StrategyWiki talk:Community Portal/2006/July

Biohazard Walkthrough problem

Right now the Four Crests walkthrough for Biohazard is greater than 30kb, which apparently may cause some browser display errors. And I'm only about 20% through the entire section (yeah, I got a looooong way to go), so expect it to be HUGE (probably over 100kb). The other levels of Biohazard are very small, and they're nowhere near the size of the Mansion walkthrough. So do you guys think I should split the Four Crests walkthrough into individual sections or just leave it as one huge page? Thanks! --Antaios 20:45, 1 July 2006 (PDT)

Split it. DrBob

Agreed -- Mason11987 ^{(Talk - Contributions)} 22:32, 1 July 2006 (PDT)

Agreed x2 --Dukeruckley 05:02, 3 July 2006 (PDT)

Image Categories Once Again

I was thinking about how the images have been categorized and we definitely need to pick a standard. Personally, I feel that the best idea is categorize by game title and what it is. For example, a sprite from Secret of Mana could be categorized as Category:Secret of Mana sprites instead of just Category:Sprites. The reason is that if an editor was looking to insert a certain picture, they would be able to find it easier by going to the game specific category. This category will, of course, be a subcategory of Category:Sprites.

Another thing that should be taken into account is the naming of the images. I think that each image should beging with the title of the game (or a shortened version of it). Example: A zombie from Secret of Mana could be name [[Image:Secret of Mana Zombie.jpg]] as opposed to just [[Image:Zombie.jpg]]. This is important because then how do we differentiate a zombie from Secret of Mana and one from say EarthBound without this naming convention.

As always, if we adopt some sort of naming convention and categorization convention, we need to do it ASAP. It is a lot of work to go back and rename everything and we'd need to do it before many more images are added. Also, if possible, something should be placed on the upload screen to alert the editors to this convention. Thoughts?--Dukeruckley 07:23, 5 July 2006 (PDT)

I've been going through and categorising images, and I think the current system is fine. If a game has enough images to warrant its own category, it should get one, but its category shouldn't be tailored to a specific type of image: what if you want to put the box artwork in that category (it does, after all, belong to the game)? At present, I'm categorising images by sprite/model and character/item for characters or items, and the other categories by themselves for other images. If a game-specific category exists, I'll use it, but I'm not in a hurry to create them.

I do agree that we need a naming convention for images. I would agree with a shortened (initialised?) version of the game name, so a Secret of Mana image would become som_image_name.png, for example.

There is already a message on the upload screen asking for uploaders to categorise their images, and I was asking for some JS which checks for the presence of [[Category:...]] tags, but some more prominent and linked documentation would be good. It's on my todo list. :-) --DrBob (Talk) 09:12, 5 July 2006 (PDT)

I see what you're saying about the categorization. There are a few sites that do have quite a bit of images: Secret of Mana and EarthBound come to mind (I'll be adding even more to SoM when I eventually finish that tedious bestiary). So basically, the solution would be to use Category:Secret of Mana images for all SoM images (including boxart, sprites, etc.). For games without a lot of images, just use the normal categories. Should we include the normal categories for the images that are also put in a game specific category? As for naming conventions, initialized names for the games is exactly what I mean. som_image_name would be perfect. The only problem then coming from games that might have the same initials. Example: Secret of Mana vs. Sword of Mana.--Dukeruckley 09:29, 5 July 2006 (PDT)

The normal categories should always be included. One of the reasons for categorising the images was so that we could have all the (for example) box artwork in one place. Concerning games with the same initials, just extend the initialisation: e.g. Secret of Mana would become seom, and Sword of Mana would become swom.

I'm writing some official guidelines for images. They're not finished yet, but I'll make sure they do cover everything which has been discussed here. --DrBob (Talk) 11:11, 5 July 2006 (PDT)

Back and forward links

On the bottom of pages, there are little back and forward through the Walkthrough links, like << Hyrule Castle | Goron City>>. There should be slightly more of a presence of these links. Another ~~plug~~ example is Template:Earthbound/Nav. What would be better is something styled the same as the Header Nav, but with only Walkthrough links in the show/hide section and the always visible links would be to Back, Here, and Next in the Walkthrough. Like Template:Earthbound/Nav only standardized. --blendmaster 11:54, 11 July 2006 (CDT)

(I've split up your comment; I hope you don't mind.) I like this idea, and I think I'll try and get round to implementing something for it soon. :-) --DrBob (Talk) 15:01, 11 July 2006 (CDT)

kind of like this? --blendmaster 16:27, 11 July 2006 (CDT)

Yeah, but without all the big images. :-P --DrBob (Talk) 16:56, 11 July 2006 (CDT)

It has been "improved", but it looks as if its missing somthing, don't you think? --blendmaster 17:41, 11 July 2006 (CDT)

I've spiffied it up a bit, cleaned up the markup, and made it fit in more with Header Nav. --DrBob (Talk) 12:57, 12 July 2006 (CDT)

Ok, looks fine now. But how are the hidden links going to be added in? Unless you made yet another table of contents page to include that just lists the walkthrough part, then you'd have to enter all the links as a variable in the template every time you used it. --blendmaster 11:44, 13 July 2006 (CDT)

I thought you had that sorted. I do suppose the best way to do it would be to add another page, yes. --DrBob (Talk) 13:51, 13 July 2006 (CDT)

Is what we're writing here going to stay?

