StrategyWiki talk:Community Portal

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More release dates
Time for phase two of my revamp of the release date system...system-specific release dates. Also included in this is the creation of the co template, so that icons can be displayed for country- or system-specific companies (i.e. publishers). The co template is in testing on Medal of Honor: Frontline. This template is based on the icon template which I've created, which will take an ID, and turn it into an icon (or text-based equivalent if no icon yet exists). When Blendmaster gets back, I hope he can start filling in the missing icons, and standardising them all as icons of the actual hardware (rather than the system logo). So far for the system-specific release dates, I've created xboxrd, ps2rd and gcrd and applied them to Dead to Rights for testing. I want to know what you lot think of this so far, and whether I should stop and revert changes, or continue to create the rest of the system-specific release date templates. Last one to reply's a mashed potato. --DrBob (Talk) 06:17, 15 August 2007 (CDT) Oh, and see Template:Rd/Documentation for examples of how you can use icon to replace the old text-based stuff in brackets after release dates. --DrBob (Talk) 06:22, 15 August 2007 (CDT)
 * Looks great, I'm going to protect the images because they're on the main page.--Rocky http://media.strategywiki.org/images/thumb/7/78/Rally-X_Rock.png/25px-Rally-X_Rock.png (Talk - Contributions) 07:20, 15 August 2007 (CDT)
 * Done--Rocky http://media.strategywiki.org/images/thumb/7/78/Rally-X_Rock.png/25px-Rally-X_Rock.png (Talk - Contributions) 07:29, 15 August 2007 (CDT)
 * Using a format like the one in Breath_of_Fire_II is better than having to deal with a combination of a console and country release date template. Why not use that?  --Tathar [[Image:Tathar.jpg|32px]] (talk|contribs) 10:35, 15 August 2007 (CDT)
 * If, for example, you've only got one date when it was released on a particular console/in a particular country (and it also needs an icon for a country/console). The new templates can be applied to Breath of Fire II though; the edit I've just made to it should demonstrate. It's a bit messy though, since this game seems to have an inordinate amount of complexity in the publishing. Thankfully, most games don't. --DrBob (Talk) 11:11, 15 August 2007 (CDT)
 * As you can see, doing that for the release dates would be impractical if not outright messy. I propose that the method used in Breath of Fire II and a few other guides for re-released games be the standard for re-released games and games released on multiple consoles.  --Tathar [[Image:Tathar.jpg|32px]] (talk|contribs) 11:19, 15 August 2007 (CDT)
 * Maybe we can use the icon themplate for the systems it was released on.--Rocky http://media.strategywiki.org/images/thumb/7/78/Rally-X_Rock.png/25px-Rally-X_Rock.png (Talk - Contributions) 11:47, 15 August 2007 (CDT)
 * I tried that, and it didn't look so good. --DrBob (Talk) 12:01, 15 August 2007 (CDT)
 * As I said, Breath of Fire 2 is a case apart from everything else; it has one of the most complex release date setups on the wiki (believe me, I've edited hundreds of them). For the moment, I think release date setups should be decided on a case-by-case basis, at the author's discretion, but in the future I hope to write some guidelines. Something similar to how it's done for the actual release dates (not the publishers) for that game should be as you say, one pattern people could use. --DrBob (Talk) 12:01, 15 August 2007 (CDT)
 * Well being so complex and yet being able to have such an aesthetic look for its release dates shows that it is a very adaptable proposed standard. Other guides have used it before the BoF2 guide was even started, for example Zelda II: The Adventure of Link. --Tathar [[Image:Tathar.jpg|32px]] (talk|contribs) 01:05, 18 August 2007 (CDT)
 * Zelda II can still add the release dates of its releases that haven't been added without using another format. A case-by-case basis has shortcomings that have been talked about every time something was standardized, and this can work for single-country, global, single-system, and multi-system release date scenarios.  --Tathar [[Image:Tathar.jpg|32px]] (talk|contribs) 01:17, 18 August 2007 (CDT)
 * I personally prefer not to use those new templates (ps2rd, gcrd, xboxrd). It looks much cleaner.  I also find it much easier to read a word to figure out the console name instead of trying to figure out which console the picture is trying to represent.  -- Prod (Talk) 11:26, 18 August 2007 (CDT)
 * OK. After a long argument discussion on IRC, we've decided to scrap the templates Prod just mentioned, and instead do things as described in the documentation for the new template: sys. -- 14:11, 18 August 2007 (CDT)

Rearrange rd
Current suggestion that's been thrown around on IRC is to change to. -- Prod (Talk) 01:06, 2 September 2007 (CDT)
 * Couldn't we do both?--Rocky http://media.strategywiki.org/images/thumb/7/78/Rally-X_Rock.png/25px-Rally-X_Rock.png (Talk - Contributions) 04:32, 2 September 2007 (CDT)
 * Right now the template turns Year|Date into Date, Year. If the template was reversed all current uses would become Year, Date. The only way around this is by using #switch or similar, which complicates the template and unnecessarily increases server load. GarrettTalk 05:07, 2 September 2007 (CDT)
 * As I said on IRC, I'm against this change, because it would mean ordering the parameters in an order inconsistent with their priority. You can have, but you can't have  on its own; it just doesn't make sense. It's good programming practice to have optional parameters after required ones, and the year is required. The only possible reason for making this change would be because the parameter order is apparently "confusing" as it currently is, yet I've never seen incorrect usage of the template, even from new contributors. -- 05:15, 2 September 2007 (CDT)
 * Sounds good, I just didn't understand why. -- 13:53, 2 September 2007 (CDT)

