StrategyWiki talk:Community Portal/2007/June

StrategyWiki Forum

I know a few of you have asked for a forum in the past--the key reason being that a forum has been seen as the missing link between our community and GameFAQs. While a forum for editorial discussion purposes would be completely redundant, perhaps a community forum integrated with the StrategyWiki accounts would help spur new editors to become more involved and have fun in the process. What do you guys think? This could be a really good idea or a really bad idea. (I won't be able to answer/provide feedback until I get back from Florida, but it's a good topic to get you guys started on debating now.) ech elon 01:11, 5 May 2007 (CDT)

I was hoping that ABXY would fill this need. A forum would be great, but getting editorials/news/reviews would be even better. But yea, a forum would be excellent! -- Prod (Talk) 01:16, 5 May 2007 (CDT)

Well, once the abxy user sign up issue is resolved (if it isn't already) you could create a handful of StrategyWiki-specific forums and link to them from here. If they get a good deal of traffic you could then focus on integrating the skin and hosting it at forums.strategywiki.org and all that. I can certainly see the advantages of a forum--while I like how MediaWiki talk pages allow for nested comments, quotes and the like can do this job fairly well too. I'll post more thoughts about this later. Garrett^Talk 01:33, 5 May 2007 (CDT)

This sounds like a good idea, although the random chit-chat forums (believe me, even if you intend for all talk to be something SW-related, 'How was your day?' threads and suchlike will soon spring up) would soon be the most active (I'm a moderator on a forum, so I know) and there would be some who seem to do more on the forums than they do editing. Still, it would be a good idea, it makes sure that others who seem to be the only ones out there editing (some days it does seem like that :-P) know that they're not alone!--Froglet 03:33, 5 May 2007 (CDT)

Well every page has it's own talk page maybe we should make that more obvious rather than going the forum route? --Argash 12:40, 5 May 2007 (CDT)

If this is the case then it will be easy to impliment, just a note on the top of the main game page and we can do this by modidifying the infobox templateRocky

^{(Talk - Contributions)} 13:11, 5 May 2007 (CDT)

I always thought that the Discussion pages were for editing talk. I thought that the idea of a forum would be more like it is on GFAQs - for debate on all the stuff you probably shouldn't debate and gossip about on the Discussion pages (eg, the non-neutral POV stuff that usually gets removed from the page - 'most useless character', 'why does this guy do this at the end of the game?' and so on). Of course, I may have interpreted this wrong.--Froglet 06:49, 6 May 2007 (CDT)

I agree, maybe we could link it to GameName/Forum which would be the forum still using the infobox idea. But at the moment, we only have {{PAGESINNS:1}} talk pages across the entire site for articles, we have 45,341 articles at the moment and it's not like those missing talk pages will be used because most guides are done by 1 or 2 authors and user talk communication is the best way when that happens. So I'm not sure.--Rocky

^{(Talk - Contributions)} 07:49, 6 May 2007 (CDT)

I don't think that would work very well either. I think it'd be better to go along a model similar to that of the Nintendo of Europe's forum base - there's system boards, etc, but the main boards would be the General board(s), the popular game/series boards (Pokemon and Legend of Zelda spring to mind), and of course the random babble boards (these are by far the most active, I've noted).--Froglet 08:45, 6 May 2007 (CDT)

I favor the idea of a forum, but what exactly would be discussed there? As stated above, wouldn't topics irrelevant to Strategy Wiki eventually spring up? Lunar Knight ^{(Talk to me + Contribs)} 12:52, 6 May 2007 (CDT)

I reckon that may be the point. It would stop people from aimless chitchat on the editing talk pages, and it is easier to maintain as a forum than as a bunch of editing talk pages - if a user creates spam on an editing talk page, you can remove it but the fact that it is freely editable stops it from being effective in discouraging people not to do that. With a forum, you can at least delete posts and lock discussions. I have a notion that it would also help create a better strategies for certain games, for example with a DS wifi game that hasn't had its online maps mapped out, two editors could switch friend codes and not only fight each other but also map the level out. Sure, a lot of idle chatter will occur, but it's a good diversion from editing (or to let off steam when you're not in a neutral POV mood).

Of course, forums like this will need moderators and suchlike to keep the discussion civil, but I reckon it could work.--Froglet 18:47, 6 May 2007 (CDT)

I am vehemently against using MW talk pages as a forum. User talk pages are fine as discussion between people, but they are terrible for general discussion. All content on strategywiki right now is GFDL. Forums typically say ownership of a comment belongs to the writer. I'm not too sure how compatible they are, so I would suggest keeping them separate. Also, forums tend to be POV, and we're trying to keep SW NPOV. ABXY does have most of the stuff needed already (moderators, some users, etc.) but they've been having some problems. What would be cool is if we could add something to the agn like http://abxy.org/forum.php?name=gamename or something similar, and have it link to the relevant forums. Admins on ABXY could add forums for games as they are created (after some basic verification). -- Prod (Talk) 23:41, 6 May 2007 (CDT)

I actually think it's kind of funny that people are suggesting a forum be added StrategyWiki when ness just killed ABXY for the second time - claiming it's hogging all the server resources. It's a shame too, ABXY could have easily been used as a forum outlet for SW users. But instead of helping to fix the problem, he just took the site down. Those who want a forum here, I wouldn't hold your breath... apparently ness doesn't like them. Katana 08:54, 8 May 2007 (CDT)

ABXY has been bringing down the whole server. It tends to do it every few days, which is why he took it out. The code needs to be fixed, which is most likely up to echelon (Note the message that tends to come up: too many connections to localhost). As SW is the one getting most of the traffic, ABXY is sacrificed for the greater good :P. -- Prod (Talk) 23:48, 8 May 2007 (CDT)

I love Froglet's idea! Being able to meet up with people somewhere more appropriate than a talk page and trades FC's and map out levels. Brilliant! It indeed would be a good diversion from editing, an area where you can just sit back and relax (Not that I'm not relaxing when I contribute, contributing here is one of my top ways of relaxation, aside from playing the 'ol DS). Lunar Knight ^{(Talk to me + Contribs)} 19:37, 8 May 2007 (CDT)

This could be put on trial, using a forum tool such as invisionfree.com, with a few discrete links to it on the site, with a few consoles, gabber and games/series on it just to see how regulars would react, whether it would attract more people in and suchlike. However, there is the query if there are people willing and able to administrate and moderate such a venture (I would be more than willing to assist in such aspects).--Froglet 08:35, 10 May 2007 (CDT)

Check out inside.wikia.com's forum. It's phpbb but is linked to the MediaWiki user accounts. PM buttons point to Talk: pages and everything! I don't know if the extension is available, but this is probably the best implementation since existing accounts would still work there. Garrett^Talk 16:43, 12 May 2007 (CDT)

Check these out before implementing though--Rocky

^{(Talk - Contributions)} 16:58, 12 May 2007 (CDT)

That page is regarding bugs with MediaWiki 1.10a (which isn't a stable build; Wikia, like Wikipedia, tries to follow the builds fairly closely). The Forum: namespace isn't for discussing the phpbb extension but is part of an earlier, unrelated forum extension. Garrett^Talk 19:56, 12 May 2007 (CDT)

Forum implementation vote

Indicate whether you are for the new style of forums (like at the Inside Wikia, for the old style of forums (like at Wikia), against the implementation of forums on StrategyWiki, or undecided/neutral (and possibly a reason why). source code for new forums can be downloaded at http://www.phpbb.com/downloads/

For new-Ryan Schmidt (talk · contribs). I think the new forums are a great idea, and it would help build StrategyWiki's community. --Ryan Schmidt^{Talk - Contribs} 22:14, 12 May 2007 (CDT)
For new. It combines a great forum system with our existing user accounts and markup language. Garrett^Talk 22:18, 12 May 2007 (CDT)
For new. But the forum misses some basic markup, <pre>, <code> and <nowiki>, also most HTML has been disabled over there, not sure if it would affect us though [1] - post 7--Rocky ^{(Talk - Contributions)} 01:52, 13 May 2007 (CDT)
I'm with ^these^ guys.--Froglet 02:41, 13 May 2007 (CDT)
Strongly Against Old - lacking features. Looks like a hack -- Prod (Talk) 14:10, 13 May 2007 (CDT)
Undecided, but somewhat against' New - Stated reasons above but against because: Separation of POV (comments/discussion) from NPOV (guides); direct competition with ABXY; Can we even use it? -- Prod (Talk) 14:10, 13 May 2007 (CDT)
For New Generally, I think forums would be a good idea, especially for discussing the sort of things that we shouldn't put in the walkthroughs. I'm having a hard time even recognizing the old forum style as a forum at all.--Puretext 22:38, 27 May 2007 (CDT)

Front page placement of Continue Nav and TOC revisited.

This is a continuation of the discussion started earlier (this discussion if it has not yet been archived) that prompted me to reformat all of the front pages of the guides that I worked on. The general out come of that discussion was:

Prod's assertion that the Continue Nav should be placed in such a way that it is immediately visible on the front page of any guide. Therefore, the most logical place for the nav would be immediately after the guide's introduction.
Dan's assertion that the best way to alert readers (especially new visitors) to the fact that a guide is composed of multiple page, and is not limited to the front page, is to highlight the existence of the Table of Contents, which I did by moving it immediately below the Continue Nav in every guide that I altered.

Now, it is apparent that there are some problems with these choices.

NMH (which I am now permanently adopting as Notmyhandle's handle ^_^ ) feels that the TOC should be placed beneath a guide's story, which he bases (I believe) on the aesthetics. I am inclined to agree with this, but for a different reason: It seems awkward, even redundant, to have the TOC directly beneath the Continue Nav. It's like saying, "Continue to A or B. Also, there's page A and page B (and maybe some other pages)," and that doesn't make much logical sense.
I know that in general, we wish to keep front pages small (and I tend to be a big offender of that practice, I can't help myself >_< ), it concerns me that if a reader scrolls down to the bottom of the front page, such that the Continue Nav and the TOC has scrolled off screen, the reader has no choice to scroll back up to find a link because front pages do not use Footer Navs.
There's a general, less pivotal, issue regarding choosing header levels for their proper hierarchy, or their aesthetic look (sometimes H3 looks better than H2 even though something should technically be an H2.)

For the reasons stated above, I feel that links should be made available in two places: Immediately after the Introduction, and at the very bottom of the front page. Now, this can take the form of Continue_Nav beneath the intro, and move all of the TOCs to the bottom (they are in the AGN anyway), or it can be the other way around, which contradicts Prod's concern. But I will go one step further and claim that Continue Navs may not be the best solution afterall and that a modified Footer Nav, a special front page Footer Nav, might be the best possible solution as it would standardize the placement of continuing links. I propose that it might look something like this:

[Go to top] Super Mario Bros.Gameplay → Walkthrough →

What do you all think? Procyon (Talk) 13:59, 24 May 2007 (CDT)

Seems good but just to note, in point 3, is there a way to modify the software or add a template for a 2.5 heading (2 on TOC but has a line like a 3). If we can get someting like tha working then it'll help.--Rocky

^{(Talk - Contributions)} 14:02, 24 May 2007 (CDT)

First, the continue nav acts as a short jump into the guides. If people know how to play, but not sure where to start, they click walkthrough. Secondly, the ToC is there so that new people who don't realize that the AGN and Footer nav's have drop down views will see the ToC. A footer nav for the front pages seem fine to me; but this stil doesn't solve the universal order of sections that we really need for standardization/cleanup procedures.

Rocky: The Wikimarkup is simply using the <h#> tags, and then formatting them to display the bar/edit button. So, unless we shift all the numbers up, there's no way we can do this (there are only like 6 different header values available. (Correct me if I'm wrong.)

For the standardized layout I propose this order (codewise/visually): AGN, Infobox, Game Info, Continue Nav, Story, ToC, Miscellaneous Info, References, External Links, Footer Nav, Cats. Additionally, non-sub sections must all be H2's. --Notmyhandle (talk • contribs) 15:03, 24 May 2007 (CDT)

But if a link to the Walkthrough is already contained in the front page TOC, how is that link less useful than the same link in the Continue Nav? Just to place my vote for the layout, I propose:
AGN, Infobox, Introduction, TOC, Story, Misc. Info, References, External Links, Continue Nav and/or the above Footer Nav, Cats.
I know it won't ultimately end up that way, but this would be my personal ideal. I'd be satisfied with anything as long as it's agreed upon. Procyon (Talk) 15:10, 24 May 2007 (CDT)

I'm under the opinion that the story should have a basic outline without spoilers, and have a separate story page (maybe with some spoilers in a bottom-ish section, but not on top). Plus, the continue nav should definitely be above the ToC, as it is more likely to get noticed that "hey, those are real links instead of pretty blue text" instead of the ToC (which seemed to be a problem with a few visitors to this site >.< ). There should not be anything under the ToC, though, and if there is, there should be a footer nav leading to the same links as the continue nav. In regards to the headings, there are a few ways to get around it. You can enclose the ToC in a div like so: <div class="nonumtoc">__TOC__</div> to take the tiered numbers off the ToC, or you could restrict to what heading sizes appear on the ToC with <div class="toclimit-2">__TOC__</div> (which would restrict the ToC to only displaying lv2 headings, -3 does lv2 and lv3, and so on). Currently, I haven't put in the CSS that accomplishes this, but if there is consensus, I'll do it. --Ryan Schmidt^{Talk - Contribs} 15:31, 24 May 2007 (CDT)

Ryan, that is how the story sections are currently laid out as. The front page stories are ambiguous introductions so they shouldn't take up much room. So far we have a unanimous decision on the layout besides the ToC location. Ryan: Nothing under the TOC? Do you want the References/External Links sections to be above it as well? Actually, now that I think about it the ToC does make a good bottom area; although I would still put Ref/Ext sections below that. But Misc. Info seems to go better above it, since people will read the stuff or skip down and then find links to other pages. --Notmyhandle (talk • contribs) 16:55, 24 May 2007 (CDT)

The reason that Dan suggested the TOC be placed higher up was so that people who are new to the site would easily comprehend that guides are composed of multiple pages. If we stuff the TOC on the bottom, it might be easily missed. That's kind of why I was arguing for TOC up top, and Continue Nav or front page Footer Nav on the bottom. Think about it:
If the TOC comes after the introduction, and people want to jump right away to their favorite page (which might not even be on the Continue Nav), the TOC is right there for them to click on. On the other hand, someone who bothers to read all the way down to the bottom of a front page is more likely to be follow through the guide sequentially, at which point it makes more sense for the Continue Nav to be placed at the bottom where the user can be lead to the next section of interest. That's what I don't understand about the current suggestion. I think people want the Continue Nav under the intro instead of the TOC because it "looks cooler," even though the TOC is more functional. Likewise, something is needed at the bottom of the front page. If the Footer Nav points readers to the next sequential page for a regular guide page, why shouldn't there be something similar to serve the same function on the front page? Doesn't that make sense? Procyon (Talk) 17:11, 24 May 2007 (CDT)

(Undoing indentation, wow this is long) Looking at your arguments, I'll have to agree with NMH and Proc about the placement of the ToC. However, having the continue nav at the bottom of the page looks really bad white-space wise (maybe an optional {{{bottom}}} param to style it like a footer nav instead?). From how I see it, though, there are a few decently feasible options (other info is actual information, references, external links, and the like):

Option 1
- AGN
- Infobox/Intro
- Story
- Continue Nav
- Table of Contents
- Other Info
Option 2
- AGN
- Infobox/Intro
- Continue Nav
- Story
- Other Info
- Table of Contents

Option 3
- AGN
- Infobox/Intro
- Story
- Table of Contents
- Other Info
- Continue Nav (Footer Nav styled)
Option 4
- AGN
- Infobox/Intro
- Table of Contents
- Story
- Other Info
- Continue Nav (Footer Nav styled)

Option 5
- AGN
- Infobox/Intro
- Story
- Table of Contents
- Other Info
- Continue Nav (Normally styled)
Option 6
- AGN
- Infobox/Intro
- Table of Contents
- Story
- Other Info
- Continue Nav (Normally styled)

