StrategyWiki talk:Community Portal

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PC keys?
Should there be a Category:PC keys? I think it would be useful, but I'm not good at graphics, so I'm bringing it up here as the template told me to :). -- Mason11987 (Talk - Contributions) 20:38, 22 October 2006 (CDT)
 * I'd say something more like Category:Keyboard buttons since it isn't for only PC's but all computers (minor distinction :P). -- Prod (Talk) 21:07, 22 October 2006 (CDT)
 * Separated out other talk so we can get more comments about this. -- Mason11987 (Talk - Contributions) 15:29, 25 October 2006 (CDT)
 * Yea, sorry about that. I kinda hijacked your thread. The category is probably needed, especially for games like Final Fantasy VII.  My image skills are pretty bad, but I'd suggest probably white keys, black borders, raised inner square with a nice large letter in the middle.  Also an Enter button shaped like the old ones (the triangle thing).  -- Prod (Talk) 16:34, 25 October 2006 (CDT)
 * DavysBigKeyCaps is a nice font for that. Another way to make keyboard buttons is to make a template with a plain square keyboard image as a background and the letter centered, with special cases for irregular keys. Then, it'd be more accessible as well. --blendmaster 11:45, 29 October 2006 (CST)

Strategy guide for... Strategywiki?
I think that one of the things that this site needs is a guide on how to use it. We should upgrade the help page to have all of the scripts for strategywiki such as how to categorize, place things such as stub tags on articles, how to write the guide correctly and to clean-up. It'd make more sense for new users to know how to use this stuff correctly rather than to have more experienced members use their time to clean up their articles and add the proper tags. --Navy White 13:10, 14 November 2006 (CST)
 * We are slowly putting together a couple of pages here, which describe things in decent detail (I think; if you think otherwise please bring it up on the relevant guide's talk page, and I'll see what I can do). I believe that if we imposed all this "red tape" on new users it would discourage them from contributing. It's better to have a core team of people who really know what they're doing cleaning the place up, rather than a load of people who've quickly read some documentation and are using their own interpretations of it. That said, having the documentation there doesn't hurt. :-) --DrBob (Talk) 16:37, 14 November 2006 (CST)
 * I started Help:Writing guide which covers various things, but there's still a lot missing. GarrettTalk 18:42, 14 November 2006 (CST)
 * Though it's a bit of a tanget, I actually think this could be a really good idea. In the interest of being less Wikipedia-like (and I have always hated the inherent difficulties of locating instructional Help and Special pages for editing wikis), we could use the strategy guide book-format to walkthrough various levels (beginner, advanced, etc.) of editing, and to collect all pertinent information in a single easy to understand place. This would be easy enough to over-complicate and turn into a complete disaster, but I think it could also turn out well. The goal would be to organize the creation of a new strategy guide into a minimal set of simple steps, and to use lots of images to drive points home. A Table of Contents could look like (I would expect the In-Depth guides to grow somewhat rapidly, and have included these only as a sample of how the overall guide could work):
 * The Basic steps for creating a strategy guide are in bold. Other steps cover more In-Depth concepts you may want to skip.
 * Sign Up -- ''Would contain a brief explaination that to edit any pages you must sign up for a user account, hint at the fact that content will be in the public domain, and walkthrough the process of signing up (with pictures)
 * Change Your Preferences -- ''A quick explaination of user preferences and what they do
 * Ask Questions -- ''Introduce the various places for getting help, how to use talk pages, and how to leave a signature
 * Create a Guide -- ''Searching for any existing guide, creating a new page,, basic wiki markup
 * Do Your Homework -- ''Minimum game info, where to find info, how to handle uncertainty
 * Add Pizazz -- ''Images, nav bars, sidebars, other common templates
 * Save Your Work -- ''Previewing and saving, edit summaries
 * Look For More -- ''How to stay involved with StrategyWiki, a complete outline/list of help pages and policy pages
 * And almost all Footer_Navs would contain two links in each direction, the most noticeable ones leading to the nearest Basic step, and the alternate ones leading to In-Depth steps, probably identified with icons and font sizes:


 * [ID]  = In-Depth guide
 * --inarius(T) 01:35, 15 November 2006 (CST)
 * Sounds good. Do you want to have a go at doing this? Once you've laid out the basic structure you're envisioning, I'm sure people will be able to help. :-) I suppose this would render the pages I linked to as policies, rather than help. --DrBob (Talk) 11:05, 15 November 2006 (CST)
 * I definitely won't have time to get to this until the weekend, and don't have anything against someone else who wants to get it started. I'll make sure to work on it when I get some time. --inarius(T) 14:03, 15 November 2006 (CST)
 * If anyone wants to help make a basic guide, I'll pitch in. A good idea would probably be a starter's page with some basic wiki-code and how to use it as well as strategies to writing a strategy guide. I'm thinking a page called Beginner's Guide for this stuff and later creating pages with all of the fancy things like templates.--Navy White 16:35, 15 November 2006 (CST)