Super Mario Bros. 2
That page currently links to a disambiguation page which leads to Super Mario Bros. 2 (Japan) and Super Mario Bros. 2 (US). In reality, the Japanese version is what NA refers to as Super Mario Bros.: The Lost Levels (see this page). Shoud we move the Japan page to Lost Levels and the US to just Super Mario Bros. 2? I've been following the American naming scheme when working with the Wii Virtual Console page and I think it would make more sense to continue that way. What do you guys think?-- Duke Ruckley  11:54, 15 August 2007 (CDT)


 * Technically, this would not be the correct way to handle the problem. While Nintendo of America may have refered to SMB2j as the Lost Levels, there is no such game title as the "Lost Levels".  The official title of these two different games, in both regions, is "Super Mario Bros. 2", so the region must serve as the disambiguation.  While the Wii Virtual Console page is free to refer to the game in any one particular format (in this case, American as you have chosen), the naming convention for the main pages on this site must stick to official names only.  Procyon (Talk) 12:44, 15 August 2007 (CDT)


 * I thought it was official, since it was released in America under Super Mario All-Stars as the Lost Levels. Either way works for me.  In fact, if we don't change anything that's less work to do!-- Duke  Ruckley  14:07, 15 August 2007 (CDT)


 * It's official as the English translation. He said that.  But what he's saying is it was first released, officially, as Super Mario Bros. 2... in Japan.  -- 16:16, 15 August 2007 (CDT)

Redirect Pages
I was think about redirect pages (don't we all), and it occurred to me that some people might come to this site and type the name of a particular boss or world, etc into the search field. So would it be acceptable to create redirect pages for popular bosses/worlds? For example, Meta-Ridley could redirect to the relevant page in the Metroid Prime guide and Wario Stadium could redirect to it's page in the Mario Kart DS guide. It would be a little harder for characters that appear in several games, such as Ganon or Bowser, but they could also redirect to the relevant series/category page. Would this be useful to the casual SW-user or am I just being pedantic? --RamonSalazar 14:45, 16 August 2007 (CDT)
 * I highly doubt that that would be useful, and to pick apart your examples...
 * Meta Ridley is in Metroid Prime, Metroid Prime 2, and (sorry for those of you that don't like spoilers, but...) Metroid Prime 3, and maybe a few other games. Which one would it point to?
 * Wario Stadium is not only in Mario Kart DS, but also Mario Kart 64 (and maybe a few others).
 * Plus, there are thousands of redirects that would have to be created then. I really don't think that it would be useful (if anything it would just clog the database). -- 14:59, 16 August 2007 (CDT)


 * The reason we don't need to redirect to disambig pages for these terms is because by searching you'll be returned all relevant (and non-relevant) pages with the term in it. People should be able to find what they're looking for with just that.  -- 15:08, 16 August 2007 (CDT)


 * Ok, point taken, they are not really needed. But the excuse of having to create thousands of redirects is a pretty weak one - only the most popular ones would need to be done right away. The rest would just be created as and when. Secondly, would the extra pages really clog up the database? When redirect pages were the Collaboration of the Month, people were advised to make as many pages as they could, even covering common mis-spellings of game names. --RamonSalazar 15:25, 16 August 2007 (CDT)
 * How do you gauge which ones are more popular? :-P I don't think we advised people to create redirects for misspellings of names, unless they were really common ones. My memory must've faded. Anyway, I disagree with this too. :-) -- 17:39, 16 August 2007 (CDT)


 * Ok, I admit defeat on this one guys. But just so you know I'm not mental and making this stuff up, look here. --RamonSalazar 18:54, 16 August 2007 (CDT)
 * Yeah that is right, it's one of my first memories of strategywiki lol--Rocky http://media.strategywiki.org/images/thumb/7/78/Rally-X_Rock.png/25px-Rally-X_Rock.png (Talk - Contributions) 05:12, 17 August 2007 (CDT)
 * Anyway, Zelda II needs to redirect to the proper guide. Searching for the guide is useless, perhaps because the title includes a colon.  I had a very hard time finding the guide yesterday, so it needs a redirect.  --Tathar [[Image:Tathar.jpg|32px]] (talk|contribs) 10:39, 18 August 2007 (CDT)
 * So make it Tathar. It takes two seconds.  Procyon (Talk) 10:48, 18 August 2007 (CDT)

Company Categories
Ok so as I was copying info from Wikipedia to the Square EA page I decided to keep these three categories (potentially useful for categorizing):
 * Category:Defunct video game companies
 * Category:Companies established in 1998
 * Category:2003 disestablishments