Option 7
- Tags
- AGN
- Infobox/Intro
- Story
- Continue Nav
- Table of Contents
- Other Info
- Footer Nav (no backpage)
- Categories

Option 8
- Tags
- AGN
- Infobox/Intro
- Continue Nav
- Story
- Table of Contents
- Other Info
- Footer Nav (no backpage)
- Categories

Option 9
- Tags
- AGN
- Infobox/Intro
- Continue Nav
- Table of Contents
- Story
- Other Info
- Footer Nav (no backpage)
- Categories

Also, I've put in the class data for nonumtoc and toclimit (as well as topicon, see it in action here). Those were only a few of the possible options, so which one do you think would work the best? --Ryan Schmidt^{Talk - Contribs} 17:48, 24 May 2007 (CDT)

I am strongly for having the continue nav right near the top, before the ToC for sure, but before or after the Story doesn't matter to me. I'm supportive of the modified Footer Nav, depending on whether or not we have the ToC at the bottom. References and External links should go below the ToC since they aren't really "content". I'm supporting option 7/8/9 (though I think I might not like 9 :/) >_>. -- Prod (Talk) 18:13, 24 May 2007 (CDT)

lol, I thought you would hate option 7. Naturally, my vote is for 4, but I could live with 8, which isn't far from how many of my guides are now. Realize, of course, not all games (like racing and sports games) have a story. So... If at least Ryan and NMH vote, we could narrow down the options a little. Prod, simply out of curiosity, what are you arguments for having the Continue Nav instead of the TOC up at the top? What are you arguments against using the TOC instead of the CN? Thanks! Procyon (Talk) 18:22, 24 May 2007 (CDT)

One major reason is simplicity (where to go next), but also because there tends to be a lot of white space beside the really long infoboxes, and it helps to fill that in (if we could get it to centre properly...). The ToC is also already right at the top (AGN) so it is "technically" already accessible (yea...that's a stretch :P). -- Prod (Talk) 18:45, 24 May 2007 (CDT)

My only counter-argument to yours is that in a multiple page guide, one author has to make the choice of which links to use in the Continue Nav. Naturally, we tend to choose the most obvious choices (How to play and Walkthrough for example) and I think that's sufficient 90% of the time. However, if this is not where the reader wants to go, s/he has to find the TOC (which I agree is easy enough to find, especially if you are familiar with the site) and choose a link that s/he prefers. This may be a bold assertion on my part, but I think it's the reader who navigates all the way down to the bottom of a front page that will want his/her hand held a little bit more. I admit that I'm hypothesizing and splitting hairs here. Ultimately, I'm happy to go along with the consensus (once we reach one.) Procyon (Talk) 19:10, 24 May 2007 (CDT)

One solution would be to put a "jump to Table of Contents" link at the bottom of the Continue Nav (still within the box) that would take the reader to the ToC at the bottom of the page. This is a simple fix, and it means we can continue leaving the ToC to last. Garrett^Talk 02:32, 25 May 2007 (CDT)

I'm fine with the ToC being as high as it can be without causing visual problems. Which means it should be limited to just below the Infobox. Additionally, I choose layout 8, that's always been how I make pages, except we'd add the footer nav thing. I'm wondering how it looks with the cats there... Maybe footer nav below cats? --Notmyhandle (talk • contribs) 02:06, 25 May 2007 (CDT)

Oh crap I don't know why I hadn't brought this up earlier. We should just make the ToC as high as possible, (like I just said) but then make the page ToC mandatory to show the other sections. That way we have both guide navigation and page navigation easily accessible to nublets. I'm a genius aren't I? But yeah, Proc you need to remember to make all your really long guides have the ToC. Once this is all settled, I'll help relieve you of the monotony =) --Notmyhandle (talk • contribs) 02:09, 25 May 2007 (CDT)

Er... the page ToC doesn't necessarily solve the problem. I explained this to Dan last night. Say you have two different users. One user has visited a guide many times and knows what information he's looking for. Another user has never visited that same guide before. The user who's been there before is not going to peruse the whole page, and if the link that he wants isn't in the continue nav, he will either a) have to click [show] on the AGN to see the TOC, or scroll to the bottom (or maybe hit Page Down a couple of times). The user who's never seen this guide before is more likely to explore the whole page, all the way down to the bottom. Once this user reaches the bottom, he will probably not know where to go next, which is why I propose we put the CN or an altered FN at the bottom of the front page. That's my logic. But I understand Prod's points as well. Procyon (Talk) 09:00, 25 May 2007 (CDT)

Votes

Ok, so let's try and get rid of some of the excess options. Vote for which one you think is the best (or more than one), and which ones you think are completely bad (ie. redundant, never going to happen, etc).

I'm Against 3->6, cause I think the Continue Nav should go above the Toc. I'm For 7->9, and 1/2 seem to be covered within those as well. -- Prod (Talk) 09:39, 25 May 2007 (CDT)
I'm Against {1, 3, 5, 7} since I think that we all agree that the Story should not immediate follow the Intro. I honestly think you can remove them. I'm For 4 or 6 for all of the reasons that I stated. I can live with {2, 8, 9}.
I'm For 8 mainly because I think it is entirely pointless to even HAVE a continue nav if it is located immediately above or below the ToC. However, instead of a footer nav with no backpage, it would be better to have the footer-nav styled continue nav, as the footer nav just includes the game name if no backpage is specified, and the modified continue nav still has the words Continue To: but just inline with everything else (see sandbox). --Ryan Schmidt^{Talk - Contribs} 15:16, 25 May 2007 (CDT)
For 8. --Notmyhandle (talk • contribs) 02:06, 27 May 2007 (CDT)

It looks like 8 has it. It was one of Prod's fors, I was OK with it, and Ryan and NMH chose it. So unless anyone else strongly objects to 8 (and has a good reason to back that objection up) we may have our standard. Procyon (Talk) 10:00, 27 May 2007 (CDT)

I'm fine with 8 but I'm a bit worried about putting things under the TOC for big guides, something like Pokémon Ruby/Sapphire or silver/Gold/Crystal, I think that a footer would be a bit of a waste because IMO people wouldn't really scroll to the bottom--Rocky

^{(Talk - Contributions)} 10:20, 27 May 2007 (CDT)

ToC link in Continue Nav

Suggested by Garrett just above, adding a Jump to ToC local link to the Continue Nav. Yes or no?

Support - Assuming we can get the link to be fairly non-intrusive to the rest of the content, this would be very helpful. -- Prod (Talk) 09:35, 25 May 2007 (CDT)
Support - This would be useful for navigation, and no objections come to mind. ech elon 09:38, 25 May 2007 (CDT)
Support - I'm thinking the best spot would be a link under where the customs would go, separated by a horizontal rule. As for the Footer Nav-styled one, we could just make a show/hide ToC just like the normal footer nav. --Ryan Schmidt^{Talk - Contribs} 15:09, 25 May 2007 (CDT)
Support - I don't see why not, but then again, I'm also in support of completely redesigning the Continue Nav since I don't think it serves its function as well as it could.

Can you elaborate on what you think needs to be changed? -- Prod (Talk) 10:04, 25 May 2007 (CDT)
Specifically, it was what I was talking about earlier. What if the link that I want to go to isn't in the CN? Which is why we started discussing if the TOC should be linked to the CN in the first place. This conversation is what's known as an overweight balancing act. If a problem has too much weight on one side and not enough on the other, people tend to gravitate to the solution where you add more weight to the other side to balance the problem out (which usually makes things more complex), instead of removing the original weight and redesigning the solution (which usually makes things more simple). If you're going to go through the trouble of linking the TOC from the CN, why not just replace the CN with the TOC to begin with, and go with the Footer Nav that I proposed above.

I just want to make it clear that I'm not adamant about any of this, nor do I wish to force my views about this on to anyone. I hope that I'm not giving anyone the impression that I'm pounding my fist on the table as I write this. I'm just using this opportunity to give my honest opinion about the problem. I will truly be happy with whatever the consensus is. ^_^ Procyon (Talk) 10:51, 25 May 2007 (CDT)

The problem is, some games have fairly formidable ToCs (e.g. this or even this). While the latter could be compacted using divs the vast scope of the game means it's going to take up most or all of the average screen resolution no matter what. When presented with a ToC this large many people might not go below it to the story and whatever other sections got shoved down there. Additionally, many guides don't have a long enough intro to extend beyond the infobox, meaning the ToC has to either float messily around it or else be forced below it with {{-}}, which results in a big gap of whitespace. And not every game has a deep enough story or enough gameplay tips to split these lower sections onto separate pages. For games with as few pages as Pac-Man I can see it being higher up, but for the more complex ones it might just be in the way there. Garrett^Talk 17:08, 25 May 2007 (CDT)

Ironically, Prod and I were discussing that very same thing today, and we started to wonder if it might not be a bad idea to have two different rules for small TOCs and large TOCs. Might be worth looking into. For the record I considered having TOCs with 1 or 2 columns remain high, and TOCs with 3 or 4 columns put lower down. Just thought it was interesting that we all had a similar thought. Procyon (Talk) 17:25, 25 May 2007 (CDT)

Implemented into the {{Continue Nav}}. Comments on format? -- Prod (Talk) 19:43, 7 June 2007 (CDT)

Rename {{All Game Nav}}

What does All Game Nav mean? It's somewhat minor, and a change can be handled with a simple redirect (and a bot to slowly change the links). Perhaps something like Header Nav (match with Footer Nav) or Top Nav (I like this one, nice and short). -- Prod (Talk) 09:48, 25 May 2007 (CDT)

I like Header Nav personally. If we have Footer Nav, the top should be Header Nav. I hate the fact that we use nextpage and backpage. It should have been nextpage and prevpage. But it's probably too late to change that now unless we sic a bot on the problem. As a programmer, using different antonyms is confusing to me. Words come in pairs, {Header-Footer}, {previous-next}, {forward-back}, and we break those pairs sometimes. Procyon (Talk) 10:01, 25 May 2007 (CDT)

Getting a bot to do this would be relatively easy... getting people to change what they're used to may be a bit harder :P. -- Prod (Talk) 10:15, 25 May 2007 (CDT)

Actually, we don't really need a bot, but it would help, we could move the AGN then have a bot do what links here to another place and add prevpage as well as having backpage to the footer but when backpage is used, add the page into a category. Just my ideas.--Rocky

^{(Talk - Contributions)} 10:18, 25 May 2007 (CDT)

*Scratches head...* I'm thoroughly confused by your response Rocky o_O; Procyon (Talk) 10:55, 25 May 2007 (CDT)

It's actually what I was suggesting as well....just that Rocky wants to change all the backpage to prevpage manually :P. If it gets to this, I'll have one of my bots take care of it, so don't worry too much (might have to leave it running overnight or something...) -- Prod (Talk) 11:01, 25 May 2007 (CDT)

I'm all for the rename. I like Header Nav and prevpage as the name/link. Unfortunately, this will more than likely confuse active contributors that don't look at this page. New contributors should be fine, as should we (since we're voting on this, after all). That's just what I think. --Ryan Schmidt^{Talk - Contribs} 15:06, 25 May 2007 (CDT)

Actually, I was suggesting that we keep backpage and customback until a bot can change them then have those (customback and backpage) present a warning to change to prevpage and customprev. This will give old contributors (and the ones that haven't seen this) to change.--Rocky

^{(Talk - Contributions)} 16:30, 25 May 2007 (CDT)

Originally we had guide-specific navs in the form Game Name Nav. All Game Nav, therefore, was to replace these with a unified system. Yeah, renaming it and backpage sounds sensible. A legacy cat would be a good interim fix until we have a bot that can do it. Garrett^Talk 15:53, 25 May 2007 (CDT)

That explains a few things ^_^. To be clear, this covers two changes:

Move {{All Game Nav}} to {{Header Nav}} (matches with {{Footer Nav}}, still open for alternate suggestions)
Change usage in {{Footer Nav}} from backpage/backname/customback to prevpage/prevname/customprev

Lets say we leave this discussion up for few days (until May 29th) and if we don't have any objections we can perform the changes. -- Prod (Talk) 16:22, 25 May 2007 (CDT)

I agree with the proposed rename. All Game Nav was a very confusing name to implement, and it certainly looks out of place now that we have formalized standards. A bot should do this. ech elon 00:40, 26 May 2007 (CDT)

Definitely rename it... It'll take some time to adjust from saying AGN to HN though!--Duke Ruckley 08:35, 26 May 2007 (CDT)

Well, the AGN has been moved to HN, prevpage/prevname/customprev has been incorporated, it's just a matter of sending my bot to clean up the old stuff (already prepared to go...I think :P). If there are no complaints, I'll start on Monday night (around 7 or 8 I hope...). -- Prod (Talk) 18:21, 26 May 2007 (CDT)

One final change I though of, customprev -> prevcustom (to match with prevpage and prevname). -- Prod (Talk) 10:51, 27 May 2007 (CDT)

Not too sure about that one. customprev is much easier to say than prevcustom, and you'll have to change customnext to nextcustom as well (which, again, is not very easy to say). Plus, at least for me, prevcustom and nextcustom make me think that there is a custom parameter in there somewhere. --Ryan Schmidt^{Talk - Contribs} 11:14, 27 May 2007 (CDT)

Well, as there doesn't seem to be any problems, I'm gonna start on changing the AGN's and backpage/backname. The custom ones are used so rarely they can be done later without causing too many edits. And Ryan, I don't have a voice recognition for me wiki edits :-P. -- Prod (Talk) 15:04, 27 May 2007 (CDT)

318 down, 7150 to go. I've been doing a basic spell check and a few cleanup things as I've been going, which has made it a manual process. This is probably going to take a few days to make sure I don't overload the server (and while I'm awake). As the new stuff is already in place, everyone should just start using the new things immediately as I work through the backlog. -- Prod (Talk) 17:36, 27 May 2007 (CDT)

Going over the ToCs right now, so that the deprecated templates cat doesn't get inherited. About 1000 done, 6500 to go. -- Prod (Talk) 09:01, 8 June 2007 (CDT)

Other aspects of games

I've started wondering while working on the StarCraft guide... Are we a strictly walkthrough-type site? Could we be including things like plots and characters of games, or are those out of our focus and should be left to other wikis and sites? Baejung92 17:30, 25 May 2007 (CDT)

The short answer to your question is, please feel free to include plots and characters. The longer answer is: any information that you might find in an instruction manual, or could be considered useful to a player may be included. Basically, anything that you might just as easily find in a printed strategy guide at a book store. That includes story lines, characters, item/enemy/level descriptions, and of course the walkthrough. Things that should be left out of guides are more supplemental information such as public response to a game, professional reviews, cultural references, that sort of thing. Procyon (Talk) 17:35, 25 May 2007 (CDT)

Promising Guide

We kinda need a few more candidates for this, we've got a few days to go and there's only 2 candidates.--Rocky ^{(Talk - Contributions)} 10:25, 27 May 2007 (CDT)

Some questions

Why exactly is there no March 2006 section under the Community Issues archives? and I am stumped as to the point of the depreciated templates category, and why they are on most of the pages I have viewed. Lunar Knight ^{(Talk to me + Contribs)} 11:18, 27 May 2007 (CDT)

The Deprecated templates thing is due to this, AGN and backpage/backname are now deprecated. -- Prod (Talk) 11:22, 27 May 2007 (CDT)

Anyone also interested in adding Tekken 3 and Tekken 5 movelists?

If you are interested in assisting with the addition of Tekken 3 and Tekken 5 move lists you're help will be extremely appreciated as StrategyWiki needs it and I have limited access to a computer with internet as I don't own one yet. As of now, I am beginning with the character "King" as I am most familiar with him. Please, if you do help, I will humbly ask if you can leave King's moves for me to deal with due to my reasons above.

