StrategyWiki:Staff lounge

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Blocked Message
What will the blocked message be for this wiki? Mpadilla0139 (talk) 23:09, 28 January 2021 (UTC)
 * What are you talking about? Better yet, why do you care?   Pro  cyon  02:18, 29 January 2021 (UTC)

Ports, remasters, and re-releases
Currently, we have a few different ways re-releases and ports are handled. Some games have a Versions/Home version comparison page. Others have a separate main page. There's a lot of information, and I'd like to improve the organization, and reduce redundancy. As our general policy is one "game" should have one guide, even if it differs in name, graphics, or features, I feel we should consolidate all the distinct guides into a single one. I propose the following changes: One major impact mentioned above, is the removal of release dates, reduced to just a year. As we generally don't include references on StrategyWiki, none of our dates can be trusted, which isn't useful as a historical reference. The only information it provides is approximately when the game was released, which is clear enough from just the year. This also removes country-specific release information. This will shrink ridiculously long infoboxes (some doubly so). -- Prod (talk) 08:41, 12 February 2021 (UTC)
 * 1) Have sections in the Game infobox, one for each release/port, which can be collapsed to just the title. Each section would have 6 entries - title, developer, publisher, year, system, rating. Any most recent boxart (or some other metric) can go in the infobox, but other scans can go in a gallery below the Continue Nav. This would reduce the duplication of main pages without losing any information, and make it less likely for users to accidentally end up in a "different" guide with no way back to the main page.
 * 2) For minor differences in the versions, it can be listed on the guide main page. For more in-depth details, we can have a Versions page (move Home version comparison to Versions)


 * The consolidated guides sounds fine but the infobox stuff I'm not sure. It would be good to see an example first. -BrownDerby (talk) 02:06, 15 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Example updated. This has the original game, plus 1 remake, but it would be expandable to more. I'm not really sure what criteria we would use to distinguish between splitting sections or not. All the actual DK releases are essentially the same, and we could only include the year the first one was released, and list all the systems under a single section. Re-releases (new developer/publisher) would definitely get their own section though. The /Versions page has a lot of the details on the specific versions. -- Prod (talk) 03:39, 15 February 2021 (UTC)

Condensing things and eliminating redundancies has my complete approval. I managed to condense all the computers and NES guides for Ultima III: Exodus into one, despite the differences. I am preparing to do the same for Drakkhen (hard-mode computers vs. easy-mode SNES) and Eggerland 2/Eggerland. Still, I am afraid that sometimes a remake is too different to be put in the same guide. For example, the SNES remake of Ultima VII: The Black Gate belongs even to a different genre! --Abacos (talk) 20:59, 15 February 2021 (UTC)

I don't get why release dates need to be removed when nothing else has references either. Is there really much of an advantage to using sectioned infoboxes as opposed to a single infobox with sectioned cells? I'm all for consolidated guides for rereleases that are fundamentally the same, but I guess remakes that are significantly different from the original, like say, Double Dragon (NES), Ninja Gaiden (NES), Final Fantasy VII Remake, the Trials of Mana remake, Senran Kagura Burst Re:Newal, or Hyperdimension Neptunia Re;Birth 1, would still need to have their own separate guides. Wanderer (talk) 04:56, 16 February 2021 (UTC)
 * If our dates are off by a day or two and no one is bothered, why even have the day? It's easy to vandalize a release date by a day or two and without references, we'd have to go searching for other sites to get the real information. If someone needs the information, they'd go somewhere with references. Release dates take up far more space in the infobox/front page than they deserve for such unreliable information. All other information has direct impacts to gameplay (publisher is debatable), but the specific release day does not.
 * If the game needs a different guide, it's effectively a different game, not a port or re-release, so there would be no concerns on the games you and Abacos mentioned. They'd stay separate. -- Prod (talk) 05:35, 16 February 2021 (UTC)

If the goal is just to make the infobox shorter, there are other things you could do: -BrownDerby (talk) 08:40, 16 February 2021 (UTC)
 * make the left column slimmer
 * shorter or abbreviated names in sys header (eg "Nintendo Switch" to "Switch", "PlayStation 5" to "PS5")
 * change dates to yyyy-mm-dd (2021-02-16)
 * style="display:block; border:none; max-height:250px; overflow-y:auto" for release date cell
 * change ratings so it's just a row of icons
 * change partner links to a row of icons
 * smaller font

I'm fine with consolidating ports with minor differences, but I would prefer separate main pages for enhanced ports/re-releases with additional content. The different versions can share the table of contents where it makes sense to reduce any redundancies in the walkthrough. The relevant infobox data can be moved to the separate pages, which would help shorten the infoboxes. Tedium (talk) 11:29, 16 February 2021 (UTC)