Now, these three present several different categorization ideas that I think are important. The first collects companies that are no longer active; the second categorizes comapanies by age, and the third categorizes dead ones by the year they died. Although these are useful, do they work for our scope? The second two might almost be too much information, however I really think the defunct video game company category is useful for looking at those companies who aren't going to release a sequel to that awesome series you love... ya know? But, I have an even better idea for integrating these: automatic population via the company infobox, like we have for Template:Infobox. -- 20:15, 17 August 2007 (CDT)
 * We already have Category:Defunct companies (which is automatically assigned to pages which use company's "closed" parameter), as well as Category:1998 and Category:2003. I don't think it's worth having separate categories for the years of company establishments/disestablishments, since there aren't going to be that many (one a year, maybe)? -- 03:36, 18 August 2007 (CDT)

Pages needing Wikification
What do you need to do with these, many have no preformatted text or badly made tables or ASCII art so when should the wikify tag be removed or be replaced ith a cleanup tag?--Rocky http://media.strategywiki.org/images/thumb/7/78/Rally-X_Rock.png/25px-Rally-X_Rock.png (Talk - Contributions) 15:55, 18 August 2007 (CDT)
 * There's no point in replacing the tag; you might as well just go through them and clean them up, and remove all tags. But yeah, they just need general cleanup. -- 17:10, 18 August 2007 (CDT)
 * Yea, many of these are really just cleanup/subpage candidates. I put pages there that I "planned" to look at as soon as I finished with the AGN->HN changing.  I can give you specifics about what most of the pages need if you want to know (ask on IRC). -- Prod (Talk) 17:59, 18 August 2007 (CDT)

StrategyWiki:Projects
Category:StrategyWiki projects and all the included fun and excitement! -- Prod (Talk) 18:47, 18 August 2007 (CDT)

Link to discussion pages
Is there someway that the links to discussion pages could be modified so they look different if there is no talk page (e.g. Wikipedia has the text in red)? Maybe gray out the text, swap the background and text colors, or add a symbol/text if there is no page? I often check out the talk pages for articles I view/edit, and it would be convenient to know right away if there is no talk page to go to. - Koweja 16:25, 19 August 2007 (CDT)
 * Since no one has answered yet... I think that this is a definite possibility but its up to one of the beauracrats (Echelon, DrBob, Dan, PowerMatt). -- 19:17, 20 August 2007 (CDT)
 * I've modified the PHP to put the "new" class on the discussion link if the page doesn't exist (as it currently does for links in articles which point to non-existent pages), so now it's up to somebody to modify the BlueCloud CSS to change the appearance of the link when it has that class. (I don't have time, sorry.) -- 07:51, 28 August 2007 (CDT)
 * I've just seen this and liking it! Baejung92 14:42, 29 August 2007 (CDT)
 * One slight glitch is in the "would like to create" in the toolbar of my user page, somehow the css has affected this and it looks strange(also note the links have always been purple).--Rocky http://media.strategywiki.org/images/thumb/7/78/Rally-X_Rock.png/25px-Rally-X_Rock.png (Talk - Contributions) 16:44, 30 August 2007 (CDT)
 * I did a temporary fix to your user page until a more permanent fix can be made (such as DrBob or someone else with server access assigning an id to each item in the toolbox). -- 17:32, 30 August 2007 (CDT)
 * Ok, DrBob implemented ids for all the toolbox items to the li elements (so the discussion is , for example). I've implemented that into MediaWiki:BlueCloud.css, so there shouldn't be any more bugs regarding this. -- 19:04, 30 August 2007 (CDT)

Sims 2 partnership
I noticed from this diff http://simpedia.co.uk. They don't seem to have much in the line of walkthrough information which is good for us. However, they are still rather small, so I'm not sure if it's worth it. If we decide against the partnership, the link should be removed since they are essentially competitors. -- Prod (Talk) 20:59, 21 August 2007 (CDT)
 * I'd say no, just remove the link. -- 22:07, 21 August 2007 (CDT)

PC games
Since we're trying to reach gamers, and not technology people, can we stitch the various PC system categories back together? Not everyone knows that XP is 2000 is NT and some people have started adding them to the infoboxes. -- Prod (Talk) 21:04, 21 August 2007 (CDT)
 * I'm wondering why was it decided to use "NT" in the first place? XP and Vista are both under NT I think, and there are games that work with one but not with the others. Baejung92 21:52, 21 August 2007 (CDT)
 * The categories are named after the kernels (despite using an NT kernel, it was decided that Vista should be separate because Halo 2 and some others were artificially restricted to only work on Vista). This was first discussed last October, and was covered again in January. Since the kernel used doesn't automatically indicate (in)compatibility I guess it would make some sense to put them into a unified "Windows" category (MS-DOS, of course, would still be separate). GarrettTalk 22:41, 21 August 2007 (CDT)
 * Yeah I think if we combined all three cats, and then on the infoboxes we listed them correctly for the operating system it would work out best, since those links would link to Windows itself. Oh hey, in redirects can we redirect to sections?  If we had operating system info on the cat it might be useful to set those up... -- 00:12, 22 August 2007 (CDT)
 * Regardless of whether we combine everything into one category or not, I think that there is a problem in sys. I think that |windows should show the windows logo, regardless of whether the game is for vista/nt/9x etc.  |PC would do the same thing.  This doesn't affect categorization, it just makes it easier to list the games' release dates in the infobox.  What do you guys think?-- Duke  Ruckley  17:09, 25 August 2007 (CDT)
 * It's not immediately obvious, but sys automatically adds the associated system categories. The Windows and PC categories are not used for games, so are not valid sys usages. I did this because the way it was before it would just add a category of whatever was in the first parameter, resulting in Category:GBA and craziness like that. GarrettTalk 21:49, 25 August 2007 (CDT)
 * Okay, I didn't realize it adds the category as well... I guess the question I have now is what do I do if I don't know which version of windows to use?  For example, Oni was released on Windows but it is not specified which version on either this site or wikipedia's.  I went straight to the source as well.  I'm not real familiar with which kernel corresponds with which Windows release so again I can't really do anything.  I also thought it would be much simpler to just say "Windows" and then specify which in the main text or in parentheses after the release date.  With categories, that's just too complicated though.