"Getting started" vs. "How to play"

I've initiated an effort to standardize the guides that I started with some non-SW-conventional page names to bring them more in line with SW's standards. In summary, I'm changing every page that was once called "Elements" to "How to play", and any page that was once called "Strategy" (which was redirected from "Walkthrough") to "Walkthrough." I felt that these changes would help bring more consistency with the rest of the site to the guides that I started. As a result of my changes, I have been making every Continue Nav point to "How to play" and "Walkthrough" and I began to think that just as "Walkthrough" is a default parameter for nextpage2, I thought "How to play" should be the default parameter for nextpage. That is, until I examined the template and realized that there already was a default parameter for nextpage, and it was "Getting started."

I began to think about the term "Getting started" and it always felt to me like the very first part of a Walkthrough, which is where I thought the "Walkthrough" link of the CN should be pointing to anyway. So I looked at all of the pages that we have that are labeled "Getting started" and there are 45 of them (compared to the thousands of guides that we have, so it's obviously not in frequent use) and many of them serve different purposes from one another. Many are, as I expected, the beginnings of walkthroughs (go here, buy this, talk to that guy, start your adventure) while others are used in much the same fashion that I use "How to play" (controls, items, other game elements).

Therefore, I would like to propose that we officially adopt "How to play" over "Getting started" and simply tidy up the 45 guides that use "Getting started" (i.e. either leave it as "Getting started" if it's the beginning of a Walkthrough or change it to "How to play" if it discusses controls and rules), and set the default parameter of the Continue Nav nextpage to "How to play." How does everyone feel about this? Procyon (Talk) 09:38, 29 May 2007 (CDT)

I'm a bit worried really, we will have a lot of pages using it because it's in the preload template {{New_toc_preload}}. P.S I keep getting database errors when I search for getting started and press any of the next page buttons (next page and all the numbers), does anyone else have this problem?--Rocky

^{(Talk - Contributions)} 09:43, 29 May 2007 (CDT)

Sorry, I misread the entire thing, I barely ever use the getting started and how to play would be much better.--Rocky

^{(Talk - Contributions)} 09:56, 29 May 2007 (CDT)

The thing is, "Getting Started" is a section header in the Table of Contents that contains all of the controls and general information. "How to Play" is really a broad term that spans all of the pages under that section. I think for smaller guides, "How to Play" would be perfectly fine. However, most of the new games are larger and deserve the separate sections under "Getting Started" (which is now a linked header in the toc preload instead of just a plain header). Another thing is, the default for nextpage in the continue nav is already pretty complicated. Pretty much, it links to Getting Started if Getting Started exists. If it does not, it goes to Controls if that exists. If neither Getting Started nor Controls exists, then it goes to Getting Started. I'll try to work on getting How to Play in there (simply because most if not all of the retro games will probably have that as opposed to a Getting Started section), but I don't know if I can nest another parser in there. --Ryan Schmidt^{Talk - Contribs} 10:01, 29 May 2007 (CDT)

My point is that "Getting Started" probably shouldn't be a section heading in the TOC. If it's used in different ways by different authors, then its intentions are either unclear, or unintuitive. "How to play" to me means how exactly you control and interact with the various elements of the game, and has nothing to do with how to win, which is what the Walkthrough is for. Personally, they are distinct concepts in my mind. Whereas "Getting Started" to me really feels like a guide that goes at the very beginning of a Walkthrough. As in, "these are the things that happen right at the very beginning of a new game." Controls and such, theoretically, should be discussed and understood before you even begin, sort of like a "Before you get started," which sounds lame and is why I suggest "How to play" instead. Anyway, if anyone agrees with me, let me know, and if not, no big deal. I'll just continue link "How to play" manually in the Continue Navs that I write. Procyon (Talk) 13:23, 29 May 2007 (CDT)

I see what you mean, and it makes sense. "Getting Started" IS a bit broad. At the beginning, it was meant to prepare you for playing the game if you have not yet done so by introducing you to the controls and major characters and such (hence, it got you to a basis where you could start the game itself). I do agree maybe "Getting Started" is not the best name for that, and it should be relatively easy to get a bot to change all instances of "Getting Started" in ToC's to "How to Play" (or some other heading). Of course, we'll have to manually move all of the 45 actual pages into the correct ones and change the Footer Navs, but a bot should be able to take care of most of it. However, while I am in support of renaming "Getting Started" to something else, "How to Play" isn't it. For me, "How to Play" tells of the game interface (controls) and possibly some basic info/strategies that could be used throughout the game. A list of characters or other story elements, therefore, does not really fit under this, but is still worth mentioning before the walkthrough itself. --Ryan Schmidt^{Talk - Contribs} 15:08, 29 May 2007 (CDT)

For the guide I'm working on, "How to play" or even "Instructions" would be better, since that section will only have information about controls, gameplay, menus, and so on, without anything about story or characters (since there really isn't any in the game). Perhaps something similar to "Preamble" or "Prelude"? --Deasean 15:48, 29 May 2007 (CDT)

Yes, but this is the discussion to change the entirety of StrategyWiki, not just one guide. If you feel that something other than "Getting Started" fits your guide, use it, be bold! "Instructions" probably wouldn't work that well, as we're just presenting the info, not teaching it to them. "Preamble" sounds too formal, and then we'd have to make "Walkthrough" into "Body" or something (well, not really, but it emphasizes the point). Finally, "Prelude" is more of what happened before the game, not really how to play it. --Ryan Schmidt^{Talk - Contribs} 16:01, 29 May 2007 (CDT)

That's so funny because Prod was trying to come up with one word equivalent for "How to play" or "Getting started" and "Instructions" fits that perfectly. Personally, I always equated "Getting started" with "Prelude" as Ryan described it above. Personally, I still prefer "How to play" over "Instructions" but only because "Instructions" feels kind of dry. For the purpose however, I prefer "Instructions" over "Getting Started". Procyon (Talk) 16:10, 29 May 2007 (CDT)

How about "Introduction"? I know it really don't describe it all that well, but it is a bit more interesting (and wiki-like) than "Instructions" (plus it fits with "Appendices"). --Skizzerz^{Talk - Contribs} 16:28, 29 May 2007 (CDT)

Argh, I'm gonna sound like such a jerk, but exactly when did "Appendices" begin? Who's using Appendices? And using the term "Introduction" sort of conflicts with the usage of the front page. Introductions usually don't go in to a lot of detail, which is what you would expect to find in Instructions/Getting Started/How to play. How did this get so complicated? Procyon (Talk) 16:48, 29 May 2007 (CDT)

No idea when it began. It is used as a header in a lot of games, especially in the Grand Theft Auto series (where there are even pages sub-paged under it). As for "Introduction," it was kinda a bad idea, but I was wracking my mind for some one-worders and that is the first one I came up with. I guess "How to Play" is fine, but I prefer the P in Play capital rather than lowercase. I believe this got complicated the moment you've started the section on it here ;) --Skizzerz^{Talk - Contribs} 16:57, 29 May 2007 (CDT)

I don't know where the use of Appendices began, but I saw it once and started using it all the time, it makes sense for "miscellaneous information" stuff. I say How to Play should override Getting Started, it makes more sense as to what's in it and it also helps define the ToC section heading. Instructions is, well, bland. --Notmyhandle (talk • contribs) 18:04, 29 May 2007 (CDT)

You know...where did this Walkthrough term come from? :P. For some minor history, Getting Started came into widespread usage with the Continue Nav, Appendices came into widespread usage when added to the ToC preload. As Procyon stated above, I'd prefer a 1 word replacement if we change it. Some suggestions: Introduction, Basics, Preface, Background (and many of their synonyms). -- Prod (Talk) 21:20, 29 May 2007 (CDT)

Basics is the best choice because... It states that there is more than just mere instructions. This allows us to put sections like character information under it while still being able to contain instructions. You see, instructions = instructions, background/preface = background/preface, but basics = instructions/background/preface. --Notmyhandle (talk • contribs) 22:26, 29 May 2007 (CDT)

Here's a list of what I think of (connotations) when I see these names:

Getting Started: I think of everything from menus to controls to battle mechanics to background story. This is not the best choice if we want something concise.
How to Play: Pretty much the same as "getting started", except without the background story. Its okay, except I would prefer a single word over three.
Instructions: Sounds to me like a page for just controls.
Introduction: A page for just background story or perhaps a "how to use this guide" page.
Basics: Very basic information. This would be basic controls, basic fighting, etc. Nothing "advanced."
Background: Only for story.
Preface/Preamble: Both of these make me think of the first chapter in a book. These should be left for pages in the actual walkthrough.

I think what we need to figure out is what exactly this link is going to be for. Is it supposed to be the booklet for the game, essentially? If so, there is typically a lot involved in that and it should be a link to the "Introduction" for that booklet (I don't particularly like that name for it because it can be confusing). Is it supposed to be specifically for controls (then we can name it controls)? I like the name "Basics" but what exactly does that mean?

If we are going to standardize something, we need to be very specific about it.--Duke Ruckley 12:58, 30 May 2007 (CDT)

Dukeruckley's comments helped to solidify the problem with this conversation for me. I think that we may be trying too hard to apply one standard to a variety of guide styles. I'm going to desribe four guide types that I have come across here on this site:

The "Tip sheet." Examples include Combat, Rally-X, Binary Land. One page guides for games that are very simple, and don't necessarily contain a back-story. Roughly everything that can be said about the game can be contained in about two pages of text and so doesn't need to be split up.
The "Game Manual." Examples include Defender, Karateka, Street Fighter II. Games that are not so complicated that they require an intricate Walkthrough (or where no walkthrough is possible), but still have a level of depth that requires three or four pages to adequately describe all of the features of the game. (The majority of the guides that I have written are like this.)
The "Tip Book." Examples include Super Mario Bros., The Legend of Zelda, M.U.L.E.. Games where the walkthroughs are easy enough to figure out (or are fairly linear) but are worth spelling out so that subtle details and hidden items can be pointed out for those who don't know where to look, or want to become expert players. These guides will require between 5 and 15 pages.
The "Strategy Guide." Examples include The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, Pokémon Red and Blue, World of Warcraft. Games that are so expansive that the walkthrough needs to be broken up in several parts. Candidates for these guides are fairly obvious, expansive RPGs, Strategy games, MMOs, etc. These guides easily need over 15 pages.

Sometimes an author knows in advance which type of guide he intends to write, and sometimes it starts out one way, and evolves into another (hopefully they never devolve.) The fact is, the same standards can't always be applied across every style of guide. City Connection will never require a stage by stage walkthrough since the stages are identical in every way except for the layout of the platforms. Final Fantasy XI can never be described in one page, it's impossible. So ultimately, we can try to establish standards for these four different types of guides, or sort of trust each other enough to know what's best for the guides that we write. What do you all think of this? Procyon (Talk) 14:10, 30 May 2007 (CDT)

Procyon brings up a good point. I think instead of having one single standard, we should have standards for the different types of guides. Here are a few of my suggestions:

Type of Guide	Heading
Tip Sheet	None (Subdivide into different H2's as needed)
Game Manual	How to Play
Tip Book	How to Play
Strategy Guide	Getting Started

I felt that the "Strategy Guide" class deserves the "Getting Started" simply because it is probably the only type where mentioning story and more intricate points before the walkthrough starts would be beneficial. Of course, these are only suggestions and guidelines, what they are actually called should be up to personal discretion (within reason). Of course, this would probably require a bit more than a simple preload to implement, like a js wizard describing the four types w/ radio buttons whenever the "new toc" is clicked. Unfortunately, I suck at javascript... --Skizzerz^{Talk - Contribs} 15:25, 30 May 2007 (CDT)

I don't think that's a good idea at all. The getting started section is already stardardized to contain information pertaining to starting the game. I.e., we talk about what various modes are available off the bat, what things mean (statistics, titles, sub classes, etc.) and various things that aren't really important to anyone who already knows how to play. It's like a game manual in that it contains the little tidbits you might miss elsewhere, but aren't part of anything definitive like "controls."

So what I'm saying is that we shouldn't split the standardization of the Getting Started section based on how complex a game is; it still contains what it contains, and they should all be named the same for ease of use. If we break them up, then we're also going to have to require guides/sub pages to have "type" labels clearly visible. It's like, as programmers say, keep it simple stupid! Do we really need to break things up? I think all we need is to define what we want in each section, and then name them accordingly.

We want a walkthrough, we want basics of a game, and we want a place for miscellaneus information. Walkthrough makes sense. Appendices is my choice for misc info, and Basics, Starting, or Beginning is my choice for the basics. --Notmyhandle (talk • contribs) 18:36, 30 May 2007 (CDT)

I don't have much knowledge of wikis beyond the basics, but is it possible to allow the user to input into the HN what s/he wants? I know there is "custom", but I mean beyond that... For example, the user types in {{Header Nav|num=3|page1=Walkthrough|page2=Basics|page3=Controls}} and that'll display the Nav with a level 3 completion and those three pages. This way, it'll allow the user to decide what the nav should include. If "Basics" seems more appropriate than "How to Play" that option is there. The biggest problem I see now is implementing "parent" into it.

I know this still doesn't solve the problem of standardizing what each page would mean, but it might be an easy, quick fix to the problem we have.--Duke Ruckley 18:53, 30 May 2007 (CDT)

That would make things majorly complicated. The HN currently just copies the Table of Contents, so any changes should be made there and not on each HN. How about including a note in the preload documentation that says "click here to see the guidelines of laying out a table of contents" (preferably opens in a new tab/window)? It would allow us to express the different types of ToCs on a separate page without forcing the reader to pick-and-choose what type. They would be able to read much more in-depth info about the different types than they normally would be able to, and can make an informed decision as to what type their guide should be because of it. Plus, then we really don't have to change the preload itself. --Skizzerz^{Talk - Contribs} 18:58, 30 May 2007 (CDT)

.

Whoever suggests we have more than just the onepage/multipage standard is gonna have me come over to their house and kick their dog... As said above, it's simply too complicated to implement. Also, let's not get too far off topic here. We can make templates do what we want them to do, we just have to pick the right term. I don't really have a problem with Getting Started. Basics and Background are my other two preferences (mainly because they're only one word). -- Prod (Talk) 19:44, 30 May 2007 (CDT)

Procyon hides his dog... So where were we? lol... I've been thinking about why I might differ so much in opinion from some of you, and I've thought about what my inspiration for the content that I contribute. Three things come to mind. First, Instruction Manuals (like this one for Atari 5200 Defender), Joystik magazine (great scans on that link), and the original "Official Nintendo Player's Guide" (couldn't find a good enough link to that... I think a lot of you may be too young to remember it.) Anyway, what I'm really going after with the layouts that I choose is something that I would expect to find in a printed strategy guide. I think we're all going for that, we just have different conceptions of what that contains. Procyon (Talk) 20:04, 30 May 2007 (CDT)

Looking at the printed guides, and having read many (20+) gaming magazines, I think we already have those elements covered (sections like controls, differences in versions like difficulty things, etc.). Anyways, we're talking about the "Getting Started" section here, remember that. This section is the basics, which is why I supported "Basics" as its titled. Check out Chrono Trigger/Getting Started, I think I did a decent job at listing elements that need explaining but are still basics (if you have suggestions, discuss on that talk page). --Notmyhandle (talk • contribs) 20:37, 30 May 2007 (CDT)

Damn it NMH }=^( I don't need to be reminded about the topic of the discussion that I started. I'm old, but I'm not senile. If I want to go narrowly off-topic and discuss my inspirations (which is what lead me to initiate this discussion in the first place), I prefer not to be chastised for it. Procyon (Talk) 22:08, 30 May 2007 (CDT)

Wow, I feel stupid... For some odd reason I was thinking that the HN included a link to Getting Started as well as Walkthrough and Table of Contents. So pretty much everything I said in my previous edit can be disregarded. As for the actual problem, won't it just be simpler to allow whomever is editing the page to just decide for themselves what the name should be? I can understand standardizing, but for now it seems to make more sense just to let it go as it is and allow the problems to work itself out wiki-style. Then if things get heated and an agreement can't be made, the admins/sysops can enter the debate and vote, or something.--Duke Ruckley 08:34, 31 May 2007 (CDT)

Sounds good to me, it requires no action whatsoever (which is good). --Skizzerz^{Talk - Contribs} 15:10, 31 May 2007 (CDT)

I guess no change is fine for now. --Notmyhandle (talk • contribs) 18:27, 31 May 2007 (CDT)

Games that begin with "The"

Something I've been thinking about is, on most gaming sites when you want to look for a game by A-Z they usually alphabetize games that start with "The" by the next word in the title.

