StrategyWiki talk:Community Portal

This page is for discussion of general community issues; if you just want to ask a question to more experienced users of the site, please use the staff lounge. To start a new thread [ click here]. Resolved threads are gradually archived; see the archives box to the right.

A new skin is under development. If you have any suggestions, please add them to the list

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)

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.

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

Bulbapedia links
What happened to the Bulbapedia: links (example Pokémon/Pokédex. -- Prod (Talk) 22:29, 4 February 2007 (CST)
 * It's because the image seems to have gone MIA. :-( --DrBob (Talk) 00:24, 5 February 2007 (CST)
 * Fixed. :-) --DrBob (Talk) 00:27, 5 February 2007 (CST)

Userboxes
I've seen a lot of userboxes being created. So here's a few questions about how we deal with them. Many are created directly on people's userpages, which doesn't cause problems. However, many of these would be commonly used and would benefit from being turned into templates. We could do what wikipedia did, or we can pick our own way of doing things. We could create a Userbox namespace, but that could cause problems if that means that we "officially" support them. Another option is to put all userboxes as subpages of Template:Userbox, so something like Template:Userbox/Firefox (or even Template:Userbox:Firefox since it would look better as a template inclusion). Another option is leaving them in regular template space, and having them marked with Category:Userbox. -- Prod (Talk) 21:52, 6 February 2007 (CST)
 * I think that we should just stick with one userbox template which has flexibility, and so it can be used on people's user pages, with the right variables plugged in to customise it. I would oppose having a large number of userboxes (wherever they are) as they would be unnecessary (because all you need is one with flexible variables), and take up a lot of namespace space (i.e. be messy). --DrBob (Talk) 00:16, 7 February 2007 (CST)

Questionable/pornographic games
Things like Leisure Suit Larry: Magna Cum Laude, Playboy: The Mansion, and Do You Like Horny Bunnies?. Do we allow pictures? Do we have a warning on them? Do we allow them at all? -- Prod (Talk) 21:55, 6 February 2007 (CST)
 * I believe we should follow the Wikipedian uncensored rule, but we should have a disclaimer notifying users that it is a pornographic game.  bibliomaniac 1  5  00:15, 7 February 2007 (CST)
 * I agree with Bibliomaniac15. I think we should emulate Wikipedia, and allow useful pictures, but anything excessive should be removed. --DrBob (Talk) 00:17, 7 February 2007 (CST)
 * I think we have to model ourselves after Wikipedia as much as possible, but perhaps we can provide a means of ingenuity about this. We have DOM-based article tags. I'm sure we could do Ajax-based image hiding similar in for to how popups works.
 * For instance, we could create a template that blanks the image with a X and instructs the user to edit a page such as User:Username/Age18 and fill in a "true" value that the ajax will check before showing the image in the template. This allows those who want to see images to see them and prevents harm to anyone who doesn't want to see the images. Just a thought.  ech  elon  00:27, 7 February 2007 (CST)
 * Then again, that requires user registration. That might be too much to ask?  ech elon  00:28, 7 February 2007 (CST)
 * YouTube requires confirmation to view videos flagged as objectionable and I think creating an account may be part of that requirement, so I don't see creating an account as being too huge a barrier. Perhaps, though, it should be the whole guide that's blanked, since many of these games will have equally explicit text. It's also tidier than having 20 instances of blanked out images on a single page. This could be simply achieved by placing a template in the ToC, which is then inherited by all pages in that guide via the All Game Nav. GarrettTalk 02:15, 7 February 2007 (CST)
 * Currently, the AGN works so that when the page is loaded, the ToC is collapsed, and doesn't load at all if the user doesn't have js enabled (as opposed to the MapleStory/Skill desc which loads first, then shrinks). Something like that could perhaps be used. -- Prod (Talk) 00:32, 7 February 2007 (CST)
 * Actually, now that I think about it, unless the sex acts are actually interactive (e.g. Hot Coffee) what purpose would images serve? It might be useful to have thumbnails for a summary of unlockable h-scenes or something, but other than that I'm not sure what purpose they'd serve. GarrettTalk 02:20, 7 February 2007 (CST)
 * The only thing I would propose as far as a policy would be to say that no questionable images appear on the front page of the guide. It's just like a magazine cover.  The cover has to be presentable and acceptable to the public, but if you know what you're about to view and choose to look inside, then all bets are off.  Procyon 08:55, 7 February 2007 (CST)
 * Agreed. It might be an idea to make an "age 18" template to put on the front cover to warn minors, but I think censoring it is too far. If people are going to ignore an "age 18 only" notice, they're also going to bypass any other measures we put in place, and short of asking for a credit card number, there's nothing we can do to stop that. All that restrictive measures would do is to make life harder for people who are legitimately allowed to view such content. --DrBob (Talk) 10:59, 7 February 2007 (CST)
 * Images would serve to demonstrate gameplay (not all are adventure games..though most are). I would say we have the warning on the main page, and prevent any explicit language/images on the main page, but allow "anything" (relevant to gameplay) on subpages. Perhaps we could also add a 18+ category for images, incase we do decide to do some kind of hiding for them (easier for bots). -- Prod (Talk) 11:34, 7 February 2007 (CST)
 * I think this the best course of action. Nothing should be hidden, but there should be a banner stating that the game is rated AO and the content that makes the game rated AO may be on subsequent pages, and that should be enough in my opinion. -- Mason11987 (Talk - Contributions) 22:41, 8 February 2007 (CST)