 * The only solution I can see right now is to put any guide that is in the Windows subcategories into the Windows categories as well. That way we can just specify Windows in the infobox.  Then we can manually add the Windows subcategories (9x, NT, etc) if we know what they are.  This would actually simplify things within the sys template as well as make it easier to use.  Thoughts?-- Duke  Ruckley  07:27, 26 August 2007 (CDT)

It's been about a week since anyone last added to this discussion; if we're all agreed I'll make a start on this in a couple of days. This will leave only Category:Linux, Category:MS-DOS, and the new Category:Windows, with Category:PC remaining the empty parent of all three. GarrettTalk 05:23, 2 September 2007 (CDT)
 * I could deal with merging 9x and NT, since 99% of NT games run on 9x (I think), but we have to keep Vista separate due to the fact that Vista games will not run on anything older. A note in parentheses just won't cut it, and such fundamental incompatibilities have to be indicated by the guide's categorisation. (Sorry for the late reply.) -- 11:43, 2 September 2007 (CDT)
 * Yeah, I keep forgetting about Vista. :) The Games for Windows boxes make it clear which titles require Vista, so it shouldn't be too confusing to keep that aspect of categorisation. GarrettTalk 16:36, 2 September 2007 (CDT)
 * Or, that could be in the system requirements. -- Prod (Talk) 17:27, 2 September 2007 (CDT)
 * Oh, and Windows 3.1 could be merged with MS-DOS. -- 17:33, 2 September 2007 (CDT)

Release Date fix needed
So if you look at some pages you'll see the new usage of the release date templates causes them to take up two lines. It's an unnecessary waste of space, as you can see the huge amount available on the right side. So, I'm not sure which template needs to be adjusted; probably Template:Release date, but what should we do? Specify a width? Like, 100%... I don't think it has anything to do with the use of sys or the icon floating right because I tested several icons of various heights... If need be we can also add some width to the area by adjusting Template:Infobox so that the headers take up a smaller width. I did this by throwing in a specified width on one header (90px)... see User:Notmyhandle/Sandbox4. -- 15:25, 22 August 2007 (CDT)
 * eh? How about some examples of broken pages? :-) -- 10:12, 27 August 2007 (CDT)
 * Grand Theft Auto: Vice City is the one that comes to mind; all its dates are fine but, at the time of writing, the Xbox date is on two lines. I tried various ways of arranging the templates in an attempt to fix this, but in the end I gave up and saved it. It appears like that in both IE 7 and Firefox 2.0.0.6. GarrettTalk 04:40, 31 August 2007 (CDT)
 * Fixed. -- 09:13, 1 September 2007 (CDT)
 * Are we going to change the syntax of these (see discussion on rd talk page)? -- 12:37, 2 September 2007 (CDT)
 * Discussion's here. -- 13:06, 2 September 2007 (CDT)

Video game crack uploaded
Here, a crack.ace file has been uploaded. I have absolutely no idea what to do with it with it to delete it and I kinda don't want to go to the page in case it runs (According to wikipedia .ace is like .zip and you can't really tell what it is).--Rocky http://media.strategywiki.org/images/thumb/7/78/Rally-X_Rock.png/25px-Rally-X_Rock.png (Talk - Contributions) 04:06, 23 August 2007 (CDT)
 * Simply going to Image:Crack.ace won't execute the file. You have to download it and then run it first. That said it's only 340B, so I can't see it containing anything particularly useful to the site. I'd just go ahead and delete it. - Koweja 06:28, 23 August 2007 (CDT)
 * Thanks.--Rocky http://media.strategywiki.org/images/thumb/7/78/Rally-X_Rock.png/25px-Rally-X_Rock.png (Talk - Contributions) 07:13, 23 August 2007 (CDT)
 * Based on the size, I'd guess that the file was a virus, not even a crack. I'd recommend anyone who downloaded that file not to run it. Also, we don't support non-image/video files so they should be deleted anywayz. -- Prod (Talk) 13:17, 23 August 2007 (CDT)
 * Yeah, that's why I didn't want to go to the image page unless it ran, luckily I think windows needs a decoder to decompress those files.--Rocky http://media.strategywiki.org/images/thumb/7/78/Rally-X_Rock.png/25px-Rally-X_Rock.png (Talk - Contributions) 13:24, 23 August 2007 (CDT)
 * Yeah the program is called WinAce; it's their proprietary compressed format. -- 14:50, 23 August 2007 (CDT)

