, NPCs, enemies, etc.)
 * item (also a further subcategory of 'screenshot', 'sprite', 'model', or 'art'. An image of a vehicle, gun, or trap door would be an 'item'.)
 * We might be able to add game or series categories, but that could also be overkill. The only bad thing about MediaWiki--which we are now experiencing--is that it is sadly not very relational. echelon [[Image:Ocarina.gif|...]] 22:13, 15 June 2006 (PDT)


 * Those look reasonable. Shall I implement them? (If we do implement them, it would be a good idea to write an "official StrategyWiki policy" page regarding their use, just so they're noted down somewhere prominent.) --DrBob (Talk) 22:50, 15 June 2006 (PDT)


 * Yes, please. Cosmo let's chat 13:40, 16 June 2006 (PDT)


 * (Cosmo you cheeky bugger. :-P ) I've implemented the following, adapting echelon's list to fit our standards:
 * Screenshots
 * Sprites
 * Models
 * Artwork
 * Box artwork
 * Photos
 * Maps
 * Diagrams
 * Characters
 * Items
 * All that needs to be done now is for people to categorise their images. :-( --DrBob (Talk) 13:53, 16 June 2006 (PDT)

Date Format
Should we start enacting the wikipedia standard operating posistion of linking Dates(game development, releases et al)? --Filthy swine 06:36, 7 June 2006 (PDT)


 * "Linking dates may not seem useful; however, please link dates since it enables the use of a user preference in how dates are displayed. An unlinked date, like July 13, 2004, will always be displayed in that manner. If you link the date:
 *  July 13, 2004 
 * Wikipedia will display it in one of the following ways:
 * July 13, 2004
 * 13 July 2004
 * 2004 July 13
 * 2004-07-13
 * -according to the preference set by the individual user. (This feature is only available to logged-in users. It only works if the date is linked.)"


 * That might not be a bad idea. The only problem then is that we have a bunch of linked dates that go nowhere, unless we decide to make pages for them (which I'd say we don't need).  Too bad there's no way to allow user preferences to come into effect without linking the dates (unless my understanding is wrong).--Dukeruckley 08:14, 7 June 2006 (PDT)


 * I would agree here; it could be useful to have a list of games released on each date. Each date should be in a category such as Category:Days for the dates, and Category:Years for the years (as on Wikipedia) just so they're easily accessible. On a different note: Filthy swine, could you please wait for a consensus in the discussion for something before going ahead and doing it? It's quite impolite to just rush off and do things before people've voiced their opinions. --DrBob (Talk) 09:01, 8 June 2006 (PDT)


 * This could definitely aid in navigation, so I'm all for it. There's certainly little harm in doing it. echelon [[Image:Ocarina.gif|...]] 21:54, 15 June 2006 (PDT)


 * I've started on it. Each date in the infobox is linked to a page, which then redirects to a category of the same name (e.g. 2004), which is also linked in at the bottom of the page. Each year category should be a subcategory of Years, and each day should be a subcategory of Days. --DrBob (Talk) 23:17, 15 June 2006 (PDT)

Board Games
Currently, StrategyWiki is pretty much solely for video and computer games. Are we open to create pages on board games and puzzles as well? For example, I might be interested in starting a Rubik's Cube page. Someone might be interested in a Chess page. Any thoughts? --Dukeruckley 09:58, 7 June 2006 (PDT)


 * I'm not an official person, but I don't think StrategyWiki is intended for things like that; it's based around video and computer games, and there are other places on the Internet which deal for board games. Let's see what echelon says when he gets back. :-) --DrBob (Talk) 11:22, 7 June 2006 (PDT)


 * The opening sentence on the main page says the purpose of this site;
 * "''Welcome to StrategyWiki a collaborative wiki that seeks to become the largest source for videogame strategy guides!"
 * but I wouldn't be opposed to having non-video games. A strategy guide for poker would have relevence in real life as well as a video game of poker.  As for the Rubik's Cube, a good Rubik's cube strategy guide is needed to solve it as fast as this guy
 * Note: my apologies for those of you that can't view a couple of those sites because of Flash issues, but until SVG is shown more support and improved on, it is sometimes the easiest way to do things on the interweb.
 * --Filthy swine 12:47, 7 June 2006 (PDT)

To clarify myself, this was support for the idea. --Filthy swine 13:20, 7 June 2006 (PDT)


 * To clarify myself. There are many sites out there for Rubik's Cube strategies, but not many with multiple strategies.  I was hoping to throw them all together in one site (and my idea was to do so here).  I would hate to have to find another site that I find respectable or create my own.  Plus, this wiki would provide an easy way to upload images of the cube to give a visual representation of an algorithm.