Is there a way we can make a category for games that start with "The" like Category:THE or something? And list those games alphabetically?

--Rikimaru 15:01, 31 May 2007 (CDT)

You can categorize them alphabetically by whatever you want by having [[Category:Games|Second Word]] instead of just the plain [[Category:Games]]. Therefore, a new category for games that start with "The" should be unnecessary. But before we go and change everything, does anyone else have any input? --Skizzerz^{Talk - Contribs} 15:08, 31 May 2007 (CDT)

Also, if it has loads of cats then you can put {{DEFAULTSORT:Second Word}}, this will do what Ryan says but with every category on the page.--Rocky

^{(Talk - Contributions)} 15:17, 31 May 2007 (CDT)

What about main pages? They get placed under the completion categories which are configured with the Header Nav; should all main pages thus be required to use {{DEFAULTSORT}} for games starting with "The"? --Notmyhandle (talk • contribs) 20:36, 31 May 2007 (CDT)

The defaultsort should affect the header nav cats as well, so you shouldn't need to change the template. We could easily(?) get either Auto Prod Bot or Boothby (bot) to take care of adding it to every page starting with "The." --Skizzerz^{Talk - Contribs} 20:58, 31 May 2007 (CDT)

I can easily do this (I think), just need consensus (just another thing to do along with the AGN -> HN stuff, fortunately I'm not at T yet :P). -- Prod (Talk) 21:34, 31 May 2007 (CDT)

What if we put the defaultsort on the TOC, would that work as it is transcluded onto all pages with the HN--Rocky

^{(Talk - Contributions)} 02:57, 1 June 2007 (CDT)

It's funny because I was thinking about this the other day when updating the Wii Virtual Console page... I need to go through and really clean that up, come to think of it. In any case, I agree with previous statements.--Duke Ruckley 09:21, 1 June 2007 (CDT)

I added the defaultsort to The Da Vinci Code/Table of Contents. The problem is, when looking in the categories, the "The" still shows up at the beginning, which can be somewhat difficult to read. Should I add it to the rest of them, or just leave them under "T". -- Prod (Talk) 22:49, 7 June 2007 (CDT)

Adding it to the ToC isn't the best way; while doing this also fixes placement in Category:Sub-pages that category's sole function is to make Special:Uncategorizedpages useful, so it's just extra work with no benefit. Also to consider is that if the game is categorised as "Game Name, The" people looking for it under "The Game Name" won't find it. While it is possible to double the category calls (once with The, once without) I'm pretty sure that affects the category contents counts. Garrett^Talk 01:30, 8 June 2007 (CDT)

DynamicPageList

How would you feel about installing this extension. It lists pages that are in specific categories and is very versatile in doing so. Linky. --Skizzerz^{Talk - Contribs} 15:50, 31 May 2007 (CDT)

Looks interesting. How (specifically) do you want to use it? -- Prod (Talk) 21:35, 31 May 2007 (CDT)

The idea popped into my mind when scrolling down StrategyWiki:Categories. Instead of having to maintain a manual list of them, we could use DynamicPageList to generate a list of the subcategories (I'm specifically looking at the systems section). There may be other uses now or down the road, too, just haven't thought of them yet. --Skizzerz^{Talk - Contribs} 15:07, 1 June 2007 (CDT)

"Auto Bot Shutoff Button"

I got this idea from Wikipedia. Since it appears that the bots are starting to step into the forefront as we're changing (or trying to change) every little thing that doesn't make sense, we should have an "Auto Bot Shutoff Button." Click here to see what one looks like. The only downside is that only sysops can use it, however. An alternative would be to have it shut itself off when a message is left on its talk page (have the button lead there instead of Special:Blockip). --Skizzerz^{Talk - Contribs} 21:06, 31 May 2007 (CDT)

Well, sysops can do it regardless. DrBob has set his up so it'll stop if someone leaves a message on his talk page. Apart from that, I don't think we have many bots around so we don't need it yet. If we start getting a few more bot requests, then we can worry about this. -- Prod (Talk) 21:43, 31 May 2007 (CDT)

Suggestion - Reference

To keep articles as accurate and authentic as possible, I suggest that we should follow Wikipedia's practice to include references on the bottom of the article. OhanaUnited 06:08, 1 June 2007 (CDT)

That's all very well and good, but it could prove problematic when the only external resources used are in the game itself or in the instructions booklet. For example, the Dirge of Cerberus: Final Fantasy VII walkthrough that I wrote (and I have every intention of completing when I get more time), all the tactics and maps were taken from the game itself, which I painstakingly wrote through trial and error, there was very little, if any, help from other sources. Citing references is good and all, but often there just aren't any.--Froglet 06:30, 1 June 2007 (CDT)

Hmm, I think in-game guide/walkthrough can be exempted from referencing but the main article should be referenced. Nevertheless referencing is always encouraged and should be done whenever possible. OhanaUnited 08:34, 1 June 2007 (CDT)

If references can be added, then by all means do so, but this will never be an official policy at StrategyWiki. For one thing, there simply are not enough official texts and sources on video games to provide a thorough foundation of information. Most of the content on this site comes from author experience. I can't "reference" a conversation that I've had with other game developers, but it doesn't make the information the I contribute any less accurate. References do not make articles authentic, conscientious editors do. IMO, Wikipedia's efforts to become "authentic" are misguided, and I don't wish to see SW emulate them on that point. Procyon (Talk) 09:27, 1 June 2007 (CDT)

References are needed on wikipedia because they are trying to be an encyclopedia. We have all the extensions needed to include references, we just don't require them (though they are nice to have). For us, our "external links" are really our references. -- Prod (Talk) 10:32, 1 June 2007 (CDT)

I think features or games that aren't released yet requires references, otherwise anyone can say anything about it. OhanaUnited 10:54, 1 June 2007 (CDT)

a) Why would someone bother to just make something up? And b) if you saw something that you knew to be incorrect, wouldn't you just fix it? If I can make up facts, I can make up references too. Procyon (Talk) 11:44, 1 June 2007 (CDT)

It's not necessarily on purpose. We had lots of rumors show up in the SSBB pages. However, this kind of stuff should be solved on the talk page. I do agree, that only unreleased games really need references to websites stating what's in them. -- Prod (Talk) 11:56, 1 June 2007 (CDT)

Well, I reference stuff as much as possible, but it's mostly in game quotes, such as seen on Chrono Trigger/Chronology. I've used Wikipedia's templates to create Template:Quote, Template:Cite web and Template:Reflist. Help make them better! --Notmyhandle (talk • contribs) 18:34, 1 June 2007 (CDT)

"Why would someone bother to just make something up?" - Because it's fun. At the moment, you could probably completely make up a boss strategy for a game that nobody else has been working on here, and nobody would know unless one happened to cross-reference it or start working on it yourself. If I were a general miscreant, though I'd concentrate upon the whole 'wikis suk' kind of crap, it takes too much brain power to invent a strategy.

Damn, you found me out :D--Rocky

^{(Talk - Contributions)} 10:56, 2 June 2007 (CDT)

Banner

Doesa anyone have a problem with the banner at the top of the page?--Rocky ^{(Talk - Contributions)} 09:37, 1 June 2007 (CDT)

No problem, but shall it be a shortcut to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shortcut below it? I could have swore that the banner took me to Staff lounge a moment ago. Foppe 09:59, 1 June 2007 (CDT)

I'm used to the lack of banner, so I can't really say. It looks interesting, but it may need a bit of touchup. I'd say get rid of the imagemap though, since it's not "expected". The shortcut template doesn't flow properly with it either. I don't really have an opinion as to whether to keep it or not. -- Prod (Talk) 10:34, 1 June 2007 (CDT)

I've got rid of the link in the imagemap but I can't really see anything wrong with the shortcut template except it needs to be raised by a few pixels.--Rocky

^{(Talk - Contributions)} 10:44, 1 June 2007 (CDT)

It's hard to get used to the fact that the discussion page button is on the right in here as to the top in Wikipedia. I also find that the buttons on the top are sometimes too small to click. Right now, I have to click on the word to go to another page. I hope that we can click on the whole tab. OhanaUnited 10:58, 1 June 2007 (CDT)

You can always switch to the monobook skin if you really don't like BlueCloud, I don't think it has the toolbar though.--Rocky

^{(Talk - Contributions)} 12:58, 1 June 2007 (CDT)

I would generally encourage new users to "live" with the site a few weeks before making any final judgments. We're not wikipedia, nor are we really trying to emulate their look. Procyon (Talk) 13:03, 1 June 2007 (CDT)

Category:XBOX Live Achievements

Can someone knowledgeable of XBOX Live Achievements please write up a simple description of achievements on the above category page? It's supposed to be a part of the collab of the month, but the page doesn't exist yet.--Dan 12:35, 1 June 2007 (CDT)

We have got Category:Achievements with a rename but we need consensus on what to rename it to--Rocky

^{(Talk - Contributions)} 12:41, 1 June 2007 (CDT)

Achievements or Xbox 360 Achievements sounds so much better than Xbox Live Achievements. At least for me. Foppe 12:46, 1 June 2007 (CDT)

The category that Rocky mentioned is an image category, not a title category. The truth is though, every single Xbox 360 game is a candidate for the Achievement category, so having an Achievement category would be redundant to the Xbox 360 category. Procyon (Talk) 12:51, 1 June 2007 (CDT)

I guess we're going to dump it, hoping that most people are aware of the notion that all Xbox 360 games have achievements.--Dan 13:38, 1 June 2007 (CDT)

The Achievements category has to be renamed, I am suggesting something like Category:Xbox Live Achievement images. I was thinking we could add the Category:Xbox Live Achievements similar to the Category:Move lists. -- Prod (Talk) 14:22, 1 June 2007 (CDT)

Different HN/AGN problem with Compilations

Check out Final Fantasy Chronicles. Note how for a compilation when you use the AGN it adds a category at the bottom called Category:Guides at completion stage without a number. Also note that because it is a compilation page, there will never be a walkthrough or ToC, so we'll have permanent red link. Can we create a function in the nav that when switched on it labels the page as Category:Compilations, drops the guides at completion stage, and gets rid of the ToC/Walkthrough links (it'll also need to get rid of the show/hide feature or maybe place the games in the compilation as links after that jump)? Or am I making this too difficult (I'm sure there's an easy solution somewhere).--Duke Ruckley 14:56, 2 June 2007 (CDT)

Edit: Actually, it happens any time the onepage is switched on.--Duke Ruckley 14:59, 2 June 2007 (CDT)

This only affects {{All Game Nav}}, {{Header Nav}} doesn't have this problem. I'm not sure what it is (perhaps AGN is using old/broken ParserFunctions?) but since we're moving to the new one it shouldn't be around for much longer. Garrett^Talk 00:48, 3 June 2007 (CDT)

Sorry about that. I had set up AGN as a virtual "redirect" (move AGN to HN, then had AGN pass on the parameters). I had missed passing on the parent and onepage parameters. It's fixed now. -- Prod (Talk) 09:28, 3 June 2007 (CDT)

That would explain why I never noticed it before now... Thanks guys.--Duke Ruckley 12:58, 4 June 2007 (CDT)

What happened to BlueCloud?

It no longer appears and images don't load (for me) either. Lunar Knight ^{(Talk to me + Contribs)} 12:04, 3 June 2007 (CDT)

Our media server is down (which holds all the images and javascript/css files). Echelon or Dan need to restart the server for it to come back. -- Prod (Talk) 12:06, 3 June 2007 (CDT)

I'm talking to Matt to see if he can't restore it for us. Procyon (Talk) 14:01, 3 June 2007 (CDT)

Thanks Proc!!!, (Mental note, next time don't press Ctrl+F5 to test anything)--Rocky

^{(Talk - Contributions)} 14:14, 3 June 2007 (CDT)

Rocky, CTRL+F5 isn't a bad thing; you just won't see any styling if the servers are having problems. It clears the cache, aka deletes all the images/styles you had saved for SW. --Notmyhandle (talk • contribs) 15:08, 3 June 2007 (CDT)

I tried to fix this last night, but thttpd was not being kind to me. Every time I tried to start it, it said it was already running. When I tried to stop it, it said it wasn't running!! Thanks to whoever fixed it this morning. ech elon 16:18, 3 June 2007 (CDT)

Pokemon DP a stub?

I think it's time to disqualify Pokemon Diamond and Pearl as a Stub walkthrough. I know it's very incomplete, but there's so much information to be covered, and there has been a lot of work put into it (much by myself and Lunar Knight). Any oppinions? -Myth 23:57, 3 June 2007 (CDT)

The stub thing is mainly for that page, it's saying that the main page may need a bit more info, if you disagree then be bold and remove it.--02:25, 4 June 2007 (CDT)--Rocky

^{(Talk - Contributions)} 06:53, 4 June 2007 (CDT)

I was BOLD and removed it. --Myth 15:25, 6 June 2007 (CDT)

Table cell background color

Can someone help me out? I am working on a Tenchu: Stealth Assassins Guide, and on the item page, I have a list of all the items in the game with pictures. I am using tables to show the item and description. I want to change the background color on the cells where the images are, to black to match the image background color. I tried just putting css in there but its not working out. Thanks.

Tenchu:_Stealth_Assassins/Items

--Rikimaru 15:35, 4 June 2007 (CDT)

Done, but could you re-upload those images as .png with transparency? It would allow the images to be put on any type of background (like so):

Skizzerz^{Talk - Contribs} 16:29, 4 June 2007 (CDT)

Sure, I can edit the pics. Thanks for the help

--Rikimaru 16:37, 4 June 2007 (CDT)

OK, I uploaded the new png versions and changed the page to link to them, but I dont know how to get rid of the jpg versions. --Rikimaru 17:12, 4 June 2007 (CDT)

Only sysops can delete things, so either leave a list of the .jpg versions on my talk page (put a colon before the "Image" to link to it instead of include it -- like [[:Image:blah.jpg]]), or mark all of the images with {{delete}}. --Skizzerz^{Talk - Contribs} 17:23, 4 June 2007 (CDT)

I've taken care of it, let me know if I missed any. --Skizzerz^{Talk - Contribs} 17:52, 4 June 2007 (CDT)

Hey thanks a lot for your help. --Rikimaru 18:59, 4 June 2007 (CDT)

Picture of Pearl version for here?

If I can't could someone download a picture of Pearl version onto the guide linked above? It would be much appreciated. -Myth 21:13, 4 June 2007 (CDT)

Try Wikipedia:Pokémon Diamond and Pearl. -- Prod (Talk) 21:14, 4 June 2007 (CDT)

Done. Lunar Knight ^{(Talk to me + Contribs)} 21:52, 4 June 2007 (CDT)

Printable Version in bluecolud is terrible

I just wanted to print out the Achievements for UNO. I wanted to get the printable version and there wasn't a link so I found the code to put in the URL bar from wikipedia, I did this and it looks terrible, see here, is there any way to fix this.--Rocky ^{(Talk - Contributions)} 08:55, 5 June 2007 (CDT)

As far as I can see, printable-ness isn't supported at all by BlueCloud (apparently, it doesn't even throw in a link to the printable version of the currently viewed page.) I'll add it to the skin TODO list. In the meantime, you can try using the MonoBook printable version of a page by appending &printable=yes&useskin=MonoBook to the end of an SW URL. Using MonoBook, the printable version of the page you want to print above would be here. Hope that helps.--Dan 17:49, 11 June 2007 (CDT)

Tekken 3 Movelists up for edit.