Just an idea, why can't we use this to stop vandals putting their pictures on the site. We could put this template on all new images and have an admin (or a user with a few months experience) remove it when it has been checked for porn. If a user wanted to see the image straightaway then they could change the flag to True for Unchecked Images so they can see them.

I am new to the site so if this is a bad idea, let me know

Rocky 04:01, 8 February 2007 (CST)
 * I think that would be too time-consuming and inconvenient, as 99.9% of images uploaded are legitimate. We usually catch vandals pretty fast, so I don't think it's an issue. --DrBob (Talk) 06:46, 8 February 2007 (CST)

Following Wikipedia: Implementing nofollow a good idea?
Seeing how we are trying to get StrategyWiki based off Wikipedia's effective policy, what do you all think about having nofollow in our external links?--Dan 09:23, 7 February 2007 (CST)
 * To be honest, I tried to follow this discussion but I'm still not clear on the benefits that it provides. A lot of this pagerank stuff goes over my head.  Could you concisely lay out the pros and cons of this decision to make it easier to debate? Procyon 10:16, 7 February 2007 (CST)
 * Basically, a site gets ranked by search engines (for a large part) on the number of links to that site from others. This encourages certain unscrupulous people to spam other sites with links to their own (or a client's), to boost their own pagerank. If a link has a special "nofollow" property (relationship, actually) on it, search engines won't count that link as contributing towards the pagerank of the linked website, and so the incentive for people to spam sites with such links is anulled. I would strongly support putting nofollow on external links for precisely this reason. --DrBob (Talk) 10:57, 7 February 2007 (CST)
 * For the past few months, we've only had like 2 or 3 useless links put on the site. I don't think the nofollow tag is useful unless we start getting spammed.  By having followable links to other sites, it gives the good sites a better rank, and they will potentially link back to us, helping with our rank.  So, for the moment, I'm against the nofollow tag. -- Prod (Talk) 11:31, 7 February 2007 (CST)
 * Seconded for the same reasons. -- Mason11987 (Talk - Contributions) 23:05, 7 February 2007 (CST)
 * I think it would be best to be preventative here. If people start spamming StrategyWiki, they won't stop. We should make sure they know that spamming won't do them any good before they even start. --DrBob (Talk) 01:42, 8 February 2007 (CST)
 * No. There is no reason to have nofollow.  It would only hurt us.  Nofollow means exactly that, spiders aren't supposed to(yet some still do anyway)that link. Wikipedia is huge, google knows to spider them.  Nofollow will hurt getting our pages indexed.  Even if you could put it only on outgoing links, our outgoing links consist of abxy, dsmeet and actual relevant pages.  When we get a large amount of spam THEN we can think about this.