Reminder: Staff meeting on Saturday
Just to remind everyone, the next meeting is scheduled to occur at 2pm Eastern Daylight Saving Time on the 25th. All who can attend are encouraged to come to the IRC channel at that time. Procyon (Talk) 09:27, 23 August 2007 (CDT)
 * Sorry I missed it; I was on holiday. Could someone sort out a log, and update Meetings please? -- 10:12, 27 August 2007 (CDT)

Community Portal
At the meeting we discussed a redesign of the Community Portal which would be more useful as a collaborative tool. We've already rearranged it a bit, but we had discussed a couple new possibilities. The shoutbox idea is really cool, but until we can implement it, I had mentioned the idea of a projects box. Check out this page and see if you like it. If so we can go ahead and use it until the shoutbox idea can be implemented. All I really did was replace the DPL with projects (they could also use better descriptions, both in the Community Portal and on their respective pages).-- Duke Ruckley  07:51, 26 August 2007 (CDT)
 * That's a very good idea, and much more useful than a list that's on the main page anyway. I say go for it. GarrettTalk 04:35, 31 August 2007 (CDT)

Watching Pages
I was wondering if it is possible to implement an option to "watch guide" where instead of having to select every page in a guide, to select the guide itself and have it include all subpages and talk pages. For example, if I want to watch each EarthBound subpage, I would choose watch all on the EarthBound main page. Think this is possible?-- Duke Ruckley  12:15, 28 August 2007 (CDT)
 * It's totally possible, but not a feature implemented into mediawiki yet. We could write our own script, however...  All we need is a function that returns all the pages of a guide and then opens them using "http://strategywiki.org/w/index.php?title=PAGENAME&action=watch."  That would be messy, but at least it would get 'em all done quickly (mediawiki browser bomb anyone?).  -- 12:29, 28 August 2007 (CDT)
 * In addition to what NMH said, you might want to make sure it's down as a feature suggestion (option to watch subpages of watched pages) on MediaWiki's Bugzilla. -- 13:08, 28 August 2007 (CDT)
 * Will do.-- Duke Ruckley  16:36, 28 August 2007 (CDT)

Increasing Maximum Thumbnail Size
Karlcsr brought up a good issue regarding higher resolution systems and (old) people with bad eyesight/the desire for larger images. Can we at least give people like him the ability to up the thumbnails by a bit? How hard would it be to add 350, 400, 450 and 500px settings (or more...)? I think it's a good idea and another usability feature for our users. The downside to this is of course uncrisp/blurry/scaled images. It's their choice however, so why should we stop them? This brings up a touchy issue about the actual size of images themselves, like how big should sprites and other smaller/cropped images be? -- 20:23, 29 August 2007 (CDT)
 * First off, for those who aren't aware, logged-in users can change the default thumbnail size (go to Special:Preferences and click on "Files"), however this can only go up to 300px, does not affect images inserted at 1:1 scale (using |frame or simply no parameters), cannot scale images beyond 1:1, and is overridden by thumbnails with a specified size.
 * An ever-present problem is that big swathes of screen real estate are already taken up by the navigation bars (Wikipedia has only one). 1024x768 is currently the lowest average screen resolution; when using Blue Cloud at 1024x768 any image over 200-250px will quickly swallow up almost half of the available area. This is fine for lists, but for the average walkthrough the large size means that a lot of words are required to pad each image sufficiently before the next one.
 * As for sprites, generally we've been inserting them at original size wherever possible, or clean multiples of the original, as these present the best resulting image (especially on LCD displays). The problem is that while the original size works well inline the next cleanest multiple (usually 32x32) is bigger than the average default font size, and so disrupts the text flow.
 * This is largely a MediaWiki design matter, and not something we can easily change. Adding additional preferences scales is possible, but it would more than likely be overwritten by each version update. Specifying dimensions en masse isn't a solution either, as the large number of readers with good eyesight will find the oversized images disruptive to their browsing, and, in the case of sprite-based images, may even find the scaling makes them ugly. The best solution would be to submit a MediaWiki feature request for the thumbnail size to be changed from a drop-down to a text input box (meaning users could adjust it to absolutely anything they want) with an accompanying "override specified dimensions" check box, and then promote it on Wikipedia talk:Accessibility and the like. Largely aesthetic tweaks like this are much more likely to get done if a lot of people are asking for them. GarrettTalk 21:30, 29 August 2007 (CDT)
 * I've just filed bug 11118. -- 01:47, 30 August 2007 (CDT)
 * DB, have you seen the comments? Also, how does this process work, is it a potential change so long as it remains "opened" ???  -- 11:55, 30 August 2007 (CDT)
 * I'd forgotten about it; thanks for reminding me. I've now changed that setting here, so that you should now be able to choose 400 or 500px thumbnails too. To answer your question: yes. -- 18:22, 30 August 2007 (CDT)