Thanks Procyon for assisting me King2 18:29, 5 June 2007 (CDT) (previously known as King) with cutting my Tekken 3 editing time and also with providing me with a very useful template as I don't have the time to learn the ways of creating professional pages. I will be periodically editing the Movelist so it will take a very long time to complete on my own. If you don't see any improvement for a whole please refer to the talk above about Tekken 3. This is why it would be very helpful if users also assist with this project. Tekken 3 is considered to be one of the revolutionary fighting games of its time and for the StrategyWiki younger generation who know where to easily find game strategy and don't have access to the much more expensive Tekken 5 to get it from their favorite wiki strategy site would create a new generation of Tekken pros.

I'll help clean up and organize whatever you add. Just add more! --Notmyhandle (talk • contribs) 19:56, 5 June 2007 (CDT)

King2, in all honesty, the best course of action for both you and StrategyWiki would be to recruit other Tekken enthusiasts and get them to assist you with the movelists. SW is always looking for more members, but your pleas for assistance with the movelist won't net you very much help. If anyone here was interested in working on Tekken 3, they would have already started. Since no one has, it falls on you to either do a little bit at a time, or find others who aren't yet associated with SW, and get them to sign on and help you. I have my hands full with other projects, or I would help you myself. Working on movelists is a very time consuming task, but it can be very rewarding to look at when it's complete. Good luck, and I'll provide whatever assistance I can. Procyon (Talk) 21:13, 5 June 2007 (CDT)

Standard: Sequals with New Features

So for games that are in a series, like Tekken and Heroes of Might and Magic, each game basically adds on to the last. Now the problem lies on where the info for such changes should lie. Front page? Or Getting Started? I say getting started. First of all, we don't really haven't really defined what goes in GS and I think this would be one of the prime things to have in it. Since it's actual game related info, it doesn't need to be placed on the front page, which is basically the "title page" of for the game. We have a good system at trying to keep things to a minimum thus far and yeah, it's not necessary. The two main info points on the main page are the general description and the brief summary/catchy story. We don't need it on the front page. I keep saying just the front page, simply because that's where it's been appearing the most (and yes I am at fault for putting them there at times, I might also be the only one to do so). --Notmyhandle (talk • contribs) 19:53, 5 June 2007 (CDT)

I'd say "Getting Started" would be the place to go with it. The front page can have a sentence or two about it, plus the stuff in the infobox, but things that pertain to new features in gameplay and such should go elsewhere (Getting Started). I think other aesthetic stuff (like a note of the cel-shaded graphics in Wind Waker) can go on the front page, though. --Skizzerz^{Talk - Contribs} 20:00, 5 June 2007 (CDT)

Agreed. --Notmyhandle (talk • contribs) 20:08, 5 June 2007 (CDT)

You might want to have a look at Street Fighter II, Street Fighter II Turbo, Super Street Fighter II, etc. This is why we set the "parent" parameter up for the Header_Nav. Granted, these game only required one page between them, so NMH's argument is valid if you're talking about a game that requires more than one page. I believe that the Super Mario 64 DS guide needs to be collapsed better with the Super Mario 64 guide. Personally, I believe that only the bits of the game that are unique to Super Mario 64 DS should be mentioned in that guide, and everything else should point back to the content in the original Super Mario 64 guide. Procyon (Talk) 21:18, 5 June 2007 (CDT)

If they don't have this feature already in MediaWiki, someone should advocate for tags that you can enclose text in and then subst it to another page. So, in this case we would take 64 content and subst it to the DS pages; we would have "separate pages" but they would contain literally the same content (besides the extra HN/FN and special subst markup). Theoretical suggestions are great aren't they? --Notmyhandle (talk • contribs) 01:14, 6 June 2007 (CDT)

This feature already exists. Use <noinclude></noinclude> to tag text that won't be shown when used in other pages, and <includeonly></includeonly> to tag text that will only be shown when used in other pages. You then insert the page like a template, but with a colon in front (e.g. {{:Pac-Man/Walkthrough}}). The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time Master Quest uses it extensively; all that differs is the dungeons, so the rest comes from The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. Garrett^Talk 04:10, 6 June 2007 (CDT)

Pokemon D/P

I jotted down some notes I got from Route 225 from my game today, but then saw on the D/P page that no Route 225 exists. Could someone please add it in or tell me how to re-add it? Thanks. --Myth 18:43, 6 June 2007 (CDT)

Just create the page with the proper formatting and add a link to it in the Table of Contents between the appropriate two sections. --Skizzerz^{Talk - Contribs} 19:03, 6 June 2007 (CDT)

Sinnoh Pokémon for Diamond and Pearl is whack

The Sinnoh Pokémon there have their Bulbapedia entries mushed into their pictures. Does anyone know how to fix this? Myth 20:15, 7 June 2007 (CDT)

I've tried that page on Firefox and IE7, with BlueCloud and Monobook. Looks fine in all cases. What browser and skin (and extensions?) are you using? -- Prod (Talk) 20:27, 7 June 2007 (CDT)

works perfectly in IE6, even the PNGs have transparency. Something must be really wrong :P.--Rocky

^{(Talk - Contributions)} 02:57, 8 June 2007 (CDT)

There must be something wrong. Because everything loads up fine, and then the words move over three inches and mash inside of the sprites. Myth 12:08, 8 June 2007 (CDT)

What browser are you using? -- Prod (Talk) 12:18, 8 June 2007 (CDT)

Also, what screen resolution are you using? If your resolution is small (like say 800 by 600), it might cause some squishing-together of items. --Skizzerz^{Talk - Contribs} 15:04, 8 June 2007 (CDT)

Hmm, that seems to be exactly the problem. Firefox doesn't suffer from this :P (though the ads overlap the content in that case....). -- Prod (Talk) 15:26, 8 June 2007 (CDT)

That happens to me anyway with <pre>'d text and big pages with images like maplestory bosses 100-199 or whatever it is :P. Is there a way to make them go off to the far right like they did In IE.--Rocky

^{(Talk - Contributions)} 15:38, 8 June 2007 (CDT)

I'll admit that I don't have a very large computer screen (15", but I payed for it, so what can you expect?), but I had the box enlarged pretty big on my screen. I'll try it on a computer with a bigger screen to see if it works on that. Myth 00:41, 10 June 2007 (CDT)

I tried it on a larger screen, and it came out fine. I guess it was my screen size o o. Myth 01:03, 10 June 2007 (CDT)

What resolution are you running? --Notmyhandle (talk • contribs) 01:43, 10 June 2007 (CDT)

I'm not sure what you mean. Myth 13:36, 10 June 2007 (CDT)

Right click on your desktop, click properties and go to the far right tab (Usually), there should be a picture of 1 or 2 screens depending on your OS, in the bottom-left of the box there should be a slider, read the no. by it, mine's 1024 by 768, if you don't have windows then it's a bit iffernet, I can't remember how to do it on a mac but I think it's in one of the options when you click on the apple in the top left corner but I'm not anywhere near sure. Oh and you can drag the slider to change the resolution to be a bit bigger. Sorry this is so long.--Rocky

^{(Talk - Contributions)} 13:51, 10 June 2007 (CDT)

Mine's on the highest resolution: 1080x800. That definitely isn't the problem. Myth 18:36, 10 June 2007 (CDT)

Ok then, what browser are you using (and what version of it)? You can find out in Help-About or whatever is comparable on your browser. Make sure that you are running the most current version of it, whatever it is. Alternatively, you might have your text size set a bit too high. Try decreasing the text size and see if that works (usually under View-Text Size-Decrease or something like that). --Skizzerz^{Talk - Contribs} 21:31, 10 June 2007 (CDT)

Just to note that I made a change a day or two back. Try and check again after clearing your cache (usually ctrl+f5). -- Prod (Talk) 21:41, 10 June 2007 (CDT)

Actually, I just figured out that it's the size of the page. I enlarged it to full-screen and they moved over. Now we can finally stop taking up a billion inches of Community Issues space. Myth 16:06, 11 June 2007 (CDT)

You think this is big? Check out this one, this one, and this one! Glad you figured it out though. --Skizzerz^{Talk - Contribs} 16:19, 11 June 2007 (CDT)

Legendary and Rare Pokémon for Diamond and Pearl

I think there should be a section for Rare or Legendary Pokémon in the D/P guide, as there is no section now for it and no place you could really put it elsewhere. Any thoughts on the matter? Myth 13:39, 10 June 2007 (CDT)

Add [[Pokémon Diamond and Pearl/Rare or Legendary Pokémon|Rare or Legendary Pokémon]] to the TOC and then click on it to make the article.--Rocky

^{(Talk - Contributions)} 14:48, 10 June 2007 (CDT)

Where should I put it though? Myth 18:31, 10 June 2007 (CDT)

Should I put it in the Getting Started Section, as that's where the Un-Obtainable Pokémon is listed. Myth 18:41, 10 June 2007 (CDT)

I'd put it under Getting Started immediately before Un-Obtainable Pokémon, but it is entirely up to you (you're the one adding it, put it where it feels right). --Skizzerz^{Talk - Contribs} 21:32, 10 June 2007 (CDT)

Linking to a website

Isn't it banned on Strategy Wiki to link to a personal website on your userpage, or basically anywhere else? I ask because Echelon had a link to his personal site and someone should drop him a note if he's not supposed to have it. Myth 20:21, 11 June 2007 (CDT)

We don't have such a rule as yet. Generally, if the mention isn't of the >>>>>VISIT MY SITE!!!!<<<<< variety it's fine. Since external links all have rel="nofollow" applied (which tells Google and the like to not factor them into any ranking algorithms) the spam value of such links is minimal anyway. Garrett^Talk 20:33, 11 June 2007 (CDT)

We have nofollow?--Dan 20:40, 11 June 2007 (CDT)

I think it's a MediaWiki default. Either way, it's on at the moment. Garrett^Talk 20:58, 11 June 2007 (CDT)

I'm pretty sure it's not on by default in MediaWiki. In fact, from the previous discussion on it, I thought we didn't have it. --Skizzerz^{Talk - Contribs} 21:10, 11 June 2007 (CDT)

Nofollow is definately on, check the source. -- Prod (Talk) 21:23, 11 June 2007 (CDT)

I don't see the harm in it if it's on a personal page (like my band advertisement; yeah it doesn't have a link but my next one might). --Notmyhandle (talk • contribs) 01:01, 12 June 2007 (CDT)

Lol I was reading the thread on Myth's talk page. So adverts aren't allowed? Mine's been up for like a month now. --Notmyhandle (talk • contribs) 01:07, 12 June 2007 (CDT)

Hehehe, if you mean to Abxy/DSmeet I can almost see your point. Right now that entire community application is still being recoded. I had hoped it would serve as the basis for our forum accounts, but right now I'm reworking it into something else entirely. StrategyWiki is a separate entity that just so happens to be (barely) paying for the StrategyWiki/Abxy server, and I don't see any need to cross-promote. Especially at this point, now that Abxy has slowed down. I see the point entirely, though! As for the link to my personal website in my user page--well, anybody can put anything at all (so long as it's legal) into their personal user pages. There's not much useful information at my website either--not right now. :P ech elon 20:42, 12 June 2007 (CDT)

Sigexpand/Sighidden

I found some css on Uncyclopedia that allows expandable sigs. You can find the code in my css. Basically, one span class, "sigexpand," is always visible. However, when whatever is contained within that span is hovered over, the "sighidden" part appears. I think this could be useful for a) a bit better sig styling b) contracting the size of large sigs. Should we implement this (it would go in the Common css if we do)? (PS-In the case of my sig, if you have that css, only the scissors is visible until you hover over it, in which case the other links appear as well). --Safety Skizzerz ^{Talk · Contribs · Spel Chek™ · VFG · RTFM} 21:00, 12 June 2007 (CDT)

Bumpity Bump. Hello?--

Safety Skizzerz ^{Talk · Contribs · Spel Chek™ · VFG · RTFM} 08:17, 14 June 2007 (CDT)

Doobey Doo, for me, the sigs can be annoying there, nobody would think to move their mouse over your sig and it gets in the way when highlighting text.--Rocky

^{(Talk - Contributions)} 11:01, 14 June 2007 (CDT)

Isn't this up to the admins? Because it has to do with limitations on sigs... I think it's fine as long as it works without problems. --Notmyhandle (talk • contribs) 19:30, 14 June 2007 (CDT)

The only problem with it is that when not put down on a page correctly (like mine is, I have it substitute User:Ryan Schmidt/sig2, which contains {{User:Ryan Schmidt/sig}} in it. Otherwise, it substitutes the entirety of the code, which is really messy (my sig takes up 7 lines in the default edit box). As for the annoyingness, we can always disable it if it gets too bad (plus, having any superscript or subscript makes the line above/below jumpy, so I'll have to change that part in mine if we make this global). --

Safety Skizzerz ^{Talk · Contribs · Spel Chek™ · VFG · RTFM} 20:52, 14 June 2007 (CDT)

As long as they're not too annoying, one person had their sig center when you move over it, if you move your mouse off the line then it would go back to the left, it was fairly hard to click.--Rocky

^{(Talk - Contributions)} 00:42, 15 June 2007 (CDT)

Another problem that I have just encountered is with long sigs that wrap to the next line. You can only click on the links in the very same line, it disappears before you can get to the next line. I do agree that we'll have to guage how annoying it becomes when more people (besides me) start using it. However, any changes made to them should be retroactive anyway (if they did it the right way to begin with). --

Safety Skizzerz ^{Talk · Contribs · Spel Chek™ · VFG · RTFM} 09:31, 15 June 2007 (CDT)

So should I put this into Common.css or not? --Safety Skizzerz ^{Talk · Contribs · Spel Chek™ · VFG · RTFM} 20:41, 22 June 2007 (CDT)

When we find out how to stop the line problem, P.S Do you think that it'd be a good idea to have this image when you move your mouse over the sig?--Rocky

^{(Talk - Contributions)} 14:02, 24 June 2007 (CDT)

Stopping the line problem requires the people that sign them to use preview and check to see how large their sigs are, then putting them on a new line if they would wrap. As for your other suggestion, I put in another css class in my BlueCloud.css called "sigshown" which fulfills that purpose. Copy my css into yours to see how it works. --

Safety Skizzerz ^{Talk · Contribs · Spel Chek™ · VFG · RTFM} 10:09, 6 July 2007 (CDT)

It doesn't work, all I can see is the open scissors, moving my mouse over it does nothing and I have done Ctrl + F5--Rocky

^{(Talk - Contributions)} 10:41, 6 July 2007 (CDT)

That's weird. It works fine for me, even with the closed scissors. Try closing out of your browser and re-opening it. Also, try clearing the cache on a page with the sig on it (like this one) instead of the css page. Oh, and if we do globally implement this, you can turn it off by putting the following code in your css:

.sigshown { display: none !important }

.sighidden { display: inline !important }

That forces the sig into a perpetual "hovered-over" state --

Safety Skizzerz ^{Talk · Contribs · Spel Chek™ · VFG · RTFM} 10:53, 6 July 2007 (CDT)

Nope, I tried everything u said and it still won't work.--Rocky

^{(Talk - Contributions)} 11:04, 6 July 2007 (CDT)

I really don't know what to say then, what browser/version are you using? The only other option I can think of is either removing that css or putting in the constant hover state. --

Safety Skizzerz ^{Talk · Contribs · Spel Chek™ · VFG · RTFM} 11:35, 6 July 2007 (CDT)

IE6 v.2900.2180 for XP SP2.--Rocky

^{(Talk - Contributions)} 11:42, 6 July 2007 (CDT)

Try using FireFox and see if that works. --

Safety Skizzerz ^{Talk · Contribs · Spel Chek™ · VFG · RTFM} 11:55, 6 July 2007 (CDT)

I'm having FF trouble at the moment :((((((((( --Rocky

^{(Talk - Contributions)} 11:56, 6 July 2007 (CDT)

I would like to note that I think this template is unnecessary. Sig's are there to tell who we are, our user pages are there to show who we are. I think anything beyond only your name is excessive, but a bit of expression (like a picture) isn't too bad. I'm a bit against the transcluded sig, because your sig is going to be used on a lot of pages, and if you modify that, it's going to add a HUGE queue (especially if you welcome users). I would really prefer we didn't use this site-wide. -- Prod (Talk) 20:31, 6 July 2007 (CDT)

mmk. The way I see it, there are two options. Option number one would be to put the default switch-off in the common.css (outlined above, without the !important though, so people can actually have it on if they so wish). Option number two would be for me to remove this entirely from mine (and Rocky from his) css and for me to make my sig just be the open scissors and the links without any other formatting. Either one is fine with me. As for changing my sig, that's why the page is protected. The only change I would make to it now would be to remove the styling classes. --

Safety Skizzerz ^{Talk · Contribs · Spel Chek™ · VFG · RTFM} 21:53, 6 July 2007 (CDT)

When I remove it, I will see two pics of scissors, open and closed, so it's not really a good idea IMO. --Rocky

^{(Talk - Contributions)} 01:48, 7 July 2007 (CDT)

I commented out all of the stylization things on my sig page until this issue is resolved. If you can't see the changes, try clearing your cache. --

Safety Skizzerz ^{Talk · Contribs · Spel Chek™ · VFG · RTFM} 10:49, 7 July 2007 (CDT)

Personal milestone achieved

Well, I have finally done it. A major goal of mine that I had shared with Echelon and Dan was to turn every link in this list blue. As of tonight, I have written a guide, or at the very least, stubbed in a page for every Famicom game ever made through the first three years of its existence, 1983 through 1985. I went in to depth on every game that was appealing to me, and simply stubbed the ones that were a lot less interesting to play. (I don't think too many people are going to be upset that there isn't more information about Bokosuka Wars or Onyanko Town.) I want to thank everyone who has provided me with some form of help, support, or encouragement, especially Echelon, Dan, Prod, Garrett, Rocky, Ryan, Lunar Knight, Mason, NMH, and last but not least, DrBob (we miss you around here man!) Thanks also to SnesMaster for his help with maps. Sincere apologies to anyone that I neglected to mention. And I feel that even though this monumental task is behind me, I'm only just starting. So where do I go from here?