 * Not that it would change anything. People spam wikipedia for the traffic.  We'd have the same case if we got to the point of that much traffic for it to be worth spamming anyway.  And people that are spamming that would actually cause any damage would be using bots (or large amounts of indian labor) in that case they'd be targetting wiki's in general and whether we have nofollow or not wouldn't matter to them.--ConfusedSoul 21:55, 8 February 2007 (CST)

Transiki pages with large number of revisions
I've managed to write something that will allow me to export pages from wikipedia/wikibooks that are longer than the 100 revision limit. If needed, please leave me a message. This is only in the case where a regular Special:Export wont work. -- Prod (Talk) 20:11, 8 February 2007 (CST)

Pokemon sprites: Every one from every version, or latest only?
Now that I've taken on the daunting task of getting the P:R/B/Y guide off of the ground, I realize that I would like to present pictures of the Pokemon throughout the guide. The questions is, which sprites should I use? The way I see it, there are three choices: The point about using only the latest is nice cuz we only need to upload 386 pictures instead of every single sprite ever made. The only con is that we'd be using graphics from one version of the game for the sake of another, but it seems to go against certain principles of completeness. Anyway, I wanted to put the matter up for debate and get people's thoughts. Procyon 22:55, 8 February 2007 (CST)
 * RBY: use the original black and white images since the guide is primarily for Red & Blue, and these were the sprites used by the game.
 * GSC: use the colorized version of the original 151 Pokemon, since Yellow had colorized Pokemon, and... well, you know... color is better.
 * Advance/DS: use only the latest version of the graphics. This has a couple of pros: they're nicer to look at and we only need to maintain one copy of any Pokemon (the latest) instead of three or more different versions.
 * Note that R&B had color versions... at least when using the Super Gameboy adapter attached to the SNES. --Notmyhandle 23:23, 8 February 2007 (CST)
 * I would say, go with the best version of each series (yellow in this case). I don't see why we would have to upload all the images, as there are only a few important pokemon that are useful.  Most of the other info can be outsourced to ind...bulbapedia. -- Prod (Talk) 00:18, 9 February 2007 (CST)

Prod, you gave me an idea. How hard would it be to export all of the images here for us to use as well? I don't want to externally link to their images, I'd rather they be local. But the images are needed in a couple of places (like mentioning which Pokemon can be found where, and who you might fight against). I mean, we are the death of plain-text guides, right? Might as well live up to that reputation. Procyon 09:45, 9 February 2007 (CST)
 * User:File Upload Bot (Kernigh) took care of them for the MapleStory/Monsters, so it should be possible to partially modify for bulbapedia. -- Prod (Talk) 10:05, 9 February 2007 (CST)
 * If you take a look at Pokémon Red and Blue/Pallet Town, you'll get a rough idea of what I'm going for. Obviously, a) those images sizes are bad (too much white space), b) I don't want to link to an offsite image, and c) I would prefer to use artwork instead of sprites since artwork is not game specific.  So Prod, if you think that Kernigh could do that for us, I would be most greatful.  Thanks! Procyon 13:01, 9 February 2007 (CST)
 * That's a great idea, but what about renaming? If we want to change the filenames (e.g. appending Pokémon, or adding a space between the number and the name) it's best to sort that out now. AFAIK Kernigh's bot can rename before uploading, so that should all be fine. GarrettTalk 18:30, 9 February 2007 (CST)
 * I'm all for renaming. There should definately be a "Pokemon_" prefix to each file.  Then a template could easily be made for both the picture and the Bulbapedia link.  So we should end up with filenames like "Pokemon_001.png", "Pokemon_002.png", "Pokemon_003.png", etc.  And they should obviously be categorized together.  Let me know if there's anything that I can do to help.  Procyon 20:11, 9 February 2007 (CST)
 * You should probably try getting in contact with Kernigh, he seems to be most active at Wikia. He took care of the whole image moving thing, so he would be the one to ask about any of this stuff. -- Prod (Talk) 20:32, 9 February 2007 (CST)
 * Bah... I'll do it myself. You know, I should be able to code a Perl script for a bot myself, but I'm just too lazy to figure out how to do it right now.  I'll pull the images over as I need them. Procyon 21:25, 9 February 2007 (CST)
 * The pictures uploaded already probably need to be renamed. To be totally correct, they need the acute accent above the "e" in Pokémon. I've already fixed the category they were in to be like this. --DrBob (Talk) 05:27, 10 February 2007 (CST)
 * Wouldn't it be easier not to have the accent above the "e"? Specifically, when someone is attempting to use one of the images, it would be easier just to type an "e" than having to go find the accented "e" and copy/paste it or using the alt shortcut (which I can never remember).  In the end, its more efficient and I'm pretty sure there isn't anything else that is already pokemon without the accent.-- Duke  Ruckley  12:10, 10 February 2007 (CST)