Going mainstream
There are a few things which I think we need to get done (in order) before we can become a "mainstream" website. -- Prod (Talk) 13:26, 30 November 2006 (CST)


 * 1) (done) Set up the website, get the admins, basic stuff.
 * 2) (in progress) Set up policies, tell people how to use it. Essentially, have enough documentation so that within 10 minutes they can start editing, but easily find more in depth info after (or at least some direction).
 * 3) (mostly done) Set up a good amount of background guides which follow the policy and are good examples of how to continue other guides.  Having one main example is good, but we should probably have a few that show different aspects of what can be done.
 * 4) Plan a specific opening date.  Get lots of advertisement (probably should have a page with suggestions for this).  Plan some kind of event for that day (abxy should be able to help with that).
 * 5) Make sure there are proper controls so that if we do get a lot of people, there are ways for us to make sure things stay under control.
 * 6) By getting lots of people around the same time, it will show how active the site is, and it will help the any ratings that require a huge jump to become notable (ie. Alexa.com).  To this effect, I might suggest allowing anonymous edits for a few weeks around that time, depending on how bad vandalism is.  Once people are hooked they may be more willing to register (just my opinion).
 * 7) Profit!!! A new layout would be great to release at this time.  Something to show that the site is going from "Beta" to "Official".

This is quasi on-topic, but I put a blurb about us in the latest Retrogaming Times Monthly, and that gets a good amount of traffic, so hopefully some new users might start showing up from there. Procyon 16:25, 30 November 2006 (CST)
 * We should probably keep all these promotions together on one page, just to see what kind of reach this site has. Perhaps Promotions? -- Prod (Talk) 17:54, 30 November 2006 (CST)
 * Let's make that Statistics (and some various related/subpages). We'll just copy Wikipedia on this one--they have a good format.  ech elon  22:30, 30 November 2006 (CST)

Logo Image for MonoBook
Yo, I'm a noobie, fresh off Wikipedia. I changed my prefs to MonoBook, and discovered there's no logo there. Instead, it says "Set $wgLogo to the URL path to your own logo image. Can anyone fix this with a good logo? Meowster 17:13, 11 December 2006 (CST)
 * I wouldn't be the best person to do this, but I'll see whom I can run the idea past. A difficulty would be matching any MonoBook logo with the BlueCloud logo's style; I'm not sure how we could do that in a square logo very easily. It'll take some skill to do this properly.  ech elon  22:47, 17 December 2006 (CST)
 * We could use a higher resolution version of this logo.--Dan 18:01, 20 January 2007 (CST)
 * here is the SVG version of that, so someone can scale it to the right size for the monobook logo (its square). --blendmaster 18:14, 29 January 2007 (CST)

Protection and help
--Prod (Talk) 10:39, 8 January 2007 (CST)
 * 1) Copy over the wikimedia help. It would give our help section a nice boost and somewhere to build from.
 * 2) Protect All Game Nav, Footer Nav, Continue Nav, Infobox.  These are major templates, and they have become fairly stable.
 * 3) Move Community Issues to StrategyWiki Talk:Community Portal.
 * I've dealt with #2, but I'm leaving the others for now. --DrBob (Talk) 11:43, 8 January 2007 (CST)
 * I can take care of #1, just want to know if I should go ahead with it. The reason being that we will have to go through the pages and clean them up for use here. -- Prod (Talk) 12:14, 8 January 2007 (CST)
 * I'm not sure I understand the purpose of #3. I'm not against it, I just don't understand it.  Could you explain the reasoning?  Procyon 12:17, 8 January 2007 (CST)
 * I just thought it might be something to discuss, so here are a few points.
 * We don't use the talk pages for either the community portal or the issues pages.
 * As most of the major issues have been cleared up (new users don't really need this page) the link can maybe be removed from the sidebar and replaced with Staff lounge or something.
 * The community portal is afaik unused, moving it there would draw more attention to it (it could use an overhaul anywayz)
 * We would get the "Edit +" link at the top since this is a discussion page, not an "information" page, and fits in with the community portal "theme".
 * I still haven't decided if I think it's a good idea or not yet, but I think it's worth a bit of thought. -- Prod (Talk) 12:42, 8 January 2007 (CST)
 * Cool, thank you for explaining it. I understand your points about the community portal, and my only argument against moving this page is because I'm so used to it being here, which isn't necessarily a good argument, so I would support the move. Procyon 12:45, 8 January 2007 (CST)
 * Now that you've explained your reasons (I probably should've asked, but I knew they would be good ones regardless), I would support #3. Do you want to do this Prod? For the moment, I say we should leave the Wikipedia help where it is, and just refer people to it where necessary. We could link to it from our help if/where appropriate. --DrBob (Talk) 15:11, 8 January 2007 (CST)
 * Are we going to leave this page redirecting to there? Should I have the talk pages changed to point there (the one's already subst: as part of Welcome)? Should we move the Archives? (My answers: Yes, No if there's a redirect yes otherwise, Yes) -- Prod (Talk) 15:43, 8 January 2007 (CST)
 * Sounds good. :-) --DrBob (Talk) 16:56, 8 January 2007 (CST)
 * I agree with the points brought up on #3. The talk page for the Community Portal is indeed unused and moving Community issues there would bring more attention to the Community Portal page. I have to admit, in the time I've been at Strategy Wiki, I've never really visited the Community Portal. 0-172 00:26, 9 January 2007 (CST)
 * DrBob took care of #2, I took care of #3. About #1, just to note that the help pages are public domain, so we can just copy them over whenever we deem necessary. -- Prod (Talk) 12:28, 9 January 2007 (CST)
 * The sooner the better I say. --Notmyhandle 12:45, 9 January 2007 (CST)
 * I say we leave them where they are. That way, we can direct people to them, but we also get the benefits of wikipedians constantly maintaining them. --DrBob (Talk) 16:57, 9 January 2007 (CST)
 * PD O'rly? :) -- Mason11987 (Talk - Contributions) 08:56, 18 January 2007 (CST)
 * YA RLY!!!. -- Prod (Talk) 16:54, 18 January 2007 (CST)
 * Neat, very well :) -- Mason11987 (Talk - Contributions) 09:07, 19 January 2007 (CST)
 * Actually, I don't think it changes that much looking at the recent changes (looks mostly like vandalism). -- Prod (Talk) 13:42, 20 January 2007 (CST)