First and foremost, I absolutely intend to finish the Pokémon Red and Blue guide. I made completing it rather difficult for myself, and it became very tedious. But I have so little of the game left, that I might as well just get it over with.
Next, there are a number of Pre-Famicom arcade games that I would still like to cover, so I may try to tackle the bigger titles before I look at any 1986 Famicom/NES games. The next two on my list are Tempest and Wizard of Wor.
I was surprised at how much fun it was to put the Combat guide together (although I hesitate to call it a guide), so I want to do the other 8 launch titles that came out with the Atari 2600. That includes Air-Sea Battle, Star Ship, Indy 500, Street Racer, Video Olympics, Surround, Blackjack, and Basic Math... which isn't really a game ^_^;
I've neglected the Move Lists project for quite a while. I should try to get through the Street Fighter III and Street Fighter EX series, and maybe move on to Darkstalkers...
And then finally, when I've completed #1 and #3, and made a sizable dent in #2 and #4, I will start moving on to the 1986 Famicom/NES games. At that point, the games start to get more complicated. The guides will be approaching the size of the Super Mario Bros. and The Legend of Zelda guides, so they will take a while longer to complete, naturally. (More games were made for the Famicom in 1986, then made in the first three years!)

I always ask for feedback and comments about how I can improve any of the guides that I've started, so please feel free to leave some here, or on my talk page. Thanks again everyone. Let's keep making SW the greatest site on the whole web. Procyon (Talk) 00:25, 14 June 2007 (CDT)

Thanks for all your contributions Proc, glad you're still on board and I can't wait to see what else you'll bust out. I'm just puttering a long with my guides, still haven't completed CT and my newest guide is pitiful ahaha. Keep up the great work, everyone should follow suit! --Notmyhandle (talk • contribs) 00:30, 14 June 2007 (CDT)

Additionally, because of you StrategyWiki has hit its own milestone with 200 completed guides! Congrats everyone! --Notmyhandle (talk • contribs) 00:31, 14 June 2007 (CDT)

Congrats Proc! I'm glad to see that you're able to complete a major goal of yours. I've always been impressed with your guides.--Duke Ruckley 10:04, 15 June 2007 (CDT)

*Does little dance*--Froglet 10:05, 15 June 2007 (CDT)

You're like some kind of machine! That's really great; here's to the next 100 guides! :-D I've only got three exams left, so I should be back the week after next (these three are spread out a little >:-( ), although I may be off frequently to go to parties and stuff. Keep up the good work, Procyon! --DrBob (Talk) 06:44, 17 June 2007 (CDT)

Policy on roms and emulators

What is our official policy on roms and emulators? Roms are essentially illegal unless you make your own backup of the game (fair use). Emulators I'm not sure about. bleem! was sued by Sony and essentially died soon after, and I'm not sure if it goes against the DMCA (something about copy protection schemes). Although they are the best way of getting screenshots for any non-PC games, I get the feeling that game companies aren't too happy with them (of course, I could be wrong...). -- Prod (Talk) 09:24, 16 June 2007 (CDT)

No, you're right. Emulators "take away" from the possible market of re-releases; like those on the Wii and Xbox Live (I would argue that they actually promote playability, but whatever). I don't think SW should support it, for legality issues, but I don't think it's bad to discuss them and I personally support the use for images and research, but I think if you can buy the game then you should. --Notmyhandle (talk • contribs) 14:27, 16 June 2007 (CDT)

I agree, promoting emulators can Only get us into trouble even if it is in the gray area of the law, but I think that if you own the game then you should be able to take screenshots, I disagree with emulatng modern games but I think it's OK if you can't buy them easily.--Rocky

^{(Talk - Contributions)} 14:41, 16 June 2007 (CDT)

"Buy them easily" is also controversial, like if the game hasn't been republished and we have to rely on used games, then yeah that's not fair if people say it's not ok. --Notmyhandle (talk • contribs) 15:03, 16 June 2007 (CDT)

And if you download it then it gets re-published but what I'm saying is that if you have the game then it should be your right to take screenshots. E.g PS1 and older, maybe some GBA games now but I think it's wrong to take a rom of a brand new PS3 game and emulate it without the disk. Republished games are different (for me), they're usually a lot cheaper and have extras (E.g 360 games have achievements), it's not like you are buying them for £30-40, if you don't have the console then IMO it's OK to emulate them.--Rocky

^{(Talk - Contributions)} 15:16, 16 June 2007 (CDT)

OK, I'm not a lawyer (but my dad is), but you guys are way way off on this topic. There is absolutely nothing illegal, nor will there ever be, about emulators. If there were, the MAME project would have been halted ages ago. The law (as far as the United States is concerned, and they're the strictest, so I have to assume this applies to everywhere around the world) is that anyone is allowed to reverse engineer anything currently available, so long as said reverse engineering did not take place using proprietary non-public information. That is, you can't reverse engineer something if you had to use information stolen from Sony in order to do it. Claiming that emulators are illegal is like saying that CD and DVD players should be illegal since I can buy one and use it to play nothing but illegally copied discs. Bleem was sued because it attempted to be a commercial product that intended to make money off of Sony's intellectual properties. Bleem was under no such attack while it was a non-commercial program. Further more, Sony could not win a case against them solely on the basis that Bleem was an emulator, there were several other IP theft charges rendered against them. The point is, emulators are not illegal, and no amount of association with them can ever bring harm to this website or any other. Offering ROMs for download is an entirely different story. That can bring the threat of a lawsuit, but as long as the requests were complied with, it would never get to the level of an actual case (that costs too much money, so companies always try to resolve issues "peacefully" first). I would never advocate SW offering ROMs for download, nor provide links to any sites that do (there are plenty of other ways for resourceful people to find them). So please guys, do not rashly go down the line of thought that we have to outright ban the discussion of emulators because it's an absolutely false pretense, and it is an extraordinarily useful tool for the purposes of this site. Believe me, I've been a part of the emulation community for over 10 years. I know all of the arguments that have ever been presented about the legality of emulators. It's time for the big companies to stop scaring people into believing things that aren't true, no matter how much they might wish they were. Procyon (Talk) 15:28, 16 June 2007 (CDT)

Companies would love to have you believe that emulators and game copiers are just as illegal as downloaded ROMs. According to Nintendo's legal page, "The backup/archival copy exception is ... relating to a copy being made by the rightful owner ... to ensure he or she has one in the event of damage or destruction", but they then go on to say, "Are Game Copying Devices Illegal? Yes". So a backup of a game you own is kosher if you copied it yourself directly from the original media, but the only device capable of exercising this legal right is illegal? Bottom line is, don't believe everything the companies say. :) Garrett^Talk 15:59, 16 June 2007 (CDT)

LOL, I just read that. I'm now going to find a link using the 6 links of separation theory to find that nintendo links to emulators then get them to sue themselves. BTW, click the IDSA link on the bottom of that page, I can't find anything on the front page (Shows how much they care).--Rocky

^{(Talk - Contributions)} 16:14, 16 June 2007 (CDT)

IANAL. Now that that's out of the way, I think we agree that ROMs are most certainly illegal (not exactly sure what law, maybe copyright infringement?), unless you make your own copy, where it's fair use. About emulators, I think they are still somewhat a gray area. There's so many rumors going around on both sides that it's hard to tell what is really true (that whole "delete in 24 hours and you're fine" garbage). Reverse engineering is protected in U.S., however the DMCA is being used in all sorts of ways these days. Reverse engineering copyright protection mechanisms is essentially illegal by that law (specifically re-distribution of those mechanisms, but whatever). To stay legal, as long as we don't distribute we're fine. I guess I should have focused more on the "good faith" part which is the important part. We want the game companies to "like" us. Just because it's legal, doesn't make it the right thing to do. My suggestion would be, you are able to talk about them, but telling how to get them (beyond the obvious "search for it") should not be allowed (ie. no linking to emulation sites and the such). -- Prod (Talk) 16:15, 16 June 2007 (CDT)

But... we do link to them. There's a link to MAME's website right in the MAME guide. So does wikipedia for that matter! If it was really so bad to point to emulators, then all of the publicly known emulation sites would have been shut down long ago. There are other uses for emulators besides video games (as hard as that may be to believe.) Emulators in no way violate DMCA either. If you think about what an emulator does, it takes one foreign machine language instruction and translates into a native machine language instruction. It's a translator from one machine to another. How it that can be put to use is one thing, but there's simply no legal precedent for a company to go after a website for linking to a place where an emulator can be downloaded and played with. ROMs, no question, we can't do it. I have my own personally feelings about that, but I'll keep them to myself, they aren't relevant to this discussion. But I would challenge someone to come after us legally for linking to an emulator's site.

Please note that this is about good faith towards game companies, not legality. I also don't want to delve into MAME since it has significant use for games that are no longer copyrighted. -- Prod (Talk) 16:31, 16 June 2007 (CDT)

Sure, we all have good faith (for the most part) in the game companies to make games and consoles. What I have no faith in is the fact that the companies say that emulators to create screenshots are a no-go zone, and then rather than provide a commercially available, cheap alternative (where you, say, slot a GB cartridge into a littler device that links up to the computer), just say that it's illegal. What choice do they leave strategy guide makers? To me this reeks of how various governments illegalise drugs, then refuse to provide those dependant upon them and proceed to leave a highly lucrative industry open - if you were addicted to drugs and there wasn't any legal alternatives, would you just decide to stay straight and go without? No. Some governments that have legalised and regulated certain drug industries have found that there is little to no black market for them. I say that rather than we have to bend over backwards to comply with a law made murkier by corporate interests and still make guestures of good faith, we just do what we have to - if we have a game, we should be able to have a ROM of it for making screenshots, as it is not as if we are making the companies lose out upon lucrative profits if we already own the game and the game is a few years out of date. This is just my personal opinion, the law on these matters is murky and I'm just sick of the game companies witch-hunts caused by their inability to provide an alternative.--Froglet 20:29, 16 June 2007 (CDT)

I haven't actually heard much from the game companies in either way (except Sony...they have questionable business practices in many industries). The best thing for us would be if people who work for the game companies chose to contribute to the site directly (ie. fill in their info, maybe add a list of all the games they've made, etc.) That's however wishful thinking. All I'm hoping for is that they don't bring up any frivolous suits against us, or perhaps even help out financially (if we require it, perhaps SW can get non-profit status? :P). -- Prod (Talk) 21:38, 16 June 2007 (CDT)

This discussion is getting sidetracked. The bottom line is, Wikipedia regularly links to emulators and even BitTorrent sites without getting in any significant amount of trouble. If anyone's going to be targeted for spreading "warez" it's going to start with them since they can affect the widest area. As for screenshots, their validity as fair use of a copyrighted work is not affected by the legality of how said screens were acquired. The sole exception is when the screenshots were associated with a separate licensing deal, such as being exclusive to a magazine, but these cases are few and it is unlikely scanned screenshots would be good enough quality to use here anyway.

In order to use the DMCA to bring legal action against infringing parties the plaintiff must give reasonable notice that infringement has occurred (14 days seems to be the standard), within which the defendant may remove the infringing content and thus avoid further trouble. The plaintiff's position is made weaker if the infringement was done in good faith (see also safe harbor); additionally, if the use is likely to fall well within the fair use provisions of copyright law (meaning the case is likely to be dismissed, as fair use, when satisfied, overrules all other laws) they may decide against further pressuring the other party in case they file countersuits for loss of profit during the downtime (whether assumed or proven). Being non-profit doesn't necessarily increase or decrease the validity of the fair use--unlicensed, illustrated strategy guides exist), and since we use AdSense we are considered to be clearly for-profit.

I am working on a ground-up rewrite of StrategyWiki:Copyrights to hopefully demystify use of copyrighted content here. To cut a long tale short, don't link to sites with ROMs and don't explicitly state you are using ROMs you didn't dump yourself, but other than that discussion of ROMs and emulators really isn't anything to worry about it. Garrett^Talk 22:54, 16 June 2007 (CDT)

stubs

This wiki could be really useful but there is to many stubs! —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Psg9669 (talk • contribs) 04:34, 22 June 2007 (UTC).

Yeah. :) This is largely because many people sign up, make a start on some guides, and then disappear. There are also some skeleton layouts that were deliberately seeded because some people find starting a new guide a little too daunting but might feel quite confident at filling in the blanks on an existing layout. The core user base remains steady and is constantly working on completing guides, so stubs will eventually become a minority. Garrett^Talk 03:16, 22 June 2007 (CDT)

I was one of those daunted people. I'm not sure I'd have started work on Call of Duty 2 when I first joined if the article wasn't already there. Baejung92 15:15, 23 June 2007 (CDT)

StrategyWiki scope

Today I noticed Dreams of Deception. While on the surface this looks like an interesting indie game it doesn't actually exist yet, nor has it actually been given the ESRB rating shown on the cover. A quick look at Wikipedia shows that this was just deleted there. I'm not too keen on covering freeware/shareware/etc. games that aren't sufficiently popular, let alone games that don't even exist yet!

Mason11987 questioned our inclusion policy back in March, but nothing ever came of it. After talking to Prod about the matter, I've decided to start StrategyWiki:Guide/Scope to contain such a policy. This is a rough draft only, so feel free to make or suggest any changes or improvements you feel are right. Once we're satisfied with how it's written and what it encompasses it can become a proper policy.

The requirements I've come up with are mostly "fail safes" so legitimate games can fail some expectations (e.g. being released in a physical form in stores) but still pass the test.