 * While the site does mention that it is for video games, I see more benefits to adding board games than not. There are many places to find guides for video games and less so for board games and puzzles.  Adding these could potentially lead to more people joining StrategyWiki in the long run.  Meanwhile, as long as someone updates them and turns them into respectable articles, is there a reason not to add them to the site?--Dukeruckley 13:00, 7 June 2006 (PDT)


 * I am pretty much against the whole thing - I find it unnecassary for a videogame wiki. Cosmo let's chat 13:16, 7 June 2006 (PDT)


 * It's a bad idea as the main page says that this wiki is for videogames. I don't think people want to see a repeat of what happened at WikiBooks! You can upload guides to board games at WikiKnowledge if you wish. Gerard Foley 16:24, 7 June 2006 (PDT)

So, it's perfectly acceptable then, to create a strategy guide for Rubix, gnuChess or MShearts, but when you decide to make the Civilization II guide, promptly direct anyone interested in playing the board game version of Civilization to another site. This board game business of theirs has nothing to do with this wiki. --Filthy swine 16:51, 7 June 2006 (PDT)

Hmm, the term "strategy guide" has always referred to video game strategies, so people searching for Rubik's cube strategies probably wouldn't go to a site called StrategyWiki. I'm not opposed to the idea to include board game and puzzle guides, but I don't think strategy guide sites would be the best sites for them to be. Unless the meaning of "strategy guide" can be broadened to include board games and such, you would be better off putting the guide on Wikibooks or creating a special wiki for board game strategies. --blendmaster 21:21, 7 June 2006 (PDT)


 * You've got to be kidding. "Strategy guide" doesn't imply in any way, shape or form that it should only be inferred to mean videogames. "Strategy Guide" has always meant "a guide to strategies", which can apply equally to videogames, board games, or even something like paintball or speechwriting. However, I don't think this is the place for strategy guides on boardgames, and certianly not something as complex as chess. There are enough books out there about chess to fill an entire wiki all by itself. Keeping StrategyWiki focused on videogames isn't a bad thing. --aniki21 04:16, 8 June 2006 (PDT)


 * Well, if you asked some random person what a strategy guide was, they'd almost always think of video game strategy guides. I'm not saying that strategy guides can't be for any strategies, its just the usage of the term today is pretty video game exlusive. I think it'd be better to put traditional game strategies on another site/wiki not because they should be allowed at this site, just that they would get too many pageviews here. Even if the site slogan didn't say video game strategy guides, someone coming here for chess strategies would say, "Oh, it has strategy guides, probably just for videogames" and find a different site. --blendmaster 15:33, 14 June 2006 (PDT)


 * From Wikipedia: "Strategy guides are instruction books that contain hints or complete solutions to specific video games. The exact meaning of a "strategy guide" these days is very vague, as most could be easily ranked as "walkthroughs" or "hint collections"." Added to this the fact that we explicitly state on the front page that we're for video games, and I think support for board games is ruled out. --DrBob (Talk) 08:55, 8 June 2006 (PDT)


 * Okay, fair enough. I'll have to search for somewhere else to do something like that.  Meanwhile, I need to figure out what I want to work on the most here (I like this wiki the best out of everything I've looked at because of its layout).  I wish I had more time...--Dukeruckley 09:35, 8 June 2006 (PDT)


 * Wikibooks appears to still have some sections on board games, such as chess: http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Chess. You could always get to work over there, and worse case you'll be transwiki'd some place like here.--BigCow 12:43, 15 June 2006 (PDT)


 * Initially I was going to say that I would have no problem with hosting guides for board games, chess-type games, or card games here. After reading many of your comments against doing so, I must say that my opinion has been swayed. It would be best to keep StrategyWiki soley purposed on videogames, at least at this point in time. My arguments would be the same as those of Gmcfoley, Blendmaster, et al. echelon [[Image:Ocarina.gif|...]] 21:52, 15 June 2006 (PDT)

Emulator Usage
Is there any established rule about how emulators and roms/isos/bins/etc can be used for helping with the StrategyWiki's? I can see it has some advantages (mainly the screenshot department), but I do wonder what the stance is in terms of using an emulator fully and not the original console for the walkthrough. Wolfman2000 21:28, 15 June 2006 (PDT)


 * To be honest, I took most of the screenshots that are present in the Zelda: Ocarina of Time guide with an emulator. I didn't really see the harm--I three legal copies of the game. It would not have been possible to create crisp (or cheap) captures from the N64 or Gamecube, so I figured emulation on PC would be the fastest and easiest way. I can see where you are coming from, but I personally do not find a moral problem with this. echelon [[Image:Ocarina.gif|...]] 21:41, 15 June 2006 (PDT)


 * Although I think it would be best if this was an understood suggestion as opposed to an official one, since legally owning a rom you didn't personally create of a copy you personally own is illegal, and I would assume your situation echelon falls outside the bounds of legality I think it'd be best to not officially condone the practice at all, as 99% of the time, it is illegal, and with all of your reliance on following legal practice with licenses, that would be a bad thing. -- Mason11987 (Talk - Contributions) 07:39, 18 June 2006 (PDT)
 * We certainly can't recommend screenshots be taken using emulators, but unless you want guides to look like this one (or worse!) it's still expected that authors will use them. I think we could adopt Gameinfo's image use policy: "We do not condone or encourage the illegal use of emulators ... but pictures taken by such means are not disallowed (... they are under a "don't ask, don't tell" policy: do not state that the image was taken using an emulator)." As for talking about emulation for other purposes (e.g. translation patches, emulator-only cheats) that's a matter for another day. GarrettTalk 15:50, 20 June 2006 (PDT)
 * I like the don't ask don't tell policy. -- Mason11987 (Talk - Contributions) 23:08, 20 June 2006 (PDT)

Gaining Major Exposure - A look at my plans for StrategyWiki
First off, I'd like to say that I'm back from my studying regimen, and I'm ready to get back to work. I'd like to explain some of the plans that I have for getting StrategyWiki to become a mainstream outlet.