Wikipedia linking
I've noticed that there's a fair amount of linking to wikipedia with the wikipedia template. I'm wondering how much linking is necessary. Having the template on every game shouldn't be necessary, since our pages should have enough information about the game. Company pages I guess would be a good place to put the template, since I think that's fairly borderline relevant to StrategyWiki's mission. Series pages are almost self completing, as historical information isn't that important, though it could be useful to see the changes in a game based on the developer. -- Prod (Talk) 15:33, 13 January 2007 (CST)
 * I'd just like to point out that something in the wikipedia template can really cause havoc with page layouts, especially when you've got an embedded table of contents. --aniki21 18:48, 13 January 2007 (CST)
 * I believe how necessary the linking is depends on the completion of the guide. If the guide has a fair amount of information, then the link isn't needed. But if there is no, or if Wikipedia has more information, then maybe the linking could be used. Having the link template on each game article isn't necessary, only on articles that might need it (if at all) or with guides with minimal information. Other than that, I believe that the wikipedia template does clutter up pages. As for wreaking havoc with page layouts, it really could mess things up, I can see how would mess things up with an embedded ToC. 0-172 2:25, 14 January 2007 (CST)
 * The only reason I like to include a link to WP is because frequently there is information in WP that does not belong in a strategy guide such as pop culture references, merchandise, and more detailed descriptions of the technology used to develop the game. In the long run, I don't personally care too much either way, I just provide it as a courtesy.  Obviously if someone really wants to look a subject up on wikipedia, they can figure it out.  Procyon 21:08, 13 January 2007 (CST)
 * Thus the WP template should be used on 1)stub-like articles and 2)articles with additional non-game guide information. --Notmyhandle 01:39, 14 January 2007 (CST)

Genesis Buttons
I've noticed that there aren't any Sega Genesis buttons avaiable to use. As a result my contributions keep getting tagged that they need buttons. If someone could make them, that would be awesome--GameboyHippo 12:43, 20 January 2007 (CST)
 * User:Blendmaster is the one who's made most of our button icons so far...but he's busy with school at the moment. -- Prod (Talk) 12:53, 20 January 2007 (CST)

Protection of copyright on StrategyWiki
I'm trying to work with existing guide writers (for example those who submit their works to GameFAQs) to use their work on StrategyWiki and the concern about using their work while abiding by their request for copyright. For images this isn't really a problem because you can place the notice on the page; but for text, it either becomes jumbled in with non-copyrighted information (am I using the right term here? should this stuff be deemed copyleft?) or isn't noted on the page.

Basically what I'm asking is: is there a template or something to note that the information contained on a page should be noted as not 100% copyable? OR is that sort of text not allowed on StrategyWiki?