Should we bother updating SW while it's being moved? Are things recorded at the temporary location going to make it onto the new server? (Or are we already on the new server, just under an assumed name?) Sympleko 11:28, 9 July 2006 (CDT)

This is the new server, but as noted on the old server, there are some inconsistencies in the copy, thus there is the distinct possibility of everything having to be overwritten. What I would say is that if you want to do some editing, download the source of the article you want to edit, save it as a text file and edit it on your home computer. Once we've got everything sorted and give the go-ahead, feel free to upload it. :-) Personally, the only edits I'm doing at the moment are to test my bot; such edits can easily be re-done if we have to scrap the data. --DrBob (Talk) 11:34, 9 July 2006 (CDT)

Yes, actually. I think this is going to stay. :) ech elon 04:04, 10 July 2006 (CDT)

Yep! I'm positive. Everyone can get back to work. I'll have SQL dump files for everyone tomorrow! :) ech elon 04:59, 10 July 2006 (CDT)

So will the address be changed back to www.strategywiki.net soon? --blendmaster 11:24, 11 July 2006 (CDT)

I don't know what's going on. Technically I've already changed the name servers to point to the new server, yet it's still resolving to Dreamhost. It's been 48 hours since I've done so as well. I'm beginning to suspect that Dreamhost has put in place a long TTL period, and this in turn has resulting in ISPs caching where the domain resolves to. If so, that's really quite the dirty trick... Try http://dnsstuff.com yourself and you'll see everything is properly resolving there. ech elon 14:14, 11 July 2006 (CDT)

Actually, it was my mistake. And a stupid one too. I misspelled 'strategywiki.net' in BIND. At least I hope this is the problem, because if it's really the former then we've got trouble. :( ech elon 14:26, 11 July 2006 (CDT)

Backups

This will be the StrategyWiki backup server address. Currently it contains in the folder "before-move" an XML dump of all revisions prior to our move and a tar.bz2 of all the uploaded images from the same time period. Soon I'll upload an bz2 archive of an SQL dump, and we'll host one for every month. Don't abuse this though, because we don't want to waste bandwidth. (You don't all have to download it today!) If someone wants to start a torrent or something, that may be a good idea. ech elon 11:29, 12 July 2006 (CDT)

Alternate-language versions of StrategyWiki

I've talked with DrBob about setting up alternate language versions of StrategyWiki, so sometime after we relicense I may create ja.strategywiki.net and en.strategywiki.net. I know a bit of Japanese, so I can probably set that up on my own, but would any of you like to start other language versions? I'd like to link the member database between each version so you can sign in with a single account. ech elon 11:31, 12 July 2006 (CDT)

This would be nice, but as I've said before, I'm not good enough with foreign languages yet to consider doing anything other than English. I'd advise we look at how Wikipedia has implemented multi-language stuff to see if we can do it any better. :-) --DrBob (Talk) 12:54, 12 July 2006 (CDT)

Importing Images from Wikipedia: Licensing, Technology

I'd love to get some screenshots from GTA:SA, but it appears the best (only?) way to get screenshots is from a PC game, and I only have the XBox version. I was thinking about importing those posted to Wikipedia.

At first I thought my only "issue" was one of technology; see below. But then I started reading more about the licensing, and it appears that Wikipedia content can't be imported into StrategyWiki. Is that right?

But the screenshots in question aren't owned by Wikipedia, so Wikipedia can't a apply a license to them, can they? The individual image pages indicate that the image is copywritten but they have a case for fair use. We would have the same case, I'd think.