My ultimate goal (which includes StrategyWiki) is to build a large and strong open (source) gaming media, one that I hope will take precedence over the present one. While IGN, Gamespot, and 1up do exist and do provide much information, I feel that they often pander to the lowest common denominator and don't really treat games seriously, take G4 as my case in point; the major gaming websites are owned by huge media conglomerates that ultimately don't care about videogames. The obnoxious use of flash popups and intersital ads on all three leading gaming websites is quite annoying to anyone wanting to glean information from their websites. This is why I hope to outdo them, with a news website just as big but with none of the bloat and baggage.

You may know that I created DSmeet with the help of two other college-level programmers (everything on the website, including the BBS, is custom-made). We've reevaluated and fine-tuned our abilities, and we all think that together with the use of the best open source libraries and development tools that we can build a website on par with, if not exceeding, what IGN has currently. We aim to complete this project a week or two prior to this year's Tokyo Game Show (held in late September), and this gives us all summer to work on the project. We'll probably spend the first two weeks designing the database schema and then shift into designing the program itself. (We're aided by an MVC and user/sessions architecture we have already developed.)

When this website is completed, I hope to publish both the articles on the website and the guides here on a strictly open media license, with as little restriction as possible (I am becoming uncomfortable with the strictness imposed by the GFDL). Both websites will cross-reference one another, so that visitors to either site will be exposed to the other. Consider this to be the same kind of relationship that exists between Gamespot and GameFAQs. After we have the website firmly polished and running smoothly, I will begin to work on extra tools for StrategyWiki such as "cached guides" (including pdf downloads of guides); a "tag" concept, much like exists in Subversion or CVS, allowing us to mark a certain version of a guide with a name to better manage and locate things; and, as we have discussed, video tools to enable short video explanations or complete sectional walkthroughs.

The news website and StrategyWiki are not the ultimate end, and I see this ideal being even greater in scope. I would like to create a *completely* open media relational database of games (like Moby Games) except without any restrictions on use (it would not be MediaWiki-powered, since wikis are not relational); it too will be placed under whatever OS license we choose. I hope that ultimately our efforts in these three quadrants will lead to a better gaming media, and that we can provide inspiration to game developers through our work.

A note about our server: We do have the server capacity to host all of this. If it becomes too big of a hit, we can always order a bigger one, though my plan is to slowly upgrade as needed. By the end of the summer, I will move the StrategyWiki website to our dedicated webserver, which currently houses DSmeet.

Another note about license: I want all three websites to use the same open source license (for consistency). I want it to impose as few restrictions as possible (eg, it ultimately can't be GFDL for the reasons we have previously underscored), but still be copyleft (eg, it can't be public domain): I want others to be able to use and extend our content as they like, but not be able to take it away its openness and horde it for themselves. Creative commons is looking really good right now.

In closing, I don't think that I'll be able to do a lot of guide writing or screen captures this summer (actually, I can't do screen captures at all until I fix my primary laptop with which my gamepad works). However, I will be around to help with technical issues, construction of important templates and and javascripts, and to input my two cents on key issues.

Do you guys have any comments? Complaints? Suggestions? echelon  21:37, 15 June 2006 (PDT)


 * I think, for StrategyWiki, you need a better look and feel/site design. IMO it just looks a bit too much like gamefaqs right now. I don't know how good of a graphic designer you are, but StrategyWiki needs a better logo and mediawiki theme, or at least a few tweaks to the ui. DSmeet looks nice, and the logo is unique. Maybe you should have a logo contest for StrategyWiki, or somthing like that. --blendmaster 10:06, 16 June 2006 (PDT)


 * I personally like the skin we have right now. It is honestly the best theme I've seen yet and it is part of the reason I'm sticking with it here.  A change in the logo would be fine, but don't change the skin entirely.  It is very clean and easy to follow and it is pretty unique.  What kind of tweaks to the UI were you thinking of?  As for looking like GameFAQs, the only similarity I really see is the color blue.--Dukeruckley 10:20, 16 June 2006 (PDT)


 * I would agree with Dukeruckley here. I like the current skin. :-) --DrBob (Talk) 10:32, 16 June 2006 (PDT)


 * Well, mostly, I just don't like the clouds, and the blueish color scheme, but again its my opinion. On UI tweaks, I think the items on the left side should be running along under the logo horizontally, so the page could spread left more. Also, if possible, I think the built in table of contents for pages could be positioned underneath the toolbar section on the right side, like some of the custom walkthrough table of contents people put there. --blendmaster 13:48, 16 June 2006 (PDT)