Need clarifications, also this sort of thing should be listed somewhere with notices in places that people see it.--Notmyhandle 03:47, 21 January 2007 (CST)
 * IANAL, but StrategyWiki can't accept contributions which aren't allowed to be copied. Anything which goes on StrategyWiki has to be copyable, as per the GFDL. --DrBob (Talk) 04:20, 21 January 2007 (CST)
 * I should point out that legally, anybody who copies stuff off StrategyWiki does have to keep the attributions (i.e. edit history) in tact and with the copied content. --DrBob (Talk) 04:21, 21 January 2007 (CST)
 * As stated within the GFDL I might add. Yeah I understand.--Notmyhandle 14:48, 21 January 2007 (CST)

Thoughts on Google Adsense?
Abxy.org, the source of this server's funding, has unfortunately come into a bit of a dry spell. I'm not sure why, and we're still trying to diagnose this, but traffic has fallen enough to the point we're not getting as many new visitors, and this leads to us not getting as much money from adsense as we're used to. We're working on refining the website completely, but this is going to be a slow process. Nicholas Weinberg, one of the people who moderates at Abxy and gives SEO and advertising advice, has suggested that we could earn a good deal of income through a small (probably one) unit of adsense on StrategyWiki, more than enough to pay for the server and bandwidth, and perhaps enabling us to go colocated.

I know this is a very unpopular topic at Wikipedia, and any mention of ads draws an entire contingent of boos and hissing, but there's no way that a niche wiki such as ours can be driven with their model; can we really expect to get over $100 a month in donations every single month? And what about when traffic grows?

I firmly expected Abxy to provide 100% of the coverage for StrategyWiki, and my belief is that one day it will, but development of that site and service is going to take more time than I had previously expected, especially with all of us developers currently enrolled as full-time students. (I'm taking 21 hours at two different colleges, plus I'm also teaching.)

GameFAQs and Wikia both provide similar services to StrategyWiki (in two different ways), and they are both ad-supported. While I believe GameFAQs is over the top in terms of both licensing and advertising, I think Wikia has a fair enough model. What do you guys think of this?  ech elon  20:57, 21 January 2007 (CST)
 * As much as I know this will turn certain people off, I am in support of the idea. If it comes down to seeing ads on StrategyWiki, or seeing SW disappear, I vote for the ads.  I've lived with them on gamefaqs.com long enough, and I don't want to see all my, and everyone else's, hard work go down the drain.  I say bring them on, and let's continue to build this site to what we know it can become.  Procyon
 * Ads. I don't give a damn about click throughs or ugly white space, etc.  SW must survive! Btw, wouldn't we be able to conveniently shove the ads into the toolbox/right side panel? --Notmyhandle 22:38, 21 January 2007 (CST)
 * I would support having adsense links. Just some info to put things in perspective. SW is almost into the top 100k webpages according to Alexa!  ABXY on the otherhand is somewhere around 300k.  Now, depending on where it is put, having more than one link may look better. A PayPal link would be good too.  However, with donations, I would want to see where the money is going (ie. $XX received, $YY spent on server costs, $ZZ excess).  This isn't so much an issue with adsense since it isn't really a person donating their money, just their clicks. -- Prod (Talk) 22:55, 21 January 2007 (CST)
 * I agree with Prod about the Paypal link. It could be very neatly placed under the menu on the left, with an explination of its purpose on the front page. Procyon 10:03, 22 January 2007 (CST)
 * While this does sound like a good idea that could really jump start our funding, I think it should be taken into consideration that StrategyWiki, like ABXY, is still managed, (in this case) written, and read by mostly experienced users and/or users with a history with ABXY/DSmeet/SW. We are only a niche of ad clickers compared to the enormous amount of ad clickers we call the casual readers. I can't speak for every one of the 4,500 average visits per day of course, but I feel it will do more harm than good if we allow ourselves to throw an adsense advertisement box on the side of the page and expect our number of contributions per day to stay put. Readers, who we would love to become regular contributors, would see the ads and instantly think of this site being a for-profit site. Even though this isn't really the case, this could scare potential contributors away, leaving us with the small group of hard-working contributors we have now. New writers and contributors will have no reason to why they should write in favor of someone else's wallet.--Dan 15:18, 22 January 2007 (CST)

