StrategyWiki:Staff lounge

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Welcome to all users! This page is where you can ask StrategyWiki-related questions to the staff and senior community figures, and they will do their best to answer. If you want to raise a topic for discussion (rather than just ask about it), please use the community issues forum instead. New issues are entered here, with the most recent at the bottom of the page. If your question does not pertain to editing StrategyWiki (e.g. asking for hints or game-specific information), please ask on the guide's talk page or on the forums.

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Adding external links without being logged in is broken
First time I click save page, and the page reloads asking for a reCAPTCHA. After filling out the reCAPTCHA, the page reloads telling me I'm adding to many links in rapid succession and asks me to click save once more if I'm adding something serious. Clicking save once more reloads the page asking for yet another reCAPTCHA, and after that it reloads with the "adding too many links" message again. It continously goes back and forth between the two, and never actually gets to the point where it's saving my contribution.

Collapsible infobox
I've added a [Collapse] feature to Game infoboxes. This allows users to hide parts of the infobox that are more "data" than useful for finding other interesting games. Currently it starts expanded, but I'd like to change the default to collapsed. As a first draft I made everything hidden except the following: Should we hide any additional rows by default? Should some hidden rows be shown by default?
 * Image
 * Developers
 * Genres
 * Systems
 * Ratings
 * Expansions
 * Series
 * Partner links

The information and content is there if people want it, but some of the content that gets filled in takes a lot of space on the screen. -- Prod (talk) 04:05, 11 January 2020 (UTC)
 * Prod If you need help creating gadgets to give users an option let me know. Lite Grooves (talk) 04:01, 7 February 2020 (UTC)
 * I like this idea, I think it would go a long way to helping get rid of the vast swaths of white space that ends up filling nearly every front page of games that have had multiple releases. I think the proposed defaults are good choices.   Pro  cyon  19:17, 10 March 2020 (UTC)

Get rid of Category:Distributors
There are a lot of digital distribution systems that are now available. Many of them having libraries of hundreds, if not thousands, of games. I'd like to propose removing that section from our Game infoboxes, and deleting the associated categories.

In cases like consoles, Wii/Wii U/Switch only have one option for where to get the games. Including the eShop as a distributor is redundant. For PC games, PCGW lists out many of the sources. Otherwise, it's not too hard to check the most popular distributors (Steam, GOG, D2D, Epic, etc.). Getting statistics about what each shop contains is also probably easier from the individual sites. -- Prod (talk) 21:34, 24 February 2020 (UTC)


 * Distribution method doesn't seem that important to me. Arrow Windwhistler (talk) 13:07, 25 February 2020 (UTC)


 * Considering that the game pages don't even link to the actual store page and rather few games appear to even have their distributor listed (337 for Steam, only 9 for GOG) I agree it's not too useful. Lite Grooves (talk) 20:53, 26 February 2020 (UTC)


 * It's important to me that the focus of SW be the guides and walkthroughs, and not so much the database entries that many other sites do much better than us. Presumably, if someone is coming to our site for information, they are doing so because they already have the game and are looking for help with it.  They aren't coming to us for help on how to find and purchase the game.  The distributors category serves no walkthrough/guide purpose, so I have no problem eliminating it.   Pro  cyon  19:20, 10 March 2020 (UTC)

Gothic II versions
There are two versions of Gothic II: vanilla and gold which includes Night of the Raven (NotR), an add-in. Not really an add-on because it adds stuff as part of the base game, not a new chapter.

Nowadays few people would play Gothic II vanilla, I think. On Steam and GOG you're getting the gold edition today, nothing else. So unless you're installing it from a CD-rom you bought many years ago, you've got the NotR add-in.

As I'm adding bits to the walkthrough, it is possible that some stuff doesn't apply to or is different in vanilla Gothic II because I'm obviously playing Gothic II gold. Wouldn't it be wise to just ignore the existence of Gothic II vanilla here and dedicate the entire guide to Gothic II gold? Lite Grooves (talk) 09:10, 27 February 2020 (UTC)
 * The goal is to have coverage of all versions of the game, so things that aren't part of the original game should be pointed out with the sidebar template like on Gothic II/Walkthrough. If you're not sure, then write it out as vanilla and someone can fix it later. -- Prod (talk) 14:01, 27 February 2020 (UTC)
 * Alright, I will. There is no apparent way to disable the add-in and I'm not really interested in looking up every detail to check if it applies to the original as well. When reading this guide by Ellusion which appears to be kind of famous I sometimes notice that something in the guide doesn't seem to be quite right. It's extremely comprehensive but it was written for Gothic II vanilla. For the most part it applies to G2+NotR as well, but not always. And no, I don't copy anything from it (that's not allowed and I prefer to omit plot details unless needed), but I need a guide too. Lite Grooves (talk) 19:50, 27 February 2020 (UTC)

Delete Category:Defunct companies
Tracking defunct companies does not contribute to the usefulness of any of our guides, and doesn't help finding other related games. I suggest we delete it. -- Prod (talk) 19:06, 23 March 2020 (UTC)

Main page for ports/remakes
Do all ports/remakes of games with a different name get their own main page and a shared table of contents? Does the amount of content additions/changes matter? For example, 3DS ports with 3D at the end of the title that had additional content (The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time 3D, Donkey Kong Country Returns 3D). I separated Code of Princess and Code of Princess EX, but I believe the actual gameplay differences are minor feature changes and rebalancing. Tedium (talk) 23:17, 26 March 2020 (UTC)
 * This can be a little subjective. It depends on how much have changed from the original to the remake, and how much time as passed between them.  We do have guides where multiple front-pages share a Table of Contents, like Super Mario Bros. or Street Fighter II.  If you look at the guides for Dragon Warrior III, you can see that we try to incorporate info for multiple release within a single guide, although the level of success we achieved is debatable.  All in all, use your best judgement.   Pro  cyon  02:15, 29 March 2020 (UTC)
 * I think in this case it's really up to you. They were released 6 years apart, but if it's essentially a straight port, they can probably be merged. If you go that route, the alternate name should be categorized with the appropriate categories. It's probably easier to do a separate main page. -- Prod (talk) 06:13, 9 April 2020 (UTC)