 * I'd like to remind everyone that skins can be chosen (there are a few different ones to pick from) in your preferences. And if there is enough support for one skin, then one of the other skins can be replaced if we want a new one, or another one can be appended to the list.  There need not be just one skin.  But if there is going to be an option of skins here (with more then one being "mainstream") then maybe a similar option should exist for the site?  A site I visit http://  www.planetspore.co.uk/ has something like that (although looking at DSmeet, you could do much better then that).  I love all your ideas and I'm on board to help out with whatever I can do on mediawiki especially, but with anything else too.   On another note, what's up with this spam filter, we can't give outsite links here?  -- Mason11987 (Talk - Contributions) 07:49, 18 June 2006 (PDT)

Cleanup project
I've created a page consolidating all my cleanup efforts, and I'm hoping it can make it somewhere useful, like Cleanup. I would like to make it a recognised "sub-project", and possibly involve more people in maintaining and cleaning StrategyWiki. I would also like User:DrBob/Wikify to be made official, and used on pages which need wikification, so they can more easily be found. --DrBob (Talk) 23:36, 15 June 2006 (PDT)
 * Can I recommend a kind of policy similar to sporewiki's cleanup page? http://www.sporewiki.com/SporeWiki:Cleanup?

Official StrategyWiki law
Wikipedia has many "Wikipedia:Insert_law_here" pages, detailing the guidelines and ways in which Wikipedia should be used and layed-out. I propose that we write a few of these – mainly based around editing structure – to help people format their pages properly. May I also suggest that we have one listing all the system templates we've created (such as wip, stub, etc.) so that they can all be found in one place, perhaps with an example? --DrBob (Talk) 23:38, 15 June 2006 (PDT)
 * I definitly think this should happen. I think once a policy that gets disscussed here is finalized, It should be made into a Law page, written up nice and clearly, and the discussion that was once here moved to the talk page of the law. The only problem now is that we haven't really finalized any big policies yet. --blendmaster 13:51, 16 June 2006 (PDT)
 * My biggest recommendation is to implement these few policies/guidelines (like their wikipedia examples, but not exactly the same obviously): Be bold, Assume good faith, and a policy stating that noone "owns" a guide.  Wikipedia has something like that last one, but I can't find it.  It's best for this kind of thing, as long as everyone is bold in adding what they think is useful, and noone thinks they own the article, they will assume good faith in discussing the changes maturly.  Besides these three, everything else is specific instances.  As long as everyone follows these, this site will function perfectly well I believe. -- Mason11987 (Talk - Contributions) 07:57, 18 June 2006 (PDT)

Including enemy lists, item lists, and other big table data
Should guides here include big tables of data like enemy lists, shop prices, loot statistics, and other data that comes in large tables? Somthing like the enemy lists here. Although they would be useful to have on site, they would be very hard to maintain in a wiki format. Subtle vandalism (i.e changing a few values at a time) would be extremely hard to detect and hard to verify if it was a legit change or not. What do you guys think?--blendmaster 09:51, 16 June 2006 (PDT)


 * Do most strategy guides give such tables? I think we should do so.  I'm familiar with wiki tables if help is needed.  Wolfman2000 20:15, 16 June 2006 (PDT)


 * I would agree with including this data, just as long as the guide does have other useful content (i.e. it's not just a big table listing data). If the tables are huge, they should go on an appropriate sub-page. --DrBob (Talk) 03:20, 17 June 2006 (PDT)


 * An enemy list is better then nothing. It'd be best to have a full guide, but if someone wants to add an enemy list or item list to a guide that doesn't exist, starting up the guide even with just these things is the best way to get other people to write full guides right?  Just as long as all new guides get the appropriate guide structure (whatever that may be) then the link to an empty walkthrough should exist, and a lot of people will follow red links and write something up just because it isn't here.  -- Mason11987 (Talk - Contributions) 08:01, 18 June 2006 (PDT)

CSS class for "notice" templates
It would be useful if there was a CSS class for "notice" templates which are stuck at the top of a page, such as Template:wip and Template:stub. This would mean styles aren't duplicated across templates, and remain consistent. May I advise "messagebox" be the class name, and "float: center; margin: 10px; border: 1px solid #7d87bc; background-color: #d0d5f1; padding: 3px; font-size: larger;" as the properties for the class? --DrBob (Talk) 10:37, 16 June 2006 (PDT)
 * You are a sysop, you can edit MediaWiki:BlueCloud.css can't you? :) Would you mind adding it to MediaWiki:Monobook.css while you're at it? Thanks. -- Mason11987 (Talk - Contributions) 08:03, 18 June 2006 (PDT)
 * I've added it (I wasn't a sysop when I first brought this up), but haven't used it in any templates yet. --DrBob (Talk) 23:01, 20 June 2006 (PDT)

More project administrators?
I've made DrBob an administrator so that he can do some of the more routine organizational work that he tends to do. I was thinking we could use a few extra administrators as well in order to block spam and keep the wiki clean. If any of you would like to take the job let me know. (Depending on the number of applicants we may or may not do this by a voting process. I'm not really sure of the best way to handle it this early on.) echelon  11:48, 17 June 2006 (PDT)
 * I might be interested in being an admin, though I don't exactly have the most time in the world right now. How much work would be involved here?  I'd like to help out in any way I can, but I don't want to make a commitment to something that will be too much for me to handle at the moment.  If, on the other hand, being an admin would be something I can do without spending hours online, I'd be very willing to take it on.--Dukeruckley 11:05, 19 June 2006 (PDT)