MMOG categorisation
At the moment, we're categorising MMOGs as a genre, and then also putting them in the Multiplayer category, which doesn't quite seem right. What do people think about removing MMOG as a genre, and then using it instead of Multiplayer where appropriate? If anybody asks, we're not creating an "MMORPG" genre, as that would be combining a genre and a player-count category; for MMORPGs, the genre is RPG (and anything else if appropriate), and it's also a MMOG. --DrBob (Talk) 13:30, 9 February 2007 (CST)
 * I think MMOG by itself is required, and it is a genre, since these types of games usually behave significantly differently then regular multiplayer games (online economies, usually 100s of people playing together rather than 8/16/etc). I think it's fine as it is, and definitely no MMORPG cat. -- Prod (Talk) 14:27, 9 February 2007 (CST)
 * That's what I'm saying (although I think I worded it badly above): we should not categorise MMOG as a genre, but instead as something akin to Single player or Multiplayer. Then we don't get games categorised as both Multiplayer and MMOG. --DrBob (Talk) 14:49, 9 February 2007 (CST)
 * Actually I think I worded it more badly :P. I was actually saying the opposite, but after some thought, I think you're right.  MMOG is a mode, rather tan a genre, though this is a fairly major change (my bot might be able to take care of it) so I think we need a few more voices.  -- Prod (Talk) 15:28, 9 February 2007 (CST)
 * It's a major paradigmatic change, but should be as simple to do as going through the MMOG category, making sure all the games have MMOG moved into the "players" parameter of AGN (rather than the "genres" parameter), and that they are all no longer in the Multiplayer category. --DrBob (Talk) 15:44, 9 February 2007 (CST)
 * Category changing is easy enough (botable), moving MMOG to players is not so easy. Let's give this a week for people to leave comments. -- Prod (Talk) 15:52, 9 February 2007 (CST)


 * Support: Go ahead and make the change whenever you're ready.-- Duke  Ruckley  17:22, 9 February 2007 (CST)
 * Support: since games can be MMOGs and many other games as well, like simulations, or RPGs, or else. -- Mason11987 (Talk - Contributions) 18:42, 11 February 2007 (CST)

Credits
Considering we already promote the documentation of basically all the game information, should we have a page listing the credits of a game or no? --Notmyhandle 14:42, 10 February 2007 (CST)
 * I don't see why not, as long as it doesn't confuse game credits with SW writer credits... It also shouldn't be top priority, but I don't see why not.-- Duke  Ruckley  15:07, 10 February 2007 (CST)
 * I can't see it as being particularly useful. People can find that information from the game itself (whereas they might not have the game when they look at the other game information we provide), and we should be concentrating on making good walkthroughs. --DrBob (Talk) 15:11, 10 February 2007 (CST)
 * I don't know, I'm not much of a fan of this idea either. Even IMDB doesn't list complete billing credits for movies. The big problem with this idea is that it may detract from our true purpose of writing videogame strategy guides.  ech elon  23:32, 10 February 2007 (CST)
 * Why/How would it detract? I can see how it can shift the focus slightly to a compendium like state, but it's rather complimentary and I think it should be mandatory for games with completion level 4. --Notmyhandle 00:52, 11 February 2007 (CST)
 * I really don't care one way or the other, but I really don't see these pages getting a lot of views. Most games make watching the credits mandatory upon completion anyway, so I don't see why we should incorperate them. Then again, it could give our guides a more professional look to them by including them. --Ryan SchmidtTalk - Contribs 10:02, 11 February 2007 (CST)
 * There shouldn't be a ban on them. If someone really wants to spend the time to write them up, then I'd say its okay.  But we shouldn't focus on them either.  The most important thing is the guide.  I personally will probably not ever contribute to a credits section, but if someone feels they want to, they should be allowed to do it.  We also shouldn't make them mandatory, even for a level 4 completion guide.-- Duke  Ruckley  11:21, 11 February 2007 (CST)
 * This summarizes exactly how I feel about the situation.  ech elon  12:46, 11 February 2007 (CST)
 * Also how I feel. It's nice, but not necessary, and most importantly, I can't imagine it's really be useful and therefore I don't see the point. -- Mason11987 (Talk - Contributions) 18:40, 11 February 2007 (CST)