People put up with all the ads on gamefaqs all the time. So long as that they don't seriously interfere with the regular operation of SW, I don't see any reason to object.--Froglet 03:16, 22 January 2007 (CST)
 * I agree as long as the ads aren't too flashy or annoying. It sucks to have ads that pop-up in the middle of the page and stay there when the page is scrolled down or up.  I don't know a whole lot about Google Adsense, but I'm in support of placing ads on SW until we don't need them anymore.-- Duke  Ruckley  10:51, 22 January 2007 (CST)
 * Google Adsense adverts are the sensible ones you see which say "Goooooogle!" at the bottom. ;-) I'm in support of this. --DrBob (Talk) 10:55, 22 January 2007 (CST)
 * Like I said, we have space for ads on both the left and right side; and they would not take away from the site; I mean we have whitespace, why not make use of it. --Notmyhandle 17:24, 22 January 2007 (CST)
 * What do you think? It doesn't quite match the width, and Google's TOS says not to mess with the code to change the width of ads (although Digg clearly does). Should we change the size of our sidebar? Or perhaps change the placement of the ad? I'm curious to see how much it earns in the first week; I'll definitely report some figures when we find out.  ech elon  00:11, 24 January 2007 (CST)
 * Dang, I just saw that you added it and I had been editing and didn't even notice! That's definitely a good sign. Additionally, can you add a box below toolbox in the wiki template that just spaces it from the rest? It can be labeled or not, but a visual (white space or otherwise) break should be there to separate ads from SW. --Notmyhandle 00:22, 24 January 2007 (CST)
 * The width doesn't matter so much as the alignment. As of now it's just floating not really in the center, not on the side.  It should be aligned with the right or left side.  Digg is allowed to change the width on their ads because they're a "premium publisher" (aka they get over xxxxxxxxxx amount of page views or something).  Change the alignment and everything should be good.  And make SURE you have a channel set specifically for SW.org in adsense to see how it does specifically.--ConfusedSoul 00:35, 24 January 2007 (CST)
 * Just a question, does the adsense payment thing work by how many views it uses or by the number of people who click on it? I think that the idea is a good one for now since we need the funding, but should be removed/reduced once the site gets bigger. --Navy White 09:30, 24 January 2007 (CST)
 * It looks fine to me, though the 4th ad is usually half off the screen for me, therefore adding a bunch of whitespace below small pages (for example, my user page, area below the cats). Some pages (like Final Fantasy VII) have stuff in the sidebar, which pushes the ads much further down.  It's not so much a concern for those pages though, since they're already fairly long. -- Prod (Talk) 10:39, 24 January 2007 (CST)
 * Yuck!! I hate the ads, but whatever it takes to keep Strategy Wiki going...0-172 20:35, 24 January 2007 (CST)
 * It's pay per click. So it's every time someone clicks on one of the ads.  On this site it will probably come out to be anywhere from $.02-$.20 a click.  We could also try something like what they are doing here http://www.centiare.com/Directory:Maryland see underneath the "contents" box it has ads by google.  But they are still very subtle.  And yeah the ads look "out of place" until they are aligned properly.--ConfusedSoul 14:45, 24 January 2007 (CST)

Procyon 15:13, 24 January 2007 (CST)
 * Ugh. Did *anyone* read my comment?--Dan 17:14, 24 January 2007 (CST)
 * Well...I read Dan's comment and I do agree, but as I said before, anything to keep the site running. 0-172 (Talk) 23:41, 24 January 2007 (CST)
 * I do feel that we need our fundings, but at least if we're going to put up ads, A} put them on the left and format it according to the left, and B} put a small explanation below the ad on why it's there. I'm really worried about new contributors thinking of SW as a for-profit site.--Dan 19:53, 24 January 2007 (CST)
 * @ Dan: let's put the notice ABOVE (maybe below as well) so people see it (sometimes the ad is only half visible, thus the bottom wouldn't be seen). We can just say "SW is NON-PROFIT." @ Procyon: Sorry for making the thread big, but the discussion isn't dead yet. @ Confused Soul: The alignment isn't really that noticible, there's like a 4-8 pixel difference in white space for either side; if its uncorrectable oh well (I would like it fixed, just saying). --Notmyhandle 20:05, 24 January 2007 (CST)
 * I think ads are not a bad thing really. two things though:

--Kajolus 02:53, 26 January 2007 (CST)
 * think about different ways of funding (the idea with the paypal button surely can be one option). but attracting more visitors is also not a bad idea (marketing?)
 * MMORPG fans will "love" you for displaying ads for platinum/gold sellers like links to thsale.com or power4game.com. I know that certain sites are being boycotted since they sold out to IGE.com i.e. I am not sure of the impact here on the SW though. are there options to block those ads i.e.?
 * Actually, I had a bad run-in with IGE's Jon Yantis about a year ago; his firm squatted some domains that were critical to the expansion of my then-active project DSmeet. Needless to say, I decided to change my direction rather than pay him a large sum of money for the domains. In investigating his other dealings I also discovered how much the MMO community hate him and his company for what they do. As such, I would love to ensure that IGE are blocked from our ads for their part in gold trafficking. Do you guys have a list of everything we should block?  ech elon  21:03, 2 February 2007 (CST)