 * For now, the only added benefits of being an admin (or sysop) is being able to edit protected pages, protect/unprotect pages, and delete/restore pages. We'll still be democratic, so being a sysop doesn't give you extra "voting power". Normal users may look to sysops to perform special tasks (such as editing protected pages, deleting pages, etc.) or they may look to you for advise. I believe sysops can also ban troublesome users, and since they can edit protected pages, they can also ammend the spam blacklist as necessary. As for your question, I do not think that sysops need commit any more time than they would as normal users. A sysop needs only commit to do extra misc. tasks, help resolve situations involving problematic or disruptive users, and help out users in need. echelon [[Image:Ocarina.gif|...]] 02:26, 23 June 2006 (PDT)


 * Well, I think I can handle that! Just let me know.--Dukeruckley 05:27, 23 June 2006 (PDT)


 * However, you do also need to be able to fly, and pull bunches of flowers out of your sleeves. *ducks* --DrBob (Talk) 08:58, 23 June 2006 (PDT)

Release days should not be a category
Currently games are being categorized by what day of the year they were released on, see Final Fantasy VI. I believe that these categories should be removed and the date should simply be linked because:


 * Categorizing a game based upon the year is useful and will let you examine games that were released around the same time. Categorizing games based upon the individual day they were released on is little more than a curiousity and won't let you compare anything useful.
 * The purpose of finding out what games were released on a particular day can be accomplished by simply examining what links to that day of the month, as in http://strategywiki.net/wiki/Special:Whatlinkshere/April_2. Having an "April 2" category adds next to nothing and its purpose can be accomplished more easily otherwise.
 * While we're at it, the category for years, http://strategywiki.net/wiki/Category:1994 should really be "Games released in 1994"

I can understand the need to want to order and categorize this kind of information, but the day of a month a game was released on can be handled by a link, you don't need to really see it as a category at the bottom of the page whne you're looking for related information. Categories should be for things like genres or titles in a series that you would naturally group together, there's not a similar need to group by days--BigCow 14:00, 17 June 2006 (PDT)


 * It doesn't take any time at all to add these categories, they take up no real space, and they can be useful for some things, such as finding out what games were released on your birthday (or some other important date). The average user won't look at "what links here" for a day page, and the listing there isn't as concrete as that provided by a category. If we use categories, we can explicitly link them in to articles, but if we use "what links here", all sorts of other fluff will be listed: I've seen many articles which talk about dates other than their release dates (such as the release dates of other, related games) which would confuse people reading the "what links here" listing.

The year categories are (imho) named fine as they are, as this wiki is only about games, so people reading it can assume that a year will be related to games releases (and they can't be "Games released in 1994" because we list consoles and perhaps companies in those categories too). If we did that and kept all the current year pages it would be quite involving and complex to keep it all organised (there's a greater potential for error with names such as "Games released in 1994" than there is with a simple year number). --DrBob (Talk) 14:36, 17 June 2006 (PDT)


 * I just think there are better ways to handle all these things. If you want to see the precise day a game was released we can have a master list for that which indexes games by date. And if you can't make the category title specific enough to say what it actually represents, as in "games released in 1994", you should subdivide it into multiple categories, or break it apart. If the category doesn't represent any one thing but could represent any game or company related to 1994 then it's not really a category which makes any sense.--BigCow 14:52, 17 June 2006 (PDT)


 * The problem with master lists is that they're very hard to keep up-to-date, and are prone to corruption. The only master lists we've got at the moment are in Categories, and they're hard enough to keep up-to-date just by looking at what's in the main categories! I think it's OK to have everything which was released in a year in that year's category, as the differences will be obvious (compared to the example above where any page could link to a day, only games/hardware/companies created on that day would be in the category), and the number of games would far outnumber the companies and hardware in the category. I am willing to change my mind on this detail, though. (Just as long as the years stay as numbers.) --DrBob (Talk) 00:00, 18 June 2006 (PDT)


 * The Chrono Trigger article currently has 13 categories. Out of those 13, seven of them are related to the release date. Just as a user interface issue, people don't generally like lists with more than seven items, it's the most we can hold in short term memory. I don't think we need to categorize a game according to three seperate years and four seperate days on which it was released. (for starters, there's no easy mapping between release day and year). If you're going to categorize games based upon release dates at all, you should only count the first release date, otherwise you could have several if you track each region.--BigCow 18:54, 19 June 2006 (PDT)


 * I gotta agree with that, it's simply ugly to look at and I don't see the advantage of having chrono trigger stored on 4 random day of the year categories, especially since ablut 99% of the time, 3 of those links will seem to be incorrect by the person looking for the guide because it won't apply to them. Doing just the initial release seems like the best option to me. -- Mason11987 (Talk - Contributions) 19:40, 19 June 2006 (PDT)


 * I would go with that. --DrBob (Talk) 23:33, 19 June 2006 (PDT)