Refreshing the PGotM and other front page monthlies
We need your votes and nominations.--Dan 10:38, 1 September 2007 (CDT)
 * Don't forget collaboration of the month. There's currently a red link there, so we need to pick one soon.-- Duke  Ruckley  08:57, 4 September 2007 (CDT)

Show Preview Boilerplate Text
I've created some boilerplate text to be placed in a contributor's talk page when they make many small edits on a single page. If you think it needs any changes or a better name, please feel free to edit it. showpreview-- Duke Ruckley  08:44, 4 September 2007 (CDT)

Considering alternatives to Google Adsense
I thought I would throw this discussion wide open to the community. We've talked about it a few times in the staff meetings on IRC, but I'd like some input that any of you have about possible substitutes to Google Adsense. At the moment, it's helpful, but it doesn't quite cut the mustard. With more traffic, that may improve, but it can't be counted upon. There are alternatives out there, but I'm not particularly knowledgeable about many of them. I know that there is an eBay click-through program, and an Amazon click-through program. I also have a direct line to (and have been in contact with) the staff at Advertising.com, but this introduces the subject of visual ads and their placement. I have a feeling that the reception any non-text based visual advertisement is going to be very poor, from both the core community and the outlying community. However, I believe these ads really do stand the chance to create the highest possible stream of revenue from my personal understanding. I would love to be proven wrong, and possibly educated by anyone else if they have personal experience dealing with any of these, or other, possible alternatives. Thanks very much. Procyon (Talk) 13:35, 4 September 2007 (CDT)
 * I'm fine with ads as long as they don't hinder editing, I really wouldn't want popups here. I think we should try the Amaon and Ebay links first but I don't think we'll get much from them really because if you want the walkthrough then you'll most likely have the game.--Rocky http://media.strategywiki.org/images/thumb/7/78/Rally-X_Rock.png/25px-Rally-X_Rock.png (Talk - Contributions) 15:15, 4 September 2007 (CDT)
 * Not ebay, since what would they be selling that people reading the guide would want anyway? As for the Amazon ads, I think they are a good idea (and Garrett already has done some experimentation of how they get laid out, which is also a good thing). Perhaps having both Amazon and AdSense might make an extra hundred dollars or so in revenue per month (hopefully). Also, it appears that non BlueCloud skins don't have ads, so implement them there as well. As for the advertising.com flash/picture ads, as long as they're small and sort-of out of the way, I'm fine with it. Or even better, do what Wikia does and display larger and flashier ads when users are not logged in, and hide/shrink the flashy ones and stick with only the AdSense or whatever when they do log in (also encourages people to create accounts, and hopefully also use them -- perhaps make the type of ads that appear change based on how many edits a user makes, and outline it somewhere). I've brought up a couple of other points in the sections below. -- 16:10, 4 September 2007 (CDT)
 * Auction Ads apparently yields up to 400% more than AdSense. Based on the demo the ads seem to be unobtrusive and properly targeted. We could probably make more from Amazon referrals, though. Unfortunately the Amazon ads box doesn't seem to detect products intelligently enough to give reliable links to the game a given page is actually covering, so the links would have to be done manually via a template of some sort (you can see my experiment right here). GarrettTalk 19:21, 4 September 2007 (CDT)
 * I would recommend just sticking with Google AdSense, and perhaps adding an Amazon link; no other advertising services compare with AdSense (I'm a bit suspicious of the one Garrett brought up; I've never heard of it before), and I worry about turning StrategyWiki into a billboard. We're here for the guides, not adverts. -- 11:09, 5 September 2007 (CDT)
 * I've heard of the service Garrett was mentioning. Personally I think if Garrett can easily implement some of them, we should try any and all that we can easily access.  DrBob, I understand your hesitation, but there's a bottom line for SW users: More money = bigger SW, and bigger SW = better experience for the users.  No one is holding a gun to anyone's head and saying you have to buy something (that's what the donate button is for ^_^), but there's money to be made, and we're not making enough of it.  We can even try implementing the idea that Skizzerz has for logged in vs. non-logged in users (and fixing the non-BlueCloud skins to show the ads as well).  There are so many ways now for users to filter out ads that if someone was truly offended by the sight of them, they could correct that for themselves.  Heck, Firefox makes ad filtering almost too easy!  Procyon (Talk) 14:43, 5 September 2007 (CDT)
 * I'm currently in agreement with DrBob.. I don't really want to see any large ads on SW.  One of the reasons I left GameFAQs in the first place was because of all the annoying ads they have added.  As for the idea about logged in vs. not logged in users...  What's going to happen here is that potential contributors and browsers are going to come to the site for the first time and see all these big flashy ads, and then just leave.  I think that you are less likely to draw more contributors, even if you get rid of the ads for logged in users.  New users aren't going to know that offhand.  And its not going to be easy to keep their attention long enough for them to see that by registering they can get rid of those unwanted ads.