As for the technology...may I create a bot with pywikipedia to automate the uploads? I'm also planning on importing some auto-generated content from the cfg files (vehicle data), so using a bot would be nice. Sympleko 13:12, 12 July 2006 (CDT)

We can import content from Wikipedia as we are technically still GFDL licensed. (I'm considering writing an "Open Media License" as a more broad license alternative to "StrategyWiki Public License".) As for screenshots, I don't think Wikipedia can put those under a license at all since they are fair use. There is nothing "original" in a screenshot unless it is somehow of extrodinary merit (some task that can't normally be accomplished or something). As for using a bot, feel free! Bots are great! :) Let me know when you get it finished, and I'll mark it as a bot. ech elon 14:58, 12 July 2006 (CDT)

IANAL but that was the way I saw it, so I'm glad you agree. What about screenshots from other sites? It seems the same reasoning applies: just because somebody snapped a screenshot and uploaded it doesn't mean they "own" it; the producing company owns it and we can use it as much as the snapper can) to screenshots posted on other web sites. OTOH it would probably be impolite to do so without permission at least. Sympleko 06:12, 13 July 2006 (CDT)

Yeah, get permission, and make sure there are no watermarks. Watermarks make us look bad, kiddies. :-P --DrBob (Talk) 10:54, 13 July 2006 (CDT)

I created the bot account, although I haven't done anything with it, yet. His name is SymplekoBot (yeah, I know, creative). Sympleko 05:30, 14 July 2006 (CDT)

Please make sure the bot waits 5 seconds or more between uploads, so as not to overload the server. If you have the time, could you also make it stop if it senses changes to its talk page? I think some rules on bots are in order... --DrBob (Talk) 10:44, 14 July 2006 (CDT)

You know, Apache went on the fritz yesterday. I was thinking it might've been an attack of some sort, but it might've been SymplekoBot! Please do place limits on how fast any bots access the server. If they work too fast they will crash Apache, and since I'm not around all the time I won't always be here to reset it. (as it is I don't have any cron jobs set up to run an apache -k restart or something.) :P ech elon 10:37, 15 July 2006 (CDT)

If it was SymplekoBot I absolutely apologize. I was playing with it on Friday the 14th. But I hadn't actually succeeded in getting a single change committed (*), let alone programming a massive job. Any access by SymplekoBot was of the debugging nature, intiated by me, one request at at time on the command line. So I hope it wasn't me. Pywikipedia does have some safeguards built in to throttle the speed of access. So if/when it ever works I'll make sure to take it slow. Sympleko 15:19, 17 July 2006 (CDT)

(*) On the subject of my errors, I had some strange ones. It seemed like GET requests to retrieve the editing form for a page were handled just fine but POST requests to commit an edit were returned 404 Not Found. The path in each case was the same, only the request method and parameters changed. Does the server's error log show anything about that?

On the subject of GTA:SA vehicles, I have the PC version and would be glad to take screenshots. Is the style used on Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:GTASA_PC_vehicles_Bullet.jpg) good? -- DrV

I think it would be better to have two separate images for the two different views, and then arrange them on the page as appropriate. --DrBob (Talk) 13:09, 14 July 2006 (CDT)

Yay! I agree with DrBob. Give them a consistent file name and categorize them as...what? Category:Grand Theft Auto Vehicles? Sympleko 15:19, 17 July 2006 (CDT)

I'd go with Category:Grand Theft Auto images and then make sure you include GTA_SA or GTA_VC etc in each image name. That way, all GTA images can be placed in one category. Another option would be to make a category for GTA:SA images specific. I wouldn't go as specific as GTA vehicles though (although there are a lot, so an argument could be made to do that). What does everyone else think?--Duke Ruckley 15:26, 17 July 2006 (CDT)

The current guidelines are to create a "Gamename images" category, and then add other categories to the individual images as appropriate. So a vehicle, for example would be in "Gamename images", "Items" and "Models". I don't think things need to get any more specific than that — people are hardly going to be browsing the images regularly. --DrBob (Talk) 16:02, 17 July 2006 (CDT)

Guide organization

Something I alluded to above...I'd like to add a lot of small pages to the GTA guide. Like, a page for every vehicle, lots of location pages, lots of weapon pages, etc. The page could have some statistics about the thing (like in the case of a car, how fast it goes), where it can be found, what it's good for, what if anything IRL it's based for, etc.

It seems like this format, rather than a small set of long pages, is a little more flexible and conducive to expansion. For instance, if you had trouble finding the pilot's entrance to the airport in Los Santos, and once you found it you wanted to add it to SW, where would you put it? There are no missions which start at LSX, so it doesn't fit on any page under Missions/. It should go on a page about the airport. Likewise, any page that mentions the Jetpack or the Tank should link to a page that details how to get it.

Another thing I was wondering about were the directories in SW URLs. Should we continue to put new pages in a directory below the game name? Some of the pages I'm thinking about creating don't have an existing directory to put them in, so I have to think about where they should "go." If I create new directories, I have to think about updating the navigation template and adding a TOC page. On the other hand, I could just leave all the new articles in the top level, categorize them, and then the category page is the TOC page. If you want an article about a mission and a vehicle with the same name, you can use parentheses after, like they do on Wikipedia.