 * On second thoughts, I wouldn't. All the release dates (should) all be the last categories in the list, so all the more important categories (such as developer and genre) are right at the start of the list, where people will be looking. The categorisation by release date is not so that you can look at other games released on the same day from the bottom of the article; it's so that you can look at the article from the category, so there need be no mapping from day to year at the bottom of the article: people would be going to the category, then navigating to a game from there, and they'll want to see all the games released anywhere in the world on that date if they're in that category. --DrBob (Talk) 12:51, 20 June 2006 (PDT)


 * I would personally be glad to work on and update a master list of games by release date if it would put this issue to rest. And I really don't think looking up games by release dates anywhere in the world makes sense. The same game may have four or five releases in different versions, and we shouldn't need seperate categories to keep track of a European, Asian, or other releases. When the game was first released puts it into a useful context of when it was developed. The other number just says when it was ported to another platform.--BigCow 13:06, 20 June 2006 (PDT)

My whole problem with the whole release day categories are that we are going to have a ton of categories with only one entry in them (until we become a large site). The best thing to do is have categories based on months and years. In other words, if a game was released on July 7, 1999 then it would be in a category July 1999. At least that way you'll be more likely to have more than one game in each category.--Dukeruckley 12:58, 20 June 2006 (PDT)


 * That would also be an improvement over having seven categories, whittling it down to just one.--BigCow 13:06, 20 June 2006 (PDT)


 * The only problem is that in the case of Chrono Trigger it would still only bring it down to four catagories from seven. It was released in March 1995 (SNES) (JP), August 1995 (SNES) (NA), November 1999 (PS) (JP), and June 2001 (PS) (NA). So unless we were to only choose one of the releases it would work. We could get rid of the Final Fantasy Chronicles dates and bring it down to two dates. I could see that working out quite well. Thoughts?--Chrono Warrior 3 15:53, 20 June 2006 (PDT)


 * I still believe that as long as all the dates are the last categories in the list, they're doing no harm there. Most games have only one release date, and of the ones which have several, they usually share years. We're arguing over extremities here. --DrBob (Talk) 23:03, 20 June 2006 (PDT)


 * Bob has convinced me, :) As long as they are the last cats it should be fine. -- Mason11987 (Talk - Contributions) 23:08, 20 June 2006 (PDT)


 * This gets back to the whole Wikipedia is not paper thing. We can use any amount of space we want, the sky's the limit in terms of storing data. I just think that having a bunch of redundant categories looks sloppy and hurts intuitive navigation. We could categorize games according to any number of things (soundtracks composed by Koji Kondo for example), but we need to make a conscious effort to limit ourselves to only the most relevant information to avoid becoming too bulky and unwieldy.--BigCow 09:07, 21 June 2006 (PDT)

Clarified Discussion
Sounds like there are two different discussions going on here... I'm writing this for clarity more than anything. Please respond to each discussion underneath the appropriate paragraph. If you have any more questions, please add an additional bullet to the end.--Dukeruckley 06:15, 21 June 2006 (PDT)


 * First: Are we going to categorize the dates using the exact date (i.e. July 7, 2006) or the month/year (i.e. July 2006) or some other method?


 * I personally feel that we should use the month/year approach to categorization. That way we don't have a ton of categories with only one game in it.  It just makes more sense in the long run.--Dukeruckley 06:15, 21 June 2006 (PDT)


 * I personally feel that the month and the year would be the best method of catagorizing the games. Far fewer pages and less clutter. However is there a method in which to arrange the games by date in the catagory? Such as CT came out March 11, 1995 and let's same game ABC came out March 20, 1995. Could we arrange so that ABC came after CT with the date above it? --Chrono Warrior 3 08:14, 21 June 2006 (PDT)


 * I believe it could via the cat tag would put it in a 01 section I believe. -- Mason11987 (Talk - Contributions) 09:00, 21 June 2006 (PDT)


 * Exact date. Once the wiki gets going, we won't have a tonne of categories with just one game in. Even at the moment, with only (I'm guessing) 50% of the guides actually categorised, we've got plenty of categories with multiple guides. Just because something isn't amazing at the moment doesn't mean it won't get better. Do you think we should abolish, say, the Atari 2600 category just because it's only got one game in it? --DrBob (Talk) 09:04, 21 June 2006 (PDT)


 * But even when the site gets big, a category as specific as a single day will still have only two or three entries in it. By going with a month and year, you end up having many games in the category and then using the idea of organizing the categories it just works out better.  I'd hate to look at a list of categories and see 2000 categories with only two to five entries in them.  It'd be better to have 100 categories with many entries in each and organized in a way that the information you are looking for is easy to find.  It would be must less work and would not clutter the site up as much.--Dukeruckley 09:17, 21 June 2006 (PDT)


 * I also believe that the month and the year together would provide the most useful information, or just linking the year on its own would be fine. --BigCow 09:07, 21 June 2006 (PDT)


 * Once the site gets big, we will have thousands of game guides (because there have been thousands of games made) - that equates to a good 10 entries in each day category, which I think is perfectly acceptable. --DrBob (Talk) 09:03, 23 June 2006 (PDT)


 * Second: Should we categorize games by each release date or just one or two?