 * I think that by taking a very slow approach to adding ads would be better than just all of sudden having them. We should start small with the ads and work on having more people who regularly contribute first.  Once we have a very good amount of people, a bit of a following, we can then add the ads (for non-logged in users).  The right time to implement this is when it is more important to make more money than it is to attract new users.  I hope I'm making sense.-- Duke  Ruckley  18:35, 5 September 2007 (CDT)


 * MobyGames has had text-only product ads for a while now, but they offer logged-in users the ability to turn them off (it's not automatic). If it can be implemented without being incompatible with MediaWiki upgrades this would be a great way to maximise profits from visitors and minimise annoying regular contributors.
 * Even if that's not a viable solution, what we're proposing is nothing compared to the ridiculous level of product placement other gaming sites have—right now GameFAQs' main page has two banner ads, a square ad, and a themed background all imploring me to pre-order Medal of Honor: Airborne. Sometimes these ad themes even have mouse-over sounds/animations and other annoyances. IGN and GameSpy are little better, mixing animated ads with reminders about their tantalising "subscriber extras". GarrettTalk 05:32, 6 September 2007 (CDT)

I can do further experimenting with the Amazon sidebar, but before the concept can be actually implemented echelon will need to set up the referrer ID that the sales will be credited to. GarrettTalk 05:32, 6 September 2007 (CDT)

Privacy Policy
It might be nice to have a privacy policy page, and then link to it on the bottom (where About and Disclaimers are). It could cover such things as account creation, cookies used, and info regarding donations, among other things. The two MediaWiki messages that control this are MediaWiki:Privacy and MediaWiki:Privacypage, and their presence is what lead me to believe that including them would be a good idea. What do you all think? -- 16:10, 4 September 2007 (CDT)

Other Donation companies
While PayPal is fine, there are some people that don't like using it for whatever reason. I've browsed the web a bit and didn't find much in the way of alternatives to PayPal, but it might be nice to offer some alongside the PayPal button on Donate. Again, I'd like to see your thoughts on this (also, we should probably move "Donate" under "Help" in the sidebar, people are more likely to catch it as they scroll down a large-ish page if it is at the bottom). -- 16:10, 4 September 2007 (CDT)
 * Do we have to worry about donations from minors? -- 21:18, 4 September 2007 (CDT)

Account pruning
If our user growth has been occurring anywhere close to the current rate, do we have any kind of account pruning measures in place? Something like 0 total edits in 3 months and/or 0 recent edits in one year? It seems like it might be beneficial. Someone on IRC stated not all of the account creation is done benevolently. And while I doubt any of the recent activity is malicious, it would be interesting to know if we have any clean up measures in place. Just wondering. Procyon (Talk) 19:50, 4 September 2007 (CDT)
 * I don't think we do... anyway, I found a DeleteUser extension, but it is unstable and should not be installed here. However, it tells in the documentation the SQL queries that it sends to remove users from the database . Perhaps Echelon or someone could code something that does this automatically once an account meets certain conditions without a UI (although, some inactive accounts, such as blocked accounts and alternate-name accounts (like User:Skizzerz, which is blocked anyway) should be exempt from such deletions). -- 20:20, 4 September 2007 (CDT)
 * Does Wikipedia prune accounts? I haven't heard of this being done before... What would be the advantage? echelontalk 01:11, 5 September 2007 (CDT)
 * Reducing the number of accounts in the database, if you compare the number of accounts with edits, to the number of accounts just sitting there with no edits at all, you don't even come close to half.


 * A possible solution to all these rampant account creations, is to put a captcha on registration, this will certainly hinder any automated registrations and filter bot from person. -- 01:17, 5 September 2007 (CDT)
 * Yes, but these spare accounts are hardly affecting the performance of the database. I don't see any advantages associated with pruning them. Call me the devil's advocate, but I've never been in favor of this kind of action. Having unused accounts floating around will neither increase nor decrease the probability of a spambot or vandal attack; the issue of using a captcha to deter spammers is another issue onto itself, and I wouldn't be one to disagree with the benefits such a system would offer. But as for the issue of account deletion, what other organizations do this? MySpace doesn't delete the billions of unused accounts it has. Does Google do that with Gmail users? I doubt it. And as unlikely as it might be, what of the possible implications a faulty DELETE query on the users table would bring?  might not appear anywhere within the MediaWiki code base, but I am less willing to trust that the same scrutiny that produces the relatively bug-free MediaWiki software lies within the hands (or capability) of third party developers. echelontalk 01:37, 5 September 2007 (CDT)
 * I never said I supported it, I just thought that would be the only "advantage" to doing so. --
 * I would recommend NOT pruning accounts. Having admind many forums over the last ten odd years I can say with certainly it's a very bad practice to prune.  The much better approach to this is an occasional email nudge.  You would be surprised how many people respond to those things.  I myself take long breaks from editing this site (hell I started the Neverwinter Nights guide like 4 months ago and haven't touched it in like 3) but I eventually return a few months later,  but if I came back and my account was gone then I would never ever return.  What you may want to do is re-validate the email after a certain time period has passed but that would be the extent that I would go.  Just remember that nothing is gained by pruning accounts but a very small amount or room on the back end DB (you might gain 10MB),  but you could potentially loose contributing members of the site.  Just my 0.02 cents.  -- Argash 03:32, 5 September 2007 (CDT)
 * Agreed most definitely with Argash and Echelon. -- 11:07, 5 September 2007 (CDT)
 * OK cool, if my concerns about the user growth being a detriment to database performance are unfounded, consider the matter closed. I didn't know if it would hamper the speed or available space of the database at a certain point or not.  It's actually one less concern to deal with in this case.  Procyon (Talk) 14:45, 5 September 2007 (CDT)

Thoughts on Template:Helpwanted
Consider this a kind of marketing move.