This kind of organiziation would make the guide read less like a book and more like an encyclopedia. But the nonlinear nature of the game and its illusions of an alternate world seem suited to this structure. I talked a little with Duckruckley about these ideas, and he suggested I bring them up here. I wrote a post but forgot to save it, then the server move...anyway, here it is. Does it make sense? Is it a good idea? Sympleko 13:12, 12 July 2006 (CDT)

Always use sub-pages. It's one of our golden rules. Personally, I'd put (for example) all missions as sub-pages of the Missions sub-page of the GTA guide, and all cars as sub-pages of the Cars sub-page of the GTA guide. Another rule is that no sub-pages are categorised, unless for maintenance purposes (e.g. WIP using the wip template). They should be listed in the ToC, but not categorised. This keeps all the games nice and self-contained. --DrBob (Talk) 13:26, 12 July 2006 (CDT)

The only time I don't recommend a new subpage is when there isn't enough pertinent information to constitute a full page of its own. For example, the Secret of Mana Bestiary. Instead of having a page for each individual enemy (as was originally planned) it is organized so that about eight to ten monsters are on each page. That way there isn't a page with just seven or eight lines of information that looks very empty. Otherwise, subpages all the way. And I love how you called me "Duckruckley", made me laugh :).--Duke Ruckley 13:34, 12 July 2006 (CDT)

OK, it's good to know the rules. I'll use subpages.

Sorry, Duck. Slip of the keyboard, you know. :-) Sympleko 14:01, 12 July 2006 (CDT)

Problem uploading png files?

I have tried to upload several different PNG files, but everytime I try, I get "The file is corrupt or has an incorrect extension. Please check the file and upload again." Many of these PNG files was saved directly from another site in the PNG format, and some were even manipulated and saved as PNGs by me personally (using GIMP 2.2) so I have no reason to believe that every single one is corrupt. Are there any issues with PNGs? Thanks. Procyon 13:24, 12 July 2006 (CDT)

Shouldn't be. Does your internet have connectivity problems? What browser are you using? --DrBob (Talk) 13:27, 12 July 2006 (CDT)

No connectivity problems that I'm aware of, I was able to upload JPGs and GIFs with no problem. I'm using Firefox 1.5.0.4, which I have used to successfully upload PNGs in the past. Procyon 13:43, 12 July 2006 (CDT)

Same here, with firefox, and gimp2.2/inkscape. --blendmaster 13:45, 12 July 2006 (CDT)

If by "same here" you mean it's broken for you too, then we need to wait for echelon. :-) --DrBob (Talk) 13:50, 12 July 2006 (CDT)

That's really odd... Did it work before we changed servers? I'll take a look into uploading. ech elon 15:07, 12 July 2006 (CDT)

Yup. Checkout my image uploads @ 23:58, 5 July 2006. 4 pngs. Procyon 17:33, 12 July 2006 (CDT)

No problem. I don't know if it's related, but there seems to be some problem converting GIFs in to thumbnails, as seen with two GIFs that I use here. Procyon 14:16, 12 July 2006 (CDT)

That's a really weird problem. Clearly the source image exists, but it can't be resized. I'll make sure the GD library is up to date. ech elon 15:07, 12 July 2006 (CDT)

I do have the problem, with all png's giving the "corrupt" error.GIFs upload fine. I'm using firefox 1.5.0.4, gimp-2.2, running on gentoo linux, but if the problem's serverside, then I don't think it matters. --blendmaster 20:03, 12 July 2006 (CDT)

Would you mind saving the image to imageshack or something so that I can experiement with it? ech elon 10:32, 15 July 2006 (CDT)

here it is. Its a icon for the cleanup template. --blendmaster 12:53, 15 July 2006 (CDT)

I am still unable to upload PNGs and I am sort of stalled with my contributions as a result. Should I just switch to GIF format? It does not compress as well, nor does it store as much transparency information. Please advise, thanks!Procyon 10:38, 16 July 2006 (CDT)

No. Just accumulate your images locally, and wait until it's been sorted out. Try and find something else to do (text to write, etc.) in the mean time, and we'll work quickly to try and resolve the problem. :-) --DrBob (Talk) 10:43, 16 July 2006 (CDT)

I am experiencing the same error you guys are when I attempt to upload the PNG image above. ImageMagick is installed in the appropriate place, so I'm not understanding why this is occuring. Going to try reinstalling ImageMagick from source, but I don't know how good that will do. I'm going to ask around about this error to see if someone can enlighten me. ech elon 14:04, 16 July 2006 (CDT)