Small requirement for Pokemon guides
I feel that all of the AGN's should include a " |custom=Pokédex ". I'm going to add it to all of the R/B/Y AGNs. I know there's a lot more that would need to be fixed. Procyon 15:31, 10 February 2007 (CST)
 * Perhaps offer a couple links to where I can find all the pages that need it? I'd go through and add that. -- Mason11987 (Talk - Contributions) 18:39, 11 February 2007 (CST)
 * I'm fairly certain that all of the Pokémon Ruby and Sapphire and Pokémon FireRed and LeafGreen pages will be needing them. I have Pokémon Red and Blue covered, and Rocky has Pokémon Gold, Silver and Crystal covered.  As for any other Pokémon game (such as Pokémon Pinball or Pokémon Stadium), I would consider it a nice option, but not a requirement. Procyon 12:28, 12 February 2007 (CST)
 * Doing Ruby and Sapphire

Easy game addition
Check out this new page UI from the TV Wikia:

http://tv.wikia.com/index.php?title=TV_Wiki:Sandbox&action=edit

I was thinking that the options they have there could be translated here to make things very easy. We can create a template that we can link to from the UI to preload the page with the game infobox and AGN and other things. It's a relatively minor change difficultly wise but I think it would be very useful, what does everyone think? -- Mason11987 (Talk - Contributions) 18:38, 11 February 2007 (CST)
 * Me likes. I can only see it working for company, main page and ToC articles, since all others are customized. --Notmyhandle 19:15, 11 February 2007 (CST)
 * That can increase spamming of new games/companies/etc. We can use the New game template though. -- Prod (Talk) 20:15, 11 February 2007 (CST)
 * Can someone explain subst, perhaps in the Guide? --Notmyhandle 20:34, 11 February 2007 (CST)
 * I like. Definitely would be an interesting addition if it can be technically managed without open heart surgery of MediaWiki.--Dan 22:35, 11 February 2007 (CST)


 * Trying it out, just go to any redlinked article and click the button to test it out. (and don't make the article just to make this link blue :-P) -- Mason11987 (Talk - Contributions) 01:03, 12 February 2007 (CST)
 * Nice. I've changed the colours to make it slightly easier on the eyes (although it still needs improvement), and changed the text to make it more descriptive. --DrBob (Talk) 05:52, 12 February 2007 (CST)
 * Works great. Now we just need company & ToC.  Can the colors be modified by the skin?  Because on Blue Cloud it should be the commonly used purple (as seen in the lower left of any page) with a font color that stands out on top (maybe just black). --Notmyhandle 08:43, 12 February 2007 (CST)
 * I'll set up the company one, but what exactly do you mean by a ToC page? Is there a standard I can look to for this that I'm not aware of?  I'm also sure it can be modified by skin, but I don't know CSS well enough to implement it myself, so we may need Garret or DrBob to do that (or anyone who can obviously). -- Mason11987 (Talk - Contributions) 09:05, 12 February 2007 (CST)
 * Company set up, feel free to tweak. -- Mason11987 (Talk - Contributions) 09:18, 12 February 2007 (CST)
 * I set up the toc, but it needs MediaWiki 1.7+ since the BASEPAGENAME variable doesn't exist in 1.6. -- Prod (Talk) 10:45, 12 February 2007 (CST)
 * Echelon? Garret? Dan? :) -- Mason11987 (Talk - Contributions) 19:41, 12 February 2007 (CST)

Also, links of interest (sorry I didn't list these earlier):
 * MediaWiki:Newarticletext
 * New game: preload - instructions - what it looks like
 * Company: preload - instructions - what it looks like
 * Toc: preload - instructions what it looks like