User talk:Mason11987

EVO: The Search For Eden
Have you ever played that game? My room mate was going through all of the old SNES games he has on his X-Box and started playing it. It's like 2D side-scrolling Spore. You start out as a little fish and evolve your way up to a man with a club. I'm going to make a guide and propose it for Retro Game of the Month.

Hmm, I thought I signed that. --Filthy swine 12:08, 9 June 2006 (PDT)


 * I haven't, although I've told told I should, I'll have to check into it. -- Mason11987 (Talk - Contributions) 07:48, 9 June 2006 (PDT)

Welcome to StrategyWiki!
Haha, kidding! You're already pretty much a regular here. :P

I wanted to ask if you would mind being a project administrator. We could use some more administrators as SW grows, and you seem to have experience at both Wikipedia and Spore Wiki. Would you mind being an admin? echelon  22:05, 17 June 2006 (PDT)
 * No problem, I wouldn't be the most active one I imagine, and I'm not completly sure of what policies or whatever you have here, but just let me know what's up and how things go and I'll be glad to help whenever :). Thanks. -- Mason11987 (Talk - Contributions) 07:28, 18 June 2006 (PDT)
 * And I'm probably going to be having more suggestions as time goes on, lol. -- Mason11987 (Talk - Contributions) 07:30, 18 June 2006 (PDT)
 * Done! Sorry it took so long! :P echelon [[Image:Ocarina.gif|...]] 02:14, 23 June 2006 (PDT)
 * Cool, thanks :). -- Mason11987 (Talk - Contributions) 08:45, 23 June 2006 (PDT)

Todo Template
I was considering creating a template like that once I had more experience with the wiki... I'm glad you did though, it'll be very helpful. Thanks! --Dukeruckley 08:20, 26 June 2006 (PDT)
 * Hey thanks, I copied it from the one I set up on sporewiki, which was originally from wikipedia. I'm planning on setting up the dynamic nav here that you see in the link on sporewiki.  It shouldn't be too hard, then the template will not only be useful, but it'll be less annoying, glad to help. -- Mason11987 (Talk - Contributions) 08:25, 26 June 2006 (PDT)

Stub template
I noticed you've been moving stub templates to the bottom of articles. Is there any particular reason for this, when they're supposed to go at the top? :-P --DrBob (Talk) 08:52, 30 June 2006 (PDT)


 * Hmmm...I didn't know they were "supposed" to go at the top. I see it's on the stub template page, but I don't see a place where it was a generally accepted standard.  Putting stub messages (which are for editors, not readers) at the top seems like bad practice (a reason wikipedia doesn't do that) because it is distracting, and in some pages, quite ugly.  If there has been a discussion about this that I didn't see, then I'll fix those changes and kick off the discussion again, I really don't see a reason to put it at the top though, especially when it is already quite obtrusive (even at the bottom). -- Mason11987 (Talk - Contributions) 08:55, 30 June 2006 (PDT)
 * There has been no discussion: I just put them at the top because almost all other templates go at the top. I can't see a problem with it, and as we're still growing (hopefully) many of our readers will do editing, and thus the template is relevant. Otherwise, readers should know it's a stub anyway, because it tells them that content is missing (which they otherwise might miss). --DrBob (Talk) 09:01, 30 June 2006 (PDT)