Failing that, you might want to log the network traffic when uploading an image and see what's happening there. You might also want to put some debug statements into MediaWiki's upload code. :-( --DrBob (Talk) 14:23, 16 July 2006 (CDT)

Took me a good while to debug, but it appears that MimeMagic does not contain png support out of the box for FC4/CentOS--really lame if you ask me. More info here and here. Anyway, it's fixed now! :) ech elon 17:45, 22 July 2006 (CDT)

TOC Categorization Problems

The Header Nav is categorizing subpages accidentally, in certain circumstances. Final Fantasy VII began to have the problem when I included the introduction on the main page. The main page is being used as the Table of Contents page, so the Header Nav is including the categories. I think the best idea would be to always use a Table of Contents page for the Header Nav as opposed to a title page as a convention. What does everyone else think?--Duke Ruckley 14:55, 13 July 2006 (CDT)

To clarify, the problem is mainly that the Table of Contents pages are redirecting to the main page (which has all the categorizations). So when the Header Nav is used on a subpage, it includes the categorization.--Duke Ruckley 15:06, 13 July 2006 (CDT)

Yes, all Header Navs should be referencing a stand-alone Table of Contents page; one which does not redirect to the main page. :-) --DrBob (Talk) 15:08, 13 July 2006 (CDT)

Alright, I think I took care of all of them...--Duke Ruckley 15:44, 13 July 2006 (CDT)

Bad request from redirect

This page used to work but not since the transfer to the new server:

Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas/Appendices/100% Completion Guide

The response is a 400 Bad Request error. The page still exists, though, at the ugly URL:

http://strategywiki.net/w/index.php?title=Grand_Theft_Auto:_San_Andreas/Appendices/100%25_Completion_Guide

What's going on? Sympleko 08:36, 14 July 2006 (CDT)

The server isn't configured properly with regards to the percent (%) in the URL. Wait until echelon gets here and it'll be fixed. :-) It's most likely just a simple problem with a configuration file. --DrBob (Talk) 10:46, 14 July 2006 (CDT)

Unfortunately, there are only two options here as to what to set as the RewriteRule, and neither of them is perfect:

RewriteRule ^wiki/(.*)$ /w/index.php/$1 [L,QSA] (The one we use now)

With this rewrite rule, the string is rewritten as path info. Ampersands can be understood, as they are not special characters. Certain characters such as the percent sign result in a bad request error. (This is how it is at Wikipedia too!)

RewriteRule ^wiki/?(.*)$ /w/index.php?title=$1

Server performance - We may need multiple servers...

We're currently running StrategyWiki on a dedicated server along with the website dsmeet.com. Both of these websites have a large amount of traffic and their databases are equally sizeable (DSmeet is 367.2 MB, StrategyWiki is 416.8 MB). The problem is not with the space we are using, nor do I think it's with Apache. It's not even our server load, which for the most part remains at a constant "1". My initial diagnosis is that the MySQL server is experiencing a deluge by these two highly websites. So my question is what do we do?

Since StrategyWiki has no ads and generates no revenue (nor do I intend it to do so!), DSmeet serves as the primary breadwinner for this project and pays for the server. We make anywhere between $150-$300 a month, and that figure varies a lot (July's check will be nearly $400 when it gets mailed). My intentions have been to change and expand DSmeet into a more useful and profitable website that can sustain growth for both itself and StrategyWiki, but our intended update will not be ready until the end of August. Currently our server bill is about $100/month (you can see specifications here).

I've been planning along with some of our server technicians (technical friends of mine) about our plan to eventually go colocated. Colocated webhosting, for those of you who do not know, is sort of a step up from dedicated rentals. You actually buy and own the server and then pay to have your server connected to a fast pipeline. You can then install whatever hardware you want, and you generally rent by the U size (how large the server is). You can run one or more servers concurrently in this model.

The obvious hurdle here is cost. While colocating itself can probably be found for $100/mo at the low end (which fits our bandwidth needs exactly), we'll still have to purchase the hardware--approximately $2,000 per server for a *good* server (AFAIK). And if we decide to go with two servers (one for apache, one for MySQL), this quickly becomes a costly measure. I don't think we're quite ready for this yet, and we need to wait until the year's end before we make this jump.

I've also looked at the options that Wikipedia suggests, and there may be a possibility that we can install eAccelerator (or Zend Optimizer), Squid Cache, and/or some other software to aid in this problem. The only problem is that I know next to nothing about these yet, and if it turns out that RAM is our problem these won't exactly help us.