Please comment on this proposal on the talk page, not here. This will make tracking the policy's history much easier. Garrett^Talk 02:49, 22 June 2007 (CDT)

As per Dreams of Deception, I did my research on it as well and there are absolutely no mentions of it whatsoever anywhere. It has not been rated by the ESRB, even though it was indicated so on its "box artwork" (blatant lie #1=strike #1), "Seed Entertainment" is not truly a company (blatant lie #2=strike #2), and it appears that the page was designed to be nothing more than a sales pitch on the front page (which goes against our goal to have actual walkthroughs for games=strike #3, it's out!). If he/she IS one of the designers (as suggested on the Wikipedia deletion discussion), he/she could at least provide us with the walkthrough for the first level or something, he/she should have that info even though it has not been released. Because of all of that, I marked the article for deletion. Please discuss this nomination on its talk page, not here. --

Safety Skizzerz ^{Talk · Contribs · Spel Chek™ · VFG · RTFM} 21:05, 22 June 2007 (CDT)

With Dreams of Deception, I think we should keep an element of good faith. We should delete the page, but notify the page author, and tell them that once they've got the game released/the game is released, they should notify us, and we'll restore the page so that the guide can be developed.

Looking at the scope document, I'm a bit unsure about the requirement to have been rated by ESRB or PEGI. Many indie/shareware/freeware/open source games which are still perfectly valid might fail this. You might also want to put in a clause saying that games brought up here are considered on a case-by-case basis. --DrBob (Talk) 12:04, 24 June 2007 (CDT)

Pokemon pages requiring cleanup

I was reading through a list of pages needing cleanup, and I noticed that a bunch of Pokemon pages were on there. But I noticed that when I ran my spell checker on the page, the "spelling errors" were Pokemon names that it didn't recognise, and the capitalization of the word "Pokemon". I think that there may be quite a few pages in there that shouldn't be, but I may be wrong (it's not the first time...) BTW, tell me if this note should be moved to the Staff Lounge, as I am still not quite sure where a comment like this should go. Thanks. Myth 00:46, 24 June 2007 (CDT)

You might as well use Word and modify the custom.dic to contain every pokemon name. Copy and paste works wonders. --Notmyhandle (talk • contribs) 01:31, 24 June 2007 (CDT)

BTW, the problem with my old checker is that Pokemon will not be suggested as Pokémon. Oh, and whenever I copy a strategywiki article into word, the spellcahecker won't work, I can copy the wiki code and it works fine though.--Rocky

^{(Talk - Contributions)} 03:08, 24 June 2007 (CDT)

I looked through some of the Pokemon pages, and they are marked not because of spelling errors, but because the layout needs to be cleaned up. It may just be a small part that needs cleaning up, or the whole page need to be redone. If in doubt, you can always look through the history for who added the {{cleanup}} template and ask them why it was added. -- Prod (Talk) 09:10, 24 June 2007 (CDT)

To prevent confusion between the two later on, I've created the {{spelling}} template, which marks a page as having spelling errors. --

Safety Skizzerz ^{Talk · Contribs · Spel Chek™ · VFG · RTFM} 10:22, 24 June 2007 (CDT)

I'm not sure if such a template is really necessary. These days (i.e. Firefox 2) it's so easy to fix spelling errors, that it takes about the same time to add the template as it does to fix the spelling errors, while with layout cleanup, it may take considerably longer, so a template should be used. Regardless, there's a spelling "mistak" in the template (unless it's intentional?). --DrBob (Talk) 12:09, 24 June 2007 (CDT)

It is for guides that take 20 mins with firefox spellchecker.--Rocky

^{(Talk - Contributions)} 12:10, 24 June 2007 (CDT)

If a page takes 20 minutes to spellcheck, then it probably needs tagging for cleanup and splitting out into multiple pages. --DrBob (Talk) 17:06, 24 June 2007 (CDT)

Category:Pages needing subpaging and {{Subpage}}

Thoughts?

Couldn't we just stick with tagging them with {{cleanup}}? Pages which need subpaging are typically ones which have been imported, and they need cleaning up anyway. --DrBob (Talk) 17:11, 24 June 2007 (CDT)

However, the required skill set is slightly larger. Cleanup and wikify are both inherently single page things, which anyone who understands basic wikisyntax can do. Cleanup also requires a bit of knowledge of the game (sometimes). Subpaging also needs a bit of editorial experience (where are good places to break it up), knowing how to properly lay out new pages, in addition to basic cleanup tasks. -- Prod (Talk) 17:25, 24 June 2007 (CDT)

Hmm, this template could have some limited uses. However, I can also foresee this becoming an issue of contention--some editors will favor single pages versus subpages. In such instances which decision will the community support? And by this argument, we also create the need for {{Singlepage}} (which would call for subpages to be unified into a single page). If we decide to implement this template, I'm fine with that. But it does seems to further complicate the issue of keeping our wiki well organized. ech elon 18:13, 24 June 2007 (CDT)

I doubt we would ever go from a multipage to a singlepage guide. If that does happen, it'll most likely be from a discussion by people maintaining the specific guide, and they should base their decision on consensus (this should be a guide specific discussion, not community discussion). And we already have the single page template. Actually one page I noticed that would fall under his merge thing would be Need for Speed: Carbon/Cars, but that's besides the point. This should mainly be used along with Special:Longpages, and it should spawn a discussion if there are any problems. Actually, I was planning on using this as I was going through some of the main pages with my bot, but now that I'm done those, the use of this template may become somewhat limited. -- Prod (Talk) 18:29, 24 June 2007 (CDT)

My thought is that we should try to keep things simple. The more templates we add, the more complex things become and that can turn some people away... So unless it's really necessary (i.e. it becomes a big deal later on and "cleanup" just won't cut it) then we can create it. For now, it's not much of a problem.--Duke Ruckley 10:31, 25 June 2007 (CDT)

Pokémon Red and Blue Walkthrough status

OK. It's been an arduous task, but the Pokémon Red and Blue walkthrough is, for the most part, complete. There's very little else that I can contribute to it at this point. But the guide as a whole is not ready for a num=4 rating yet. There are little bits that I need to add, and little bits that I'd like others to help me with. The list of things that I have yet to do are:

~~(need to do) Add all of the gym maps to the Gym Battle sections.~~
~~(would be nice) Add some images, or at least portraits, or the gym leaders and the Elite Four.~~
~~(need to do) Add a bulleted list of a high-level breakdown of the Walkthrough, interlinked to the right pages.~~
~~Flesh out Mew information.~~
~~Add page for other secrets.~~

The list of things that I desperately need help with from other users are:

(need to do) Spel checking, spell cheking, and spell checkng. I know I suck, I'm sorry. But I especially need help with Pokemon names that can't be checked through Firefox. I especially especially need someone to verify the bulbapedia links.
(need to do) Spot check all of my facts. If you see something wrong, don't tell me about it, just fix it. The biggest bones of contention seem to be the Gary fights, since I guess the game levels Gary's Pokémon according to your relative level.
(need to do) The items list: Rocky and Ryan did just a ridiculously great job creating the moves list table for every generation of Pokémon, and linking it to the appropriate pages in bulbapedia. Well, it would be nice if we could do the same with them items because, frankly, that's the only red link left in the ToC, and it benefits every single Pokémon guide.
(would be nice) On that note, in addition to looking for any Pokémon names in the walkthrough that I didn't link to bulbapedia, and perhaps linking them up where appropriate, the same could be done with all of the Pokemon move names and item names. That would go a long way towards saving someone the trouble of having to look it up on another page, but if it never happens, it won't be so terrible.
...and anything else I can't think of right now cuz I'm pretty tired.

So... if you're interested in helping getting this guide all the way up to num=4, this is the best possible time. This will be the site's first fully comprehensive, mapped out, trainer battle identified Pokémon guide, and even though it's ancient now compared to Diamond and Pearl, it's a big milestone for the site, so please help if you're inclined. Thanks so much, and thanks again to all the help that I've received from the usual crowd. Procyon (Talk) 23:33, 24 June 2007 (CDT)

Nice work :). This should be up for Promising Guide. -- Prod (Talk) 00:03, 25 June 2007 (CDT)

For: Add some images, or at least portraits, or the gym leaders and the Elite Four, do you think we should use FR/LG artwork (e.g this one), sprites (e.g here) or anime artwork (e.g here). I'm happy to start the item list as well. Definitely promising, maybe it should be an example guide with OOT as well.--Rocky

^{(Talk - Contributions)} 01:06, 25 June 2007 (CDT)

I've gone through the entire guide and spell-checked it for conventional spelling mistakes, but I can't do anything about misspelt Pokemon's names. I've also normalised all the Bulbapedia links from [[BP:...]] to {{bp|...}}. Damn good work; take a well-earned break (if you want one :-P )! --DrBob (Talk) 12:37, 25 June 2007 (CDT)

I'm going to disagree with linking to BP for the items, only the ones with articles, in BP it's mainly big lists for them, berries are the only ones I could find.--Rocky

^{(Talk - Contributions)} 15:28, 25 June 2007 (CDT)

I agree with Rocky... BP's items page is massive and confusing. I opened it up and left almost immediately. I think it would benefit us more to have our own full page with information. I found a site called PsyPokes that has items lists. That's where I found the recovery items.--Duke Ruckley 15:47, 25 June 2007 (CDT)

Very well, I trust your judgment regarding the best way for SW to present the material. Speaking of BP, Once all of the items on my checklist are complete, I'm going to write an announcement for them. I wish that we could get some sort of dialog going with their admins, but so far, they haven't appeared to forthcoming. Thanks for your wonderful and thorough cleanup DrBob, it's tremendously appreciated. Procyon (Talk) 16:20, 25 June 2007 (CDT)

Actually, I'm going to somewhat retract my statement... I've done a little more searching and found a better page (the lack of redirects before weren't useful). This page has a link to different categories, such as status ailment healing pages and such. If you would like to link for example, "antidote" to this page, it might work out. I'm not really sure if it's all that useful though. I think it could work either way.--Duke Ruckley 13:00, 26 June 2007 (CDT)

Yeah, I saw that, maybe we could link the title to bulbapedia but I feel in the items case we're actually better than Bulbapedia, that reminds me... (Gets out GBA and uses it to add things to the movelist that aren't in bulbapedia)--Rocky

^{(Talk - Contributions)} 13:35, 26 June 2007 (CDT)

Just to provide an update, my task list is complete, and I have made an announcement on Bulbapedia's forums regarding the completion of the walkthrough. All that I can hope for at this point is that some of their members come over and give the guide a glance to search for any errors or inaccuracies. I will aim to promote the guide to num=4 status by the first of July, or when any of the edits die down, whichever comes later. Procyon (Talk) 14:27, 26 June 2007 (CDT)

Some suggestions

Few things I've been pondering and discussed with a few of the other people around.

Header Nav -> Header, Footer Nav -> Footer, Continue Nav -> Continue
Deprecated |parent (from the AGN/HN) in favor of transcluding the ToCs.
remove the option for |toc from the Footer Nav

On to discussion:

Yea, I know I was the one who proposed the previous change... I'm just putting it out there even though I'm mostly ambivalent one way or the other. The previous change was for clarity, this one is just to save one word in typing. And in the case of Continue Nav, its purpose isn't as obvious after this proposed change (Header/Footer are fine though). Not too sure it's worth it. Implementation wise, this is painlessly easy (easier than the AGN->HN since I'm cleaning up pages as I go with that, this will simply be auto-done)
It's mainly used on the Street Fighter II "series" of games. Should be simpler to do ToC transclusion like on Pokémon Yellow.
It's at the bottom of the page, what is the reason someone would want to hide the toc?

-- Prod (Talk) 00:17, 27 June 2007 (CDT)

1. I don't agree with; I think the current names work fine, and a rename would just cause extra confusion (should I use AGN, HN, or H?). 2. sounds fine to me. 3. also sounds fine to me. --DrBob (Talk) 07:26, 27 June 2007 (CDT)

1. Disagree, for all the same reasons as DrBob. 2. Disagree. Just because only a handful of games are making good use of it today doesn't mean there won't be other good candidates in the future. However, I could be convinced of this choice if I knew how the SF2 series would be rearranged upon its removal. 3. I agree with this one. Procyon (Talk) 09:15, 27 June 2007 (CDT)

The change would be completely invisible--all it means is that Super Street Fighter II/Table of Contents and the like would transclude Street Fighter II/Table of Contents rather than calling it directly on the front page. This has the added advantage of eliminating the parent #if; since #ifs can't stack, this would mean onepage guides would no longer attempt to transclude their /Table of Contents pages; right now the ToC is still used by the page, it's just you can't see it--take a look at Special:Whatlinkshere/Sega Swirl/Table of Contents for instance. Since transclusion adds some server overhead the fewer unnecessary transclusion calls the Navs make the better. Garrett^Talk 18:35, 27 June 2007 (CDT)

Notmyhandle for sysop

I've nominated Notmyhandle (talk · contribs) for sysopship, and the nomination page's here. I'm sure he'd be grateful if people could go and vote (either way) there. :-) --DrBob (Talk) 06:43, 27 June 2007 (CDT)

Image guide headers

Hello everyone. I was wondering if I could get some honest opinions about the marquee images that I preface the introductions of many of the guides that I construct. Well, I'm not so sure about their placement now. Do people find their placement too jarring in relation to the text that follows? Does it look "unprofessional" in contrast to the rest of the guide layouts? There's no box art per se for an arcade game which is why I used the promotional flyers which I always thought contained artwork that would have been used on a box if one was made. But perhaps the marquees should go there in their place, and the flyers should just be moved down to a gallery. Or the marquee should just be moved down to a gallery instead. What are everyone's thoughts about this? Are they good the way that they are, or should some rearrangement occur? Thanks very much! Procyon (Talk) 12:47, 28 June 2007 (CDT)

I like them, just wish they could be centered in the whitespace. One problem is with 800x600 resolutions, the images make the pages have a huge whitespace. Otherwise, very nice! </borat> --Notmyhandle (talk • contribs) 13:32, 28 June 2007 (CDT)

As I've stated to Procyon, I think the headers (or logos if you will) look very displaced on the page of the walkthrough. Almost every single artwork/in-game image you come across on StrategyWiki has been found to have some variant of a border around it, and without the border the image distorts the distinction between what is relevant to StrategyWiki and what is relevant to the game. It's like having a cut out of a game logo from a piece of box art slapped onto the page unconditionally, serving no real purpose. Procyon can argue here and say that for arcade games, it was the only truly memorable visual cue in recognizing a game back in the day, and old schoolers would be familiar with the arcade logo. As a result, I proposed to Procyon that we could simply add a flat frame around the logo, like MediaWiki does for thumbnails, that blends in with the shades and cleanness the infobox.--Dan 21:13, 28 June 2007 (CDT)

Another alternative would be to introduce an infobox parameter that places it above the title (like this), but that as issues of its own. Garrett^Talk 23:10, 28 June 2007 (CDT)

Garrett, the featured star won't show up in IE6--Rocky

^{(Talk - Contributions)} 00:51, 29 June 2007 (CDT)

I think Garrett's idea (in fact, all of the ones on his sandbox page) is good. --DrBob (Talk) 06:56, 29 June 2007 (CDT)

I certainly like it Garrett ^_^ Procyon (Talk) 09:21, 29 June 2007 (CDT)

So we changed the topic? Anyways, Garrett's featured template doesn't work in IE7 or Firefox 2.0.0.4. --Notmyhandle (talk • contribs) 10:05, 29 June 2007 (CDT)

When Prod cleaned up MediaWiki:Common.css Ryan's addition of .topicon got lost. Please make sure all CSS/JS changes get onto the talk page version first or they'll simply be overwritten by the next person to make an update. Also make sure you leave a clear comment explaining what it does so it doesn't get culled. I've restored it now, so the featured icon will display correctly once you clear your cache. This is the same code Wikipedia uses for their featured icons (slightly tweaked for optimum BlueCloud positioning) so this is as compatible as it's going to get. Needimage is still broken in IE7, but that's an IE issue and not to do with disappearing CSS styles. Garrett^Talk 18:57, 29 June 2007 (CDT)

Oops. I thought it was part of the Infobox stuff (it was late at night :P). And I agree, most of the stuff on your sandbox looks good. The only one I disagree with is adding the logo/marquee to the Infobox. Those boxes already get tall enough, and those images look fine (to me at least) as part of the "content" or included in the ToC. -- Prod (Talk) 22:34, 29 June 2007 (CDT)