A lot of visitors see our site and find stubs for the games that they would consider to be popular. As such, they may look at our site with discontent. Instead, we should turn this into a positive reaction: a chance for the visitor to show their appreciation for the game by contributing. By making that emotional connection with the visitor, we may gain a higher percentage of core contributors and maintainers. (Those not limited to a few casual edits.) Indeed, I wouldn't be surprised if motivation of this sort leads to more guides being completed.

Note that we shouldn't (and wouldn't want to) overuse this template. If the visitor sees it on every incomplete guide, they may quickly consider the template a standard boilerplate, and hence they may loose that original emotional queue.

If we do choose to implement a template of this sort, I would endeavor to make it even more personalized and tailored to each guide. Perhaps we could insert a few parameters into it, so that on the Halo 2 guide, it stresses that Master Chief would hate to see the guide fail. If that doesn't establish a connection with the visitor, I don't know what will.

Thoughts? echelontalk 01:10, 5 September 2007 (CDT)


 * It's a good start. Wikipedia has varying cleanup/stub/etc templates for articles that need each respective one. It's better than just having stub and cleanup on everything. -- 01:21, 5 September 2007 (CDT)
 * OK. How about implementing this for all guides which are popular for the main consoles (look on the consoles' pages for the list), but aren't at completion stage 4? -- 14:25, 5 September 2007 (CDT)
 * No. I think that this should be used sparingly and that the credential for use is based on active users for the guide.  For example, you might have one or more people working hard on a guide, and then they post this on it knowing they need more help.  If we just say, these "need help" it acts as a stub template notification.  There has to be more than "please do this because it's empty."  -- 15:15, 5 September 2007 (CDT)

Minor edit needed on Main Page
The following line at the bottom of the Featured Article box should be commented out until it's actually true:

There are many Featured guides to browse and you can vote on future choices at the requests page.

Considering there's only one FA at the moment the line looks really really bad. --Argash 04:11, 5 September 2007 (CDT)
 * Good idea, I've changed the wording. Hopefully we'll get some more featured guides soon... GarrettTalk 05:10, 5 September 2007 (CDT)

August Archive page has been locked for some reason.
I just tried to archive every thing that hadn't been updated since the 20th of August but some one's apparently locked the August archives so I've temporarily deposited them into the September archives. Could someone fix that for me please. -Argash 05:34, 7 September 2007 (CDT)
 * Done-- Duke Ruckley  06:25, 7 September 2007 (CDT)

Peer Review Project
For a while now I've been wanting to copy Wikipedia's Peer Review system over here. Now that the Featured Article system has been put in place I think it's even more important. So over the next few days I plan on starting the frame work of the system/project but I'm not sure where I should put it. Per the conversation here there does not appear to be consensus. I was planning on putting it at WikiProject Peer Review or Peer Review. For the record Wikipedia has it located at  Peer review . Thoughts? Ideas? Suggestions? -Argash 05:52, 7 September 2007 (CDT)
 * Personally, I don't see the point of this. It adds a needless extra layer of complication on top of processes that we already have in place.  We're not Wikipedia, we have far less need for the level of bureaucracy that they have established.  Procyon (Talk) 09:18, 7 September 2007 (CDT)
 * I agree with Procyon; while I know what you want to achieve, simply copying Wikipedia's practices is not going to be beneficial for StrategyWiki — they're designed to operate on a much larger scale than what we need, and are needlessly bureaucratic, as Proc says. I think the rule we've got at the moment that a featured guide must be completely proofread by people who know what they're doing will suffice for the time being. -- 11:22, 7 September 2007 (CDT)
 * I don't think that an exact copy would be the best way your right. And even still it would certainly not be manditory.  It would be a way for people who've put alot of time into a guide to request another persons opinion on what should be done next.  Simply put it would stream line the asking process and open it up so anyone can help pr a guide. -Argash 16:45, 7 September 2007 (CDT)
 * Just post a new section here in CI, and if someone is interested, they'll look it over. Right now, we just want as much content as possible, and since the sysop-to-active non sysop ratio is ridiculously high, things get cleaned up etc. on a minor scale to begin with. The less bureaucratic processes we have, the better. -- 16:59, 7 September 2007 (CDT)

I think that the point being made, in this case, is that we are still a close and tight-knit community that is very much hands on. There isn't much that goes on that is beyond our attention or goes unnoticed. I think WP's contributors are a much broader spectrum of users, and so much is taking place there, that they need those kinds of magnets to draw certain people's attention to issues that need it. Fortunately, we haven't reached that point, and hopefully we never truly will. Procyon (Talk) 20:22, 7 September 2007 (CDT)
 * For reference. we have started these off at Category:StrategyWiki projects. -- Prod (Talk) 10:06, 9 September 2007 (CDT)