I need to check on some things, so I'll be back with more info in just a little while. This situation isn't as dire as I make it out to be, we're just faced with the growing reality of the popularity of our sites. If you have any suggestions about eAccelerator, Squid, etc. please leave your comments! :) ech elon 18:05, 26 July 2006 (CDT)

Squid Cache has just been installed (whew!) and it appears to be running smoothly. I'm not sure if it's optimally configured yet, so bear with me if you experience any interruptions in being able to reach the server. ech elon 02:25, 27 July 2006 (CDT)

Server was down today for approximately six hours! Yikes! The cause seemed to stem from two CPU taxing queries on DSmeet, and we're looking into fixing it. For now, those queries are shut down. ech elon 17:22, 7 August 2006 (CDT)

I turned off Squid cache. I don't think it was helping much... ech elon 09:35, 15 August 2006 (CDT)

Collaboration of the Month / Guide of the Month

July has come up on us, so would anyone like to suggest a Collaboration of the Month or Guide of the Month for the front page? Our collaboration will probably be related to switching from GFDL to SWPL. As for the guide, I'm not sure. What do you guys think? ech elon 19:13, 1 July 2006 (PDT)

My Half-Life walkthrough =D. As for a collaboration, defitenly the SWPL license. --Antaios 20:26, 1 July 2006 (PDT)

The Final Fantasy VII walkthrough seems like a fairly good one as well. It still has a few sections that could use some meat to them and it needs pictures, but it is a decent choice I'd say. Although, Half-Life might be a better choice because we just had an action-RPG, so a different genre might be a good idea.--Dukeruckley 05:01, 3 July 2006 (PDT)

Are there any guides here that are actually done? as in a {{P|3}} or {{P|4}} quality? Because those would make perfect guides of the month. I know StrategyWiki is fairly new, but if we had a guide of the month with a whole bunch of red links, it might make us look bad. Maybe as we are still small, it'd be better to put somthing like a Most Promising Guide, or somthing that suggests its a good guide to edit or somthing. The collaboration of the month still should be the SWPL or Open Media license. --blendmaster 11:52, 13 July 2006 (CDT)

Final Fantasy VII is definitely a {{P|3}} quality guide. There are few (if any, haven't checked all of it) red links and the entire walkthrough is complete save for some minor optional bits of information. I'd recommend it the most I think. A Most Promising Guide would be an idea as well and we can always phase it out when we have some completed guides.--Duke Ruckley 11:55, 13 July 2006 (CDT)

It looks like a good choice, yes, but before it can be listed I really think the front page could be cleared up:

Add an infobox and box artwork
Make the "Materia" and "Equipment" appendices a link to pages
Deal with the "stuff to be merged" section
Make sure it's categorised fully and properly

(Don't know who that ^ was) The problem with Final Fantasy VII is that it doesn't use the shiny new Header Nav or anything fancy like that. Anyway, the main page has been sitting at none at all for a while. Should we just replace it with Most Promising Guide or somthing soon? --blendmaster 17:31, 24 July 2006 (CDT)

I think it was me. *looks innocent* --DrBob (Talk) 17:53, 24 July 2006 (CDT)

Image guidelines

I've finished writing the image guidelines and they're up for comment. If you've got any gripes or suggestions (particularly for things I've missed), please mention them on the talk page for the guidelines. --DrBob (Talk) 12:17, 5 July 2006 (PDT)

Control Images

I notice DrBob has been going around putting up the Needcontrols template on a lot of guides lately, with requests for controls for specific systems. As of posting, the only controller buttons are my gamecube buttons and the only page that uses them (to my knowledge) is the Super Smash Bros. Melee guide. The current buttons are fairly generic, save for the C-stick stuff and the gcube/xbox specific button colors. Because they were meant to be generic, I named them as such, like Control-up.png and A-button.png. If there are to be specific images for systems, they need to be renamed.

Another problem with the current implementation is that inserting images everywhere makes the markup look horrendous, even with the Button template. Just look at the markup for Super Smash Bros. Melee/Basics to see what I mean. If possible, there should be a away to insert buttons without generic image markup, i.e. the bold tag or the link markup in wiki markup. I don't know how easy it is to put features like this into MediaWiki, but as this is a strategy guide wiki, it would be good to put directly in the code, to keep page markup easy to understand.

One more thing: is there really a need for keyboard button images, like spacebar, tab, and WASD? If this wiki had svg support, there could be away to replace the text in an svg file with a certain letter or symbol before rendering it, but its still kind of overkill.

Well, those are my thoughts on the controller buttons. the unrendered SVG ps2 buttons are still here, if anyone wants to comment on them. --blendmaster 19:05, 6 July 2006 (PDT)

I agree that the png buttons are ugly when littered around the page. One thing that might help is a policy to keep pages platform-agnostic when possible--say "shoot" for instance rather than "hit (triangle button image)", then refer to a rosetta page with all the controls for each platform. Then again, melee games really do need to list the button sequence.