 * (Eh, this is more of a problem in general I have with large templates at the top of pages) It tells them that content is missing, but how does that help the reader to know that info?  I can assure you that readers won't miss it at the bottom of a category.  I don't see the reason that the xbox category (for example) needs a large stub thing at the top of the page.  Especially considering that people don't even come here for info on the xbox itself.  I think it gives an unproffessional look to have something like that up there (I feel the same about the cleanup and wikify templates). -- Mason11987 (Talk - Contributions) 09:07, 30 June 2006 (PDT)
 * How are people expected to be encouraged to contribute if there's nothing telling them that stuff needs contributing? If they're reading a guide, it's likely that they own and like the game, so therefore they'd be prime candidates for contributing to it. --DrBob (Talk) 09:19, 30 June 2006 (PDT)
 * I didn't say that nothing should tell them to contribute, I just don't think a 4 text line high colorful box is necessary as the first thing someone reads for a guide. And I am certain it isn't necessary as the first thing someone reads on category:Xbox.  It doesn't really bother me as much for guides, but my recent moves were almost all system categories (because I was finding out which ones had the infobox which I had edited).  There are a lot of guides that have the wip template, and the stub template, and then a few lines of text, why both?  That seems kind of stupid to me, and very annoying to those people who may be looking for the bit of info that IS there.  While it'd be great if everyone looking for info was also interested and willing to add something, if this site grows large enough, only a small minority of those people who see that message will even know what a stub is, let alone be willing to edit it.  While I don't think that seeing a couple large boxes at the top of the guide you were looking for will keep them from coming back (or even contributing at a later date), I think that they aren't required to be at the top in order to get people to edit them (wikipedia gets plenty of new editors to stub topics just because they have na interest in the topic. -- Mason11987 (Talk - Contributions) 09:27, 30 June 2006 (PDT)
 * I didn't mean to imply that you said nothing should tell them to contribute. :-P The template can be made smaller - I agree with this, and I see your point about doing it with system categories, but I still think the template should remain at the top. Guides which have both the wip template and the stub template are wrong. In this situation, wip takes priority, because it's the current action, so only the wip template should be used. If you see guides like this, please change them. :-) --DrBob (Talk) 10:02, 30 June 2006 (PDT)
 * I'm fine with that, a smaller stub, and no stub and wip templates together. stub templates should only be at the top on guides.  Sounds like a plan. -- Mason11987 (Talk - Contributions) 10:47, 30 June 2006 (PDT)

Consoleinfo template
Why have you de-floated the consoleinfo template? There's now a huge area of whitespace on the right of them which imho looks awful. --DrBob (Talk) 09:04, 30 June 2006 (PDT)


 * It looked different in the monobook style, I'll revert it until we can sort that out. -- Mason11987 (Talk - Contributions) 09:07, 30 June 2006 (PDT)

Template:--
What on earth is that for? --DrBob (Talk) 11:14, 19 September 2006 (CDT)

a very quick way of doing 

which is a combination of and a

You're gonna have to look at the code to understand.

It's just a nice way of clearing all sides for text and throwing in a horizontal rule at the same time, shorthand used on wikipedia :). -- Mason11987 (Talk - Contributions) 13:44, 19 September 2006 (CDT)
 * Check out -- for a better explanation. -- Mason11987 (Talk - Contributions) 13:46, 19 September 2006 (CDT)

qif template
Hi Mason! I wanted to talk with you because you seem to be a bit of a template expert. I am curious about your thoughts on the recent "More template woes" entry that I posted on the Community Issues page. I'm hoping that you might have some knowledge about templates and qif that might help me with my dillema. Thanks very much for your time! Procyon 10:13, 27 September 2006 (CDT)


 * Hi Mason, awesome job on the template. Thank you so much.  However, there's still a lingering problem that you may or may not be able to do anything about.  It may be that only Echelon can fix the problem.  I expanded on the problem on the Community Issues page.  Take a look and see if you can come up with any explination for the problem.  Thanks again.  Procyon 10:18, 28 September 2006 (CDT)

I've been trying to get the infobox template to have optional parameters. User:Prod/Infobox is my latest try. The problem seems to be that the qif is changing my '<' and '>' to the entity codes so that they aren't rendered as HTML. For testing, the template is used on my user page. Any ideas? -- Prod 17:16, 1 October 2006 (CDT)
 * Thanks for the help. I'm surprised that just changing from wikitables to html fixed it.  Strangely, it works on wikipedia with wikitables.  I've fixed the colors and put it at Template:Infobox. -- Prod 20:34, 1 October 2006 (CDT)
 * Yeah, I don't know either, I made a few small changes because it didn't work right in monobook skin, if it doesn't work now in other skins we can figure something out. -- Mason11987 (Talk - Contributions) 20:47, 1 October 2006 (CDT)