 * I don't really care about this one too much... I think it might be easiest to simply categorize it by Japanese release dates (in the case of Chrono Trigger we'd use the Japanese release on the SNES and the Japanese release for FF:C for the PS)--Dukeruckley 06:15, 21 June 2006 (PDT)


 * This is primarily an English site so to most users the JP release date isn't of that much importance. True it doesn't matter much but I feel the NA release should be the one chosen. --Chrono Warrior 3 08:14, 21 June 2006 (PDT)


 * The problem with that is the English language is used often in Europe as well. So why would we choose US over EU?  Honestly, it should be the first release of the game.  So if it's an American game, then the American release would be the one used.  Since CT is a Japanese game, the JP release would be used, etc.--Dukeruckley 08:49, 21 June 2006 (PDT)


 * By each release date. If people are looking through the date categories, they'll be looking for games released on those dates. Just because it isn't the game's first release date doesn't mean it wasn't released for the first time in some part of the world on that date. --DrBob (Talk) 09:04, 21 June 2006 (PDT)


 * I can see that.--Dukeruckley 09:17, 21 June 2006 (PDT)


 * One release date is preferable, and I think the earliest release date makes the most sense. If not, we can use the NA release date since this is an English site, we just need to be consistent.--BigCow 09:07, 21 June 2006 (PDT)


 * What's your reasoning for this, BigCow? One of the driving forces behind Wikipedia is that it doesn't favour one country or nationality over another. Why should here be any different? --DrBob (Talk) 09:03, 23 June 2006 (PDT)


 * That's why I say earliest release date because it doesn't favor one nationality. Granted, Japan will be the most commonly used release date, but in this case there's a reason for it.  The game was first released on a certain date and that's the date that make the most sense to use.  The rest of the dates are really re-releases, just in different countries and languages.  Now if we want to put all of release dates in the article and not make them all categories, I'm completely for that.  It makes sense to do that.  In any case, I don't think many people are going to try and find a game based on the release date.  If someone wants to know what games were released on their birthday, it's not StrategyWiki's goal to provide that really.  It just makes things difficult for us while very few people will actually find it useful.--Dukeruckley 10:57, 23 June 2006 (PDT)


 * Agreed. --BigCow 13:50, 23 June 2006 (PDT)


 * I'd still push for categorisation by all release dates, but I'll go with this for the time being. :-) --DrBob (Talk) 15:11, 23 June 2006 (PDT)

Master List of Games
I know we have games listed in catergories, but do we have a page with each game on it? I think it might be useful to put a master list of all games that currently have functional guides. People who browse this site just for fun (not necessarily looking for a particular guide) might find it a hassle to have to keep clicking through different categories. The downside to a master list is of course the effort it would take to keep it up as StrategyWiki gets larger. Any thoughts? --Dukeruckley 06:27, 18 June 2006 (PDT)
 * If you think about how people are going to look for games, they're either going to know which game they're looking for (in which case they'll use search), or want to find out about games in a particular genre, or for a particular console. I can't see many people at all just wanting to see a list of every game we've got, and it would take a lot of effort to keep up-to-date. --DrBob (Talk) 07:29, 18 June 2006 (PDT)
 * Well if NCL was added here, this might be possible, and would require no effort to keep up to date. I'm making another topic to talk about this. -- Mason11987 (Talk - Contributions) 08:08, 18 June 2006 (PDT)
 * Not everyone is always going to know what they're looking for. Especially at the stage we are at right now, where we don't have a whole lot of strategies yet (we have a good amount, but nothing spectacular).  If someone doesn't find the game they're looking for they may think, "what games do they have?" and then want to see a list of games.  Instead of having to click through a bunch of genre or console lists, it might be nice to have a single list of everything.--Dukeruckley 07:22, 19 June 2006 (PDT)
 * Good point. --DrBob (Talk) 09:16, 19 June 2006 (PDT)
 * I was thinking it would be a good idea to categorize guides by overall completion level. We could easily place each level in an overall category of "All guides", thus killing two birds with one stone. Thoughts? echelon [[Image:Ocarina.gif|...]] 10:19, 19 June 2006 (PDT)
 * An interesting idea, though it might be difficult to implement. Mainly, how do we determine which guides are the most complete?  While it might be obvious for some guides, it'll be less obvious for others, namely MMO games that are constantly updating.  Couple that with that fact that the guides on this site will continue to improve and more content added, we'd have to update the list very often.  A simple alphabetical list would probably be the best idea, unless we can think of a way to defines a level of completeness and are willing to update the list often.--Dukeruckley 11:02, 19 June 2006 (PDT)
 * Well we have that 4 boxes things for sections of guides, like the FFVII one, we could just have a template that puts one down for the whole guide, and depending what image you use, it will categorize the guide into a different place. And optionally all guides could ALSO be in a category:guide category which would categorize all of them and sort them alphabetically too. -- Mason11987 (Talk - Contributions) 13:13, 19 June 2006 (PDT)