I tried making some buttons with Unicode and CSS at Talk:Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas/Basics/Controls. I thought they looked good except for the ABXY buttons, which of course are kind of important. DrBob pointed out that not all browsers support Unicode, and how they choose to do so is up to the browser. That's a good point: If you saw "Hit this sequence of buttons: ? ? ? ? ?" that would be kind of frustrating!

Using SVG buttons would be wicked cool. The technology is only slightly less accessible than simple images -- the plugin is easily installable and has been stable since 2001. We can use alt text in the contents of the embed element, so people who don't have/don't want SVG support can still read the page. Even better, that alt text is HTML so we can use CSS to style that text however we want (but we should still stay way from exotic unicode glyphs). That would give two reasonably good renditions of the page probably better looking than the current one, and preserve machine-readability. So I say go for it.

In terms of aesthetics, I think it's important that buttons be styled to go with the main page text. If you look at a BradyGames guide you will see that that the buttons with letters use the same font as the text, just bold. Using different fonts tends to jar the eye a little bit. Sympleko 06:19, 7 July 2006 (PDT)

I can't see any problem with the PNG buttons or the markup: once sections like that are written, they're unlikely to be changed, and so it shouldn't be much of a trouble. I'm against moving controls to disambiguation pages for each platform for each game, because that means users would have to follow another link to get to what they probably want to find, which slows everything down. I'm also against new markup for buttons, as it makes upgrading MediaWiki hell due to the hassle of porting all the modifications, then fixing the bugs.

I'm all for SVG images. MediaWiki will automatically rasterise them to PNG unless the user has set SVG to be displayed natively in their browser, so that's OK. Using the same font as the text is fine, as it's all the same anyway (and anybody who decides to make another header template containing a custom, stylised page title will be shot). I agree that the control images should be differentiated by platform and renamed; they're not widely used yet anyway, so it won't be much of a hassle to rename them all. --DrBob (Talk) 09:18, 7 July 2006 (PDT)

I'm in full agreement with DrBob. I think SVG images would be a neat idea, but I don't see much of a problem with the current PNG images. I also think that controls need to be game specific and named as such in order to create a consistent convention for when new game systems come out. In the case of Playstation and Playstation 2 (and a few others), an exception can be made because it is the same controller (except for the addition of the analogs).--Dukeruckley 09:50, 7 July 2006 (PDT)

If nobody else objects, this should go ahead. Dukeruckley, do you want to handle it? :-) --DrBob (Talk) 10:16, 7 July 2006 (PDT)

Personally I'd prefer typing in somthing like

.:left-smash:.

(embedded) instead of

[[Image:Gamecube-Control-Left-Smash.png||left]]

(generic), but since I'm not a great coder, I can't have much say in whether an embedded button markup is implemented or not. On SVG vs. PNG, svg images are a lot smaller(in file size), and are better at scaling to different sizes, if say the main control page had big button images, and all other pages had smaller button images. On using the same font as the text, I convert all the text in my buttons to paths, just because different SVG renderers use different default fonts, which makes the buttons look worse.

One thing no one talked about was the keyboard button images. Are they really neccessary? Well, I guess I'll get started on xbox and other console buttons. I'll can upload the gamecube and ps* buttons whenever the naming scheme is set. --blendmaster 16:30, 7 July 2006 (PDT)

I've said already that custom wikimarkup for buttons is not feasible. It makes MediaWiki upgrades a real pain. Honestly. Keyboard images would look nice, and make pages look interesting, but they wouldn't really add much. I'm sitting on the fence about them, really. As for the naming scheme, just use the initials of the system (e.g. "GC", "PS", "DC", "GB", etc.), then an underscore, then the name of the button/stick movement: e.g. "gc_a.png". Make sure to put them in the controller buttons category. --DrBob (Talk) 17:09, 7 July 2006 (PDT)

Well, then, now I just have to wait for SVG support in this wiki, as SVG is still a "not a recommended format". I do have another idea for naming the buttons. If they were named fairly verbosely, as in Gamecube-Control-Left.svg instead of gc_left.svg, but there was a template called {{gc}} then you could add buttons to a page with somthing like {{gc|left}} or {{ps|X}}, while the button images have nicer names. --blendmaster 13:31, 8 July 2006 (PDT)

For the disambiguation of controls on a single per-guide page, I still think that following another link when you don't know the button attached to the verb (people reading the guide will have at least had some experience with the game on their platform already) is less frustrating than having to translate button names from one platform to another. And as pages grow organically, you definitely don't want button names from different platforms on the same page. So to keep the guides clean it seems like the choices are to either list all the platform controls wherever one of them appears (as in "hit A, or ×, or NUM0, or...") or aim to keep them all in one place. Maybe policy is too strong, but it sounds like a good guideline to me. Sympleko 09:18, 9 July 2006 (CDT)