Adsense Announcement
Just so the previous thread does not continue to grow, and because the decision has been made, I wanted to start a new thread and announce the new announcement that I added to the main page. I was very thoughtful about how to phrase it in as positive a light as possible. Examine it, and let me know if you have any comments about it. But leave them here, don't edit the announcement directly. Thanks! Procyon 15:22, 24 January 2007 (CST)
 * I edited your comment in the previous thread out. Don't do what you were saying.  Not only is it against Google TOS but it is completely unnecessary.  We WILL get banned for that type of thing.  And that would pretty much screw us over.  But yeah, echelon asap let us know what the results are and fix the alignment.--ConfusedSoul 19:24, 24 January 2007 (CST)
 * Note, this doesn't show up in the monobook skin, and perhaps others. -- Mason11987 (Talk - Contributions) 02:06, 26 January 2007 (CST)
 * The width of the ad box doesn't bother me as much as the margin on the top. There should be a margin equal to the left and right margins between the ad box and toolbox. --blendmaster 18:10, 29 January 2007 (CST)
 * well, i don't like the Google Ads ad all. If you have to have them, please make them more different from the toolbox on the right side. As for now, the blue Google Ads look like some expansion of the blue Toolbox on the right of the screen. Maybe some empty lines below "related changes" (in the toolbox) would do a good job to better seperate strategywiki content from Ads.--Horstjens 13:58, 1 February 2007 (CST)
 * So in summary of all comments so far (plus my own):

-- Prod (Talk) 14:14, 1 February 2007 (CST)
 * Put space between ads and toolbox
 * Either shrink width of toolbox or expand width of ads to make them the same width
 * If possible have only 3 ads so that the 4th doesn't go off the screen.

Upload File changes
So its not really "upload file" is it, but really upload image? Is there some future goal in mind or is this an error? Because shouldn't the title be changed, as well as on the page's first sentence where it says, "Use the form below to upload files" ?? --Notmyhandle 18:57, 26 January 2007 (CST)
 * MediaWiki is configured like this by default, and we do actually support uploading of files other than images. For example, my page on Counter-Strike: Source/Maps/de_inferno has panoramic screenshots uploaded (at the bottom). --DrBob (Talk) 06:49, 27 January 2007 (CST)
 * Very cool, can you add that information to the StrategyWiki guide? --Notmyhandle 14:49, 27 January 2007 (CST)
 * What information exactly? The method for making panoramic screenshots will vary from game to game, and uploading them is just the same as uploading an image. --DrBob (Talk) 14:55, 27 January 2007 (CST)
 * Under user priveledges section I talked a little about the uploading of images, just like, correct or make changes that reflect the slightly broader inclusion of such files. --Notmyhandle 15:53, 27 January 2007 (CST)
 * I'm afraid I don't have time to do that, but feel free to do it yourself. :-) --DrBob (Talk) 16:26, 27 January 2007 (CST)

All game nav and maintenence templates
It appears that the most common procedure is to have maintence templates above the All Game Nav. Particularly myself, I favor them below below all game nav but I was wondering what everyone thought. -- Mason11987 (Talk - Contributions) 18:37, 29 January 2007 (CST)
 * I just followed User:DrBobs example. Personally, I don't think it matters. -- Prod (Talk) 18:50, 29 January 2007 (CST)
 * Realized it's part of the newgame template (where can that be found by a user, by the way?), so nevermind. -- Mason11987 (Talk - Contributions) 19:21, 29 January 2007 (CST)
 * New game will hopefully end up in the Guide eventually. -- Prod (Talk) 19:39, 29 January 2007 (CST)

Template:Toolbox
Can the funcationality of this template be exteneded to monobook? -- Mason11987 (Talk - Contributions) 19:21, 29 January 2007 (CST)

MediaWiki:Tagline
You may have noticed by now that a tagline has been appended to the beginning of every page on StrategyWiki. Currently, it reads "From Strategywiki, the collaborative source for game walkthroughs". IMO, this is too long and bulky for what we need: a concise and straight to the-point tagline that includes the word walkthrough (for SEO purposes.) If you have a suggestion for a decent tagline, append it to this thread and it'll be considered by the sysops.--Dan 21:06, 29 January 2007 (CST)
 * Maybe it isn't so bad.Dan 21:17, 29 January 2007 (CST)

Messed up Skins
What happend to the cloud one? And why can't I change my profile? It's all yellow right now, set to "classic." <_< >_> SOMEONE BROKE SW! --Notmyhandle 22:25, 29 January 2007 (CST)
 * Oops.--Dan 23:19, 29 January 2007 (CST)
 * Going to http://strategywiki.org says something about scheduled downtime between dec 20-22, but Main Page works fine. -- Prod (Talk) 00:30, 30 January 2007 (CST)
 * Dan fixed it. And Lol @ main page. --Notmyhandle 00:33, 30 January 2007 (CST)
 * No, he was right. When I left to sleep I totally forgot to check the main page, and it turns out according to the backup I used that page was the one we used during the server backup in 2006. Right now I'm hoping there isn't anything else I've forgotten, otherwise I won't be able to fix it until I come back from school.--Dan 08:20, 30 January 2007 (CST)
 * http://strategywiki.org is forbidden :-O. Main Page works though. -- Prod (Talk) 09:27, 30 January 2007 (CST)