Spam filter
On another topic I tried to link to: http:// www.planetspore.co.uk/ to show an example of something I was saying but it said the spam filter blocked it. It seems kind of pointless to block potentially legimate site when anyone with some knowledge of mediawiki can get through it anyways as I did. Or perhaps a blacklist with particular sites would be best? Maybe something like the "Filter Set G" extension for adblock for firefox? I'm not sure how these thigns work, but that site shouldn't have been blocked. -- Mason11987 (Talk - Contributions) 07:51, 18 June 2006 (PDT)
 * I'm not sure why planetspore would be blocked, but that's definitely not something we want. I'll make sure to fix it. echelon [[Image:Ocarina.gif|...]] 19:34, 20 June 2006 (PDT)
 * I checked out our blacklist, but I'm not sure what is causing it. There appear to be no matches for planetspore.co.uk on our blacklist... echelon [[Image:Ocarina.gif|...]] 19:58, 20 June 2006 (PDT)
 * I found it. The pl ban also catches planet, so I've disabled it for now. You can easily check things like this by saving a page with a blacklisted URL and reading what the error message says triggered it. GarrettTalk 00:57, 21 June 2006 (PDT)


 * It didn't seem very useful when it blacklisted it before, but thanks for the fig :). -- Mason11987 (Talk - Contributions) 09:00, 21 June 2006 (PDT)

NCL
I'm propossing an addition of the Nice category list extension to server some of the organization issues here. An example of it in use on sporewiki is in the Full creature list which creates a very long and still useful list by only using this code:

In-game creatures
Category:Creature creations

Creature concepts
Category:Creature creation concepts Category:Creature Creation Concepts

I'm sure you can understand how the category works, and it might make the Game categories list easier to keep up to date and therefore slightly more useful, and it might also be able to create a full game list page if we wanted it (why not? lol). Actually, that was the original, it might be better to use the enhanced version which is what we are running on sporewiki. -- Mason11987 (Talk - Contributions) 08:13, 18 June 2006 (PDT)
 * I definitely agree with this. Very useful. :-) --DrBob (Talk) 08:29, 18 June 2006 (PDT)

Max Image Size
I have acquired numerous images of boxart for various games on the internet as of late for this site. However is there a limit as to how large the boxart should be? I know it can't be terribly large however having a set size limit would be good for future progress. I was unable to find any limit while looking over the site. I do know that on Wikipedia that somehow the images automatically scale down some if they are too large, is there any way we could implement that here?--Chrono Warrior 3 21:34, 18 June 2006 (PDT)
 * Scale down when? When uploading them or when displaying them, the second is easy enough to implement, the first might not be so easy. -- Mason11987 (Talk - Contributions) 23:49, 18 June 2006 (PDT)
 * MediaWiki will automatically cache scaled versions of images where pages specify the size of the image to use. The standard size at which box artwork/company logos (etc.) are displayed on the relevant pages is 250px wide. Just upload the images as big as you like, then make sure to put "|250px" after the image name in the image reference (e.g. [[Image:Example.jpg|250px]] ) when writing a page. Also make sure you categorise your images when you upload them. :-) --DrBob (Talk) 09:14, 19 June 2006 (PDT)

Trying a new homepage
Check out some of the changes I made to the homepage. I think it's nice to get rid of those wasteful and annoying "image of the day" things. What do you think about the new format though? Should anything be changed? Do you feel this is an improvement? ech<font color="#125">elon  03:37, 23 June 2006 (PDT)


 * Looks nice. :-) --DrBob (Talk) 09:07, 23 June 2006 (PDT)


 * Looks a lot better than before. Once Strategywiki grows more though, I think we should have a list of wanted guides, a featured guide, and other more interactive stuff like that. --blendmaster 09:17, 23 June 2006 (PDT)


 * That sounds excellent! Hopefully by that time we'll have someone here who can make it look a lot better than I can. I can sense a lot of potential for the main page, I just don't know how to go about implementing it correctly... ech<font color="#125">elon [[Image:Ocarina.gif|...]] 12:32, 23 June 2006 (PDT)

Relicensing plan
Check this out and comment please! (Your comments to this Community Issues post are not necessary, so please do so on the License talk page instead.) ech<font color="#125">elon  04:05, 23 June 2006 (PDT)

Copyrights rewrite
I'm working on making Copyrights more thorough. You can see the draft at User:Garrett/StrategyWiki:Copyrights. Is the wording simple enough for the average person to comprehend? Does it cover all situations? I'm trying to make it as brief but all-encompassing as possible, while at the same time including rationale for blatantly defying others' copyright claims (as in the case of patch codes). As with the licensing, replying there rather than here would be better. GarrettTalk 22:33, 23 June 2006 (PDT)

Contributors list
I've seen a kind of contributors list on some guides, which seems kind of strange to me. While it's great to be proud of your work, having your name on the guide itself doesn't really help anyone out, and if they really cared who made it, they'd just hit the history button right? Not trying to downplay anyone's contributions, but I don't think the TOC of a guide (or any articlespace page of a guide) is a good place to list who helped out. -- Mason11987 (Talk - Contributions) 00:44, 25 June 2006 (PDT)


 * I did moan about this in my requests for help in articles section. Once I've had a shower, I'm going to create some more templates to put on pages such as this (probably wikify and drivel), and then go through and clean up some of the pages. --DrBob (Talk) 03:28, 25 June 2006 (PDT)