Yeah, that was the downside I was meaning. Leaving it where it is but giving it a border (as Dan suggests) would probably look OK... *goes off to try it* Garrett^Talk 22:51, 29 June 2007 (CDT)

I found this other css compressor, seems to do a better job, though I hear it sometimes has errors. -- Prod (Talk) 23:29, 29 June 2007 (CDT)

New Categories

So as I was grabbing info for Guerrilla War from Wikipedia, I ran into several "new" categories, such as cooperative play and the "sub-genre" called Run and gun. Anyways, run and gun games are pretty well known, Wikipedia has a decent article on the subject but really, what should we do about this sort of thing? For play categories, multiplayer/single player/MMO are pretty distinct, but Cooperative could make a good, detailed category for those games where you can play simultaneusly together with another player or two. For the genre cats, I think the more the better; I don't like seeing all of them grouped into one broad category called "Action" when more specific genre's exist (I'm not saying remove action, although I think I did by accident on one page, but we should add the more specific ones as well). I think we should use Wikipedia as our resource for defining genres, but we should add the ones we are missing (like shoot'em up and others). Like Act Raiser is one that's clearly a platform game, but we haven't labeled it as such. Tell me what you think! I'd like to be able to apply these changes ASAP. --Notmyhandle (talk • contribs) 19:47, 28 June 2007 (CDT)

Agreed to all. Cooperative should be on a top level with Multiplayer, etc. --DrBob (Talk) 06:59, 29 June 2007 (CDT)

Help Please

We have a user called Mystery??? (Talk) but In IE6 I have a problem getting to this user's talk and user page, is this my browser or a problem with the MW software, the only way that I can get on the talk page is go to edit mode and manually go to Mystery??? and it's annoying.--Rocky ^{(Talk - Contributions)} 00:46, 29 June 2007 (CDT)

I thought that question marks weren't allowed unless he like made his user name with the html character codes (%3F). Anyways, I can't even tell that it's a user; no user page, no talk page, no user contribs... ?? --Notmyhandle (talk • contribs) 01:08, 29 June 2007 (CDT)

You can access it in the form http://strategywiki.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Mystery%3F%3F%3F. "?" and "+" don't work in /wiki/ URLs because of server configuration. Garrett^Talk 01:23, 29 June 2007 (CDT)

So, uh, what exactly is this? If its a user, yet not exactly a user and you can't access any of the personal pages on it, what can it be? Lunar Knight ^{(Talk to me + Contribs)} 10:43, 29 June 2007 (CDT)

It is a regular user, just with a bad name. If we have a username policy, we should say we will auto ban anyone with ? in the name. -- Prod (Talk) 12:13, 29 June 2007 (CDT)

This user has done some vandalizing in the past, so I would carefully watch his/her contributions. Furthermore, I agree with Prod about banning '?', '+', and '&' from usernames. ech elon 15:05, 29 June 2007 (CDT)

We should install the rename extension, and do it for the user because they won't be able to see their talk pages. Also, how do we see contribs and can't a dev add a setting somewheere to stop ppl with ? + and & registering (One that works in IE6 as well :P)--Rocky

^{(Talk - Contributions)} 15:08, 29 June 2007 (CDT)

Actually, & works fine (see Mount&Blade), so there's probably no technical reason for restricting it. Garrett^Talk 15:51, 29 June 2007 (CDT)

Actually, I'm going to about this on IRC--Wikipedia has all three working (+, &, ?), whereas the MediaWiki documentation states you have to choose between & working or ? and + working. Garrett^Talk 15:51, 29 June 2007 (CDT)

Actually, we can do all except ? and % (Probably because it thinks it's the start of a HTML charachter and gives an error page).--Rocky

^{(Talk - Contributions)} 15:57, 29 June 2007 (CDT)

So do we, I just made ?--Rocky

^{(Talk - Contributions)} 16:02, 29 June 2007 (CDT)

It won't work though, it was a redirect to my user but clicking on it takes u to the main page, I'm deleting it.--Rocky

^{(Talk - Contributions)} 16:04, 29 June 2007 (CDT)

Ech, he has a history of vandalism? http://strategywiki.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Contributions/Mystery%3F%3F%3F only shows a single contribution/instance of vandalism. --Notmyhandle (talk • contribs) 18:07, 29 June 2007 (CDT)

Feature Guides Template

Ok so breaking off from that other thread, I decided to make one of my own (I made a cleanup one for Wikipedia with an optional small parameter). Anyways, you can check out the template in use at User:Notmyhandle/Sandbox2 and you can use the template (until it gets moved to the correct name) by using {{User:Notmyhandle/Sandbox|small=yes}}. How does it look? Thanks Garrett for some of the things (icon filename, feature guides page link). --Notmyhandle (talk • contribs) 10:18, 29 June 2007 (CDT)

Why is your CSS more complex--what's difference does it make? Also, why is it further over--we don't have any other header templates do we? Garrett^Talk 20:16, 29 June 2007 (CDT)

<_< >_> I just couldn't get yours to work so... can you show me an example? I don't even know how to subst/place yours. --Notmyhandle (talk • contribs) 21:40, 29 June 2007 (CDT)

I've only just restored the .topicon class, which is probably why it didn't work for you. Do a hard refresh (Ctrl+F5) of this file to ensure it displays correctly. All going well, you can see it in action at the top of StrategyWiki:Sandbox. Garrett^Talk 21:54, 29 June 2007 (CDT)

Mmk. Looks delicious, why isn't it at Template:Featured guide yet? --Notmyhandle (talk • contribs) 21:57, 29 June 2007 (CDT)

Cause we don't have StrategyWiki:Featured guides yet. -- Prod (Talk) 22:25, 29 June 2007 (CDT)

Yeah, we don't have a featured guides voting system or anything. My idea was to have it sort of like a sixth stage where only the best of the best would be. But first we need some way of determining what makes a "better than simply being complete" guide. Garrett^Talk 00:41, 30 June 2007 (CDT)

One way of determining "better than simply being complete" guides would be to have candidates for featured guide be reviewed, as on Wikipedia. Currently, level 4 guides aren't reviewed, are they? --DrBob (Talk) 14:23, 30 June 2007 (CDT)

Nay they aren't DB. --Notmyhandle (talk • contribs) 17:30, 1 July 2007 (CDT)

Does anybody else think that we should go ahead and get started on this? We came to a general agreement that we should have featured guides, so all we need to do now is come up with policy and standards. Here are some important things I've been thinking:

To be nominated, the guide must be at level four completion.
A featured guide should:
- Have all the features of a lvl 4 completed guide
- Contain no drivel
- Make good use of images
- Be easy to follow and understand
- Have very few spelling/grammatical errors
- Have no red links
Majority rules
Confirmed and approved by sysop/bureaucrat on look/feel committee (this I'm unsure about, any thoughts?)
Featured guide, once approved, gets a star in place of lvl. 4 completion

Would there be a way to prevent people from making a guide a featured guide without going through the process? That is the only real concern I have (especially when SW becomes larger).--Duke Ruckley 13:02, 24 July 2007 (CDT)

I would say no to the look/feel committee, as they have more to do with standards. Actually, forget all committees whatsoever. What we should do is have a page similar to the Collab page and Promising page, where we have a discussion and voting process by the community lead to a consensus. Then, once a certain day comes (say like 5 days before the first of the next month), a few volunteer sysops look over the nominated guides and judge what they think best follows the outlined points of a featured guide. Then, whoever is in charge weighs what the volunteers think with the votes and comes out with a winner (actually, forming a Featured Material committee might be nice for that). As for people making fake ones, that's why every registered user on StrategyWiki (besides blocked ones) have the ability to revert edits. --

Safety Skizzerz ^{Talk · Contribs · Spel Chek™ · VFG · RTFM} 13:22, 24 July 2007 (CDT)

How does StrategyWiki:Featured guides sound? *Edit* Er, Skizz, just create the page. --Notmyhandle (talk • contribs) 11:21, 9 August 2007 (CDT)

??? --

Safety Skizzerz ^{Talk · Contribs · Spel Chek™ · VFG · RTFM} 11:27, 9 August 2007 (CDT)

Just create StategyWiki:Featured guides, outlining what they are and discussing the creation/voting process. --Notmyhandle (talk • contribs) 11:29, 9 August 2007 (CDT)

OK. I've promoted Garrett's template to {{featured}}, since I was going to use it. However, some low-life dissidents on IRC put up a fuss, and we need to clarify: Should the star be intrinsically linked with stage 5 status, and always be displayed on guides at stage 5, or should it only be displayed on the guide most-recently promoted to stage 5? I'm going with the former, because the latter doesn't really make sense IMHO; the star is there to promote that the guide is of exceptional quality, and this should always be happening for all stage 5 guides. --DrBob (Talk) 12:16, 12 August 2007 (CDT)

Yeah that second idea is just strange. Make them all have a star. --Notmyhandle (talk • contribs) 14:23, 12 August 2007 (CDT)

I say no because the {{Header Nav}} is already confusing and long enough as-is. Since we're not going to make a featured guide every day, it isn't that difficult to just manually add in the template. Also, you should be adding the featured template not to the game's main page (which is what would happen if it was tied into the HN with num=5), but to the table of contents so that it gets transcluded in every page on the guide. As for how long we keep the star there, I've changed my mind because the star looks really cool, so we'll keep it up there forever. --

Safety Skizzerz ^{Talk · Contribs · Spel Chek™ · VFG · RTFM} 11:34, 13 August 2007 (CDT)

The simplest idea would be to just change the num parameter to five (which would display a star in place of the usual box) AND to add the featured template...--Duke Ruckley 12:50, 13 August 2007 (CDT)

Which is what I just suggested, except that {{featured}} be added to the Table of Contents instead of the Main Page so that EVERY page in the guide has the star in the upper-right corner. --

Safety Skizzerz ^{Talk · Contribs · Spel Chek™ · VFG · RTFM} 13:23, 13 August 2007 (CDT)

OK. I agree with you now Ryan, due to your suggestion that every page in the guide should display the star, which makes sense. The rest of your comment is complete tripe, though. :-P Saying that a template is "already confusing and long enough" is sort of ignoring the point of using a template; to abstract away confusing code. It's not like people are editing HN every day, so what's the problem with a little more complexity? HN as it stands isn't half as complex as the infobox, and I don't see you complaining about that. ;-) So yes, I'm now for keeping {{featured}} unlinked from HN, and putting it in the ToC, but not for the reasons you've specified. :-D --DrBob (Talk) 14:22, 13 August 2007 (CDT)

Since the guide's been promoted, I've added {{featured}} to the top of the infobox, but it doesn't show up on pages except the main page unless you expand the ToC (due to the ToC section's contents being display:none). I think we can live with that; the only solution otherwise is to use JavaScript to move the star out of the ToC and into the title bar, or to manually put it on each page, neither of which is particularly elegant. --DrBob (Talk) 05:46, 15 August 2007 (CDT)

I've fixed that by adding a simple clause to the {{Header Nav}}. Instead of putting {{featured}} in the ToC, put it in game/Table of Contents/Featured instead, as this will include it on every page in the guide without having to expand the show/hide thingy. --

Safety Skizzerz ^{Talk · Contribs · Spel Chek™ · VFG · RTFM} 12:47, 15 August 2007 (CDT)

Only now it doesn't show on the front page :/ Procyon (Talk) 12:52, 15 August 2007 (CDT)

Wait for the job queue to die down, it might not have been changed yet. --

Safety Skizzerz ^{Talk · Contribs · Spel Chek™ · VFG · RTFM} 13:02, 15 August 2007 (CDT)

We've developed a better solution, using JS to move the star, and you can see it in action right now. Unfortunately, this has put the job queue up to 18000 (due to reverting the changes to HN). What a pity. :-D --DrBob (Talk) 13:26, 15 August 2007 (CDT)

Sorry, just a question. How come the JS for the star works but the transparency JS doesn't do anything?--Rocky

^{(Talk - Contributions)} 14:30, 15 August 2007 (CDT)

Are you still on IE4, or something? Upgrade to something from this millennium, please! --DrBob (Talk) 14:55, 15 August 2007 (CDT)

Yep, I'd just like to know, btw with screens with long titles, the star overlaps with the text.--Rocky

^{(Talk - Contributions)} 15:00, 15 August 2007 (CDT)

Pages with titles that long are going to run into problems with the title layout anyway, so there's no regression there. --DrBob (Talk) 15:54, 15 August 2007 (CDT)

WikiProject

As wikipedia has WikiProjects, we could have something similar, perhaps with a gaming theme. Some options:

Others could be Move lists, Box artwork, Categories, Series. -- Prod (Talk) 00:57, 30 June 2007 (CDT)

I like the idea. We could probably get things done a lot faster. Oh, and I like "quest". It is certainly a gaming theme, and... I don't know, it just sounds better than the others. Baejung92 12:09, 30 June 2007 (CDT)

Can we hack the software to put in a WikiProject namespace, that'd be good.--Rocky

^{(Talk - Contributions)} 12:14, 30 June 2007 (CDT)

Hmmm...What exactly would this be for? I'm not opposed to the idea, I'm just curious what this would be for exactly. Lunar Knight ^{(Talk to me + Contribs)} 12:22, 30 June 2007 (CDT)

It's like an ongoing collaboration. On wikipedia there are groups like WikiProject Video games who focus on improving the video game guides. Since we are only video game guides here, we can have more specialized ones. For example, we already have the StrategyWiki:Cleanup project (which would be renamed to the StrategyWiki:Cleanup quest). -- Prod (Talk) 13:40, 30 June 2007 (CDT)

I like this idea, it would be really good to have a sort of 'co-ordination list', where people can look in, see what needs to be done (eg, categorise all the pics involved in Final Fantasy games or something), and do it to cross it off the list, and people involved can send wikilove to them :-P.--Froglet 22:02, 30 June 2007 (CDT)

Actually, we don't have to use any hacks to add namespaces. If we decide to implement this as a namespace, it's as simple as editing the configs. ech elon 00:05, 1 July 2007 (CDT)

We could have games in the scope of the Project, It'd be really good, also, we could have a Game help project which lists all the games completed and will give advice.--Rocky

^{(Talk - Contributions)} 01:38, 1 July 2007 (CDT)

Er, what? --DrBob (Talk) 10:00, 1 July 2007 (CDT)

I like this idea, but I think it'll only be useful for large projects (such as achievements and cleanup). I don't think it'd be useful to have organised "projects" for single games (such collaboration could just happen on the game's talk pages), although large series such as Pokemon could have projects. I'm opposed to calling them anything silly like "quests" or "clans", as I think that's just confusing and not very professional (OK, so I'm boring :-P ). Projects could easily go in the StrategyWiki namespace, just like the cleanup project (which is not being renamed!). --DrBob (Talk) 10:00, 1 July 2007 (CDT)

I agree with DrBob about the professional aspect of it... It may not be as fun, but it will save a lot of confusion in the future. I like the idea though. It won't really work out much until we have more people though.--Duke Ruckley 13:00, 2 July 2007 (CDT)

Cleanup quest... lol. Yeah, keep it simple! Why not just create the various namespaces for now? We don't need to wait for more people. So what ones do we want? Cleanup, Featured guides, Completion Ratings, game series? --Notmyhandle (talk • contribs) 11:57, 9 August 2007 (CDT)

We've already got StrategyWiki:Cleanup project. The only other one I can see us needing is StrategyWiki:Achievements project. Featured guides, completion ratings and game series aren't really worthy subjects for a project. --DrBob (Talk) 12:21, 9 August 2007 (CDT)

Well what is a project? --Notmyhandle (talk • contribs) 12:48, 9 August 2007 (CDT)

An organised group of people working towards a common goal which would benefit from a collaborative effort, and be largely ignored otherwise. That description isn't particularly good, but hopefully you get the gist of what I mean. --DrBob (Talk) 16:57, 9 August 2007 (CDT)

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