What's going on? http://strategywiki.org/wiki/Category:PlayStation_3 some messed up yellow template. And SW.org is forbidden. --ConfusedSoul 16:01, 30 January 2007 (CST)
 * I'm not sure about messed up, but that template is to say that the PS3 hasn't been released in EU yet. The sw.org thing probably has to do with Dan taking down the maintenance notice.  Should be easy enough to fix. -- Prod (Talk) 16:09, 30 January 2007 (CST)

Special:Import not working
XML importing doesn't work. It goes to a "cannot find server" page in both IE and Firefox, whereas before any errors were explained on the page itself. I assume this has something to do with the new image server. GarrettTalk 20:57, 30 January 2007 (CST)
 * What's the file size you are trying to import? It seems to have trouble with anything over 1 meg. -- Prod (Talk) 21:32, 30 January 2007 (CST)
 * Ah. It's 1.26 MB, but, still, I've imported things around this size fine in the past. I'll try using the cutoff I read about. GarrettTalk 22:02, 30 January 2007 (CST)

I'm trying to import two XML pages from WP, but haven't been able to, most likely this is the reason, hmmm... -- Mason11987 (Talk - Contributions) 22:52, 30 January 2007 (CST)
 * Which page? -- Prod (Talk) 22:57, 30 January 2007 (CST)


 * Both have been deleted I believe, one is a list of items common in the zelda series, the other is... I can't remember right now. But they both have large histories.  I can send you the xml and you can give it a shot if you like, just use the e-mail me function and I'll e-mail you back with the files. -- Mason11987 (Talk - Contributions) 12:37, 31 January 2007 (CST)
 * They are now at Weapons and items from The Legend of Zelda series and Dead Rising/Weapons. Not sure what to do with the first one, so I left it with the same name.  I did it by splitting each export file into a few pieces, revision by revision, and uploaded them.  Seems the limit is 0.5 MB.  -- Prod (Talk) 15:15, 31 January 2007 (CST)
 * You're dead on, the limit was 500KB. I've bump the cap up to 1.5 MB, so that should allow you to do the transfers you need sufficiently.
 * Awesome, thank you very much. Just needed to save it from afd. -- Mason11987 (Talk - Contributions) 01:41, 1 February 2007 (CST)

Forbidden SW
Every time I try to get to SW by typing in http://www.strategywiki.org into the address bar, it comes up with an error. "Forbidden". I have to type in the full address, http://www.strategywiki.org/wiki/Main_Page to pull up the homepage. Is there a way we can just redirect sw.org to sw.org/wiki/... etc.?-- Duke Ruckley  12:49, 31 January 2007 (CST)
 * It used to be that way, but I think Dan broke something... Refer to . -- Prod (Talk) 13:36, 31 January 2007 (CST)
 * Rewrite rules were going to .net instead of .org. Dan has a fixation on .net for some reason. Consider this fixed. --PowerMatt 15:58, 31 January 2007 (CST)
 * Ah, I see. Thanks.-- Duke  Ruckley  17:56, 31 January 2007 (CST)
 * I really need to apologize for what happened the night before yesterday. SCP screwed up and overwrote the StrategyWiki skin file with squat, so I had to restore a copy from the backups we did in December of 2006.--Dan 18:26, 31 January 2007 (CST)

Most Promising Guide of the Month
How do I transition the Promising Guide of the month? 0-172 (Talk) 00:44, 1 February 2007 (CST)
 * What exactly do you mean? Set up the one for the next month? It's already set up February, but check here for some examples. -- Prod (Talk) 19:45, 31 January 2007 (CST)
 * How do you change it on the main page? Even though you set up February's the main page still displays January's. 0-172 (Talk) 2:26, 1 February 2007 (CST)
 * Oh, you seem to be a few hours ahead of me. It's still Jan here.  Anywayz, it displays based on what the month variable says, and that can take up to 24 hours before it refreshes, so it should be right by the 2nd. -- Prod (Talk) 21:39, 31 January 2007 (CST)

A possibly big issue: Standardizing a guide hierarchy
First off, for those of you who may not know me, and for those of you who don't know me well enough, I'm User:Dan and I'm the server admin that has been causing the recent screw ups on StrategyWiki. It was just recently that I've started to contribute to StrategyWiki, and so far, I love it. I never knew how fun StrategyWiki, a project completely led by a community initiative, really was. My skepticism blinded me from what I was missing out.

Anyhow, today I'd like to bring up an issue that suprisingly hasn't been spoken of much. I'm talking about the development of a standardized guide hierarchy. In most guides, we've seen that both walkthrough and other informational pages have all been organized in the top-level directory of it's guide. Probably the one guide we all refer most to is the Oot guide, which was first designated by echelon as an example of the de facto guide standard that was never really written. Most interestingly, this guide has used a single top-level namespace to organize it's pages (The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time/The Beginning, The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time/Inside the Deku Tree, etc.) You'd think that a guide that was originally made to serve as an example of what StrategyWiki guides should look like would have an organized hierarchy where all pages relating to the walkthrough would fall into a /Walkthrough/ pseudo-subdirectory, while all other informational pages (such as the Controls) would fall under the top-level directory. Funny, it doesn't.

One guide that has made it to the Stage 4 of completion (I've moved it down to stage 3 due to numerous necessary cleanups that need to be made) is the Contra guide. While I was cleaning up the guide I noticed it's walkthrough has it's pages listed under /Walkthrough/, and not under the top-level directory like the OoT guide. I asked User:Procyon of what he thought I should do, as in decide whether or not I should move all pages under /Walkthrough/ back into the top-level namespace (/Contra/). It was the first occurance to him ever that he's seen a guide organized in such a hierarchy, and really had no idea as to whether that is in violation of the suggested guide hierarchy or it indirectly suggests the development of a new one, which brings me to my question.

The question to you all is: should all guides have it's walkthrough's pages organized under a /Walkthrough/ pseudo-subdirectory, as shown in Contra?

My response is yes. Although it will take many edits to enforce such a standard, it can greatly help optimize our SEO performance for the various search engines that send spiders to StrategyWiki, ultimately brining in more users and potential editors. It would be nothing but a better StrategyWiki.--Dan 20:08, 2 February 2007 (CST)


 * Dan, out of curiosity, can you explain what you mean by optimizizing our SEO performance, and how sub-dirring everything under "Walkthrough" would help? I'm not fully knowledgeable on that subject, and I imagine many other users of SW may not be either. Procyon 20:25, 2 February 2007 (CST)
 * For example, when you punch in "EarthBound walkthrough" into Google, depending on what the "spiders" or robots have gathered, Google will search for instances of both "EarthBound" and "walkthrough" of the pages it's indexed and present them to the user. In theory, the more occurances of "EarthBound" and "walkthrough" on a page the more likely a page would be to be displayed as the 50th result than in the 100th result, resulting in more attention and a higher possibility of getting more clicks. There are many metrics that web spiders gather and compute to determine in which order that web results are displayed, so it isn't as simple as it sounds. A high web result with relevant texts in the result's title and excerpts make it more likely to receive attention, and get clicked on. Having "walkthrough" in every title and have it occur multiple times would signal to Google that we do have "walkthrough"s and we do have "EarthBound"s, and we deserve to be placed in the first few web results.--Dan 20:36, 2 February 2007 (CST)
 * I understand what you mean, but I'm confused as to what exactly you want to do. 0-172 Talk 2:39, 3 February 2007 (CST)
 * I'm not so sure. We've already got "the free walkthrough wiki" in every page title and "walkthrough" in the text of every page thanks to All Game Nav. Also, wherever possible the page name contains the full title of that mission or objective. Moving everything down a notch will result in some long and awkward page names. We'd also have to consider redesigning Footer Nav since some guides (like Procyon's) use Footer Nav on non-walkthrough pages as well. Finding and moving the pages will be a very long process (although Special:Whatlinkshere/Template:Footer Nav is a good starting point). Not to say the size of the job alone means we should put it off, but we really need to be sure about the gains before we head down this road. GarrettTalk 20:44, 2 February 2007 (CST)
 * Actually, I noticed this a while ago. I don't think it really matters which way it is done.  The way I understand google's (and most likely other search engines) listing is based on PageRank (or comparable technologies).  Those ratings have more to do with what links to a page, rather than what a page has.  The tagline seems to have disappeared, but that gives the term walkthrough for when it shows the summary, and the word walkthrough is on every ToC, which is included in every page.  I would be strongly against changing from one to the other, but I don't think it matters which way we set it up. -- Prod (Talk) 21:00, 2 February 2007 (CST)
 * I would say that it doesn't really matter. I originally set out to have things under /Walkthrough/, but this fell by the wayside, and most guides now just put pages in the guide root. I've got no problems with this, and it does make linking to such pages a hell of a lot easier; if we had things sub-paged under /Walkthrough/, we'd have to type out /Walkthrough/ every time we wanted to link to that page from anywhere other than its siblings. --DrBob (Talk) 21:50, 2 February 2007 (CST)
 * I see. Well, in that case, should something be done for the guides that already have /Walthrough/ used as a pseudo-subdirectory for the walkthrough pages?--Dan 23:02, 2 February 2007 (CST)
 * I think you are over-estimating the importance of the term "walkthrough" check out this link "http://freekeywords.wordtracker.com/?seed=walkthrough&suggest=Hit+Me&adult_filter=remove_dubious" even the most popular "walkthrough" morrowind only got 1,000 searchs in the past 90 days. And yes, on-page SEO is dead.  What I mean by that is, yes have the word on the page, in the title, and in h1 tags, but other than that it's not a big deal.  Links are what search engines care about.  And what we really want is to rank for the actual game.  That's where real traffic comes from.

--ConfusedSoul 23:36, 3 February 2007 (CST)