What some guides are doing (which is good) is to have subheadings for each system on the controls page, and listing the system-specific buttons that way. However, for games with too many controls (or fighting games with many hundreds of different moves attached to combinations of buttons), the best way to do it would be to list alternatives for different systems in-situ. --DrBob (Talk) 11:38, 9 July 2006 (CDT)

I agree on both. I think Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas/Basics/Controls and Super Smash Bros. Melee/Basics are good practice, each for their type of game. Sympleko 12:04, 9 July 2006 (CDT)

Okay, now that png support is back up, I can upload the now finished gamecube and ps* control icons. They are named Gamecube-<button or control>-<name or direction>.png and Playstation-<button or control>-<name or direction>.png.The directions are in camelcase with Up and Down first and then Left or Right. por exemplo: Gamecube-Control-DownRight.png. The reason everything starts with a capital, is due to a wierd error I found with the existing Template:Button. If you specify a value as just "left" or "right", it will take that as an float argument, like an image, so if I tried to get an image for Control-right.png, specified like {{Button|Control-right.png|right}} it would automatically float it right. So, my plan this time, is to make templates gc and psx for the gamecube and ps* buttons. The arguments would be for button name/direction and type of name/direction. But, there will be a qif argument for the type of name, so you specify a button just like {{gc|X}} and a direction like {{gc|DownLeft|Control}}, but you wouldn't need to type {{gc|X|Button}}.

Well, I need to upload them now. I'll start with the gamecube ones and do the ps* ones later. they are all 24x24px, which I found is a happy medium between fitting in with the text and being pretty. I will also make the gc and psx templates. Admins, don't delete the old generic buttons and the button template yet, because then Super Smash Bros. Melee/Basics will break. xbox and n64 buttons are next. --blendmaster 14:02, 24 July 2006 (CDT)

Super Smash Bros. Melee/Basics has been migrated. Looks pretty cool, huh? --blendmaster 17:39, 24 July 2006 (CDT)

Schweet. :-) --DrBob (Talk) 17:54, 24 July 2006 (CDT)

Awesome, now just give me the PS control images for Biohazard and I'll be twice as happy. :p --Antaios 18:54, 24 July 2006 (CDT)

w00t. --blendmaster 11:46, 25 July 2006 (CDT)

Thanks, blendmaster!. Looking forward to the xbox ones. Sympleko 12:50, 25 July 2006 (CDT)

Looks great mate, keep it up! :) --Antaios 12:48, 25 July 2006 (CDT)

Awesome job blend. Just out of curiosity, would you have any plans to do icons for a generic arcade joystick? (You know, black stick, red top... something along those lines.) I could really use those for games like Street Fighter II. And I uploaded the punch and kick icons that Capcom used, but they're pretty low quality and could probably use replacement as well... (shoot, forgot to sign) Procyon 20:43, 25 July 2006 (CDT)

Problem solved, I replaced them with higher quality buttons. Procyon 00:52, 6 September 2006 (CDT)

Hmm, good question. I guess I'll just have to make some shiny svg versions of those. If you see any color highquality ones you like, or even a shot of the buttons on an arcade cabinet or somthing, show me them, And I'll do my best. --blendmaster 22:03, 25 July 2006 (CDT)

Ok xbox and 360 buttons are up. I know the analog stick images are just recolors of the ps2 ones, but that was the best way to make them look nice and still be understandable. They are colored after the xbox360 controller, but they can be used for xbox too, as I included both the xbo360 left and right "bumpers" as well as the white and black buttons. One problem with it at the moment is that MediaWiki randomly decided one of the images is corrupted, even though it was made the same way every other button is. Xbox-Rstick-Down.png is perfectly fine with imageshack yet MediaWiki wont render it. I've uploaded it several times, rasterized with different programs like the gimp and it still doesn't display, Which leads me to believe there's something wierd about the name of the image. This has happened before too. Well, besides that enjoy the buttons. --blendmaster 15:28, 27 July 2006 (CDT)

The thing these two buttons have in common is the /a/ad/ directory structure. So it seems something's stuffed up there. I tried deleting it completely in an attempt to end up in another directory but the new version still went to /a/ad/. Garrett^Talk 01:37, 31 July 2006 (CDT)

Has any work been done on DS button images? The NSMB article currently only has 1 image, the box art and it looks rather bland. Just wondering. --RovingRoflguy 16:06, 27 July 2006 (AEST)

Not as far as I know. blendmaster will probably get round to them soon; he's on a roll at the moment (correct me if I'm wrong). ;-) --DrBob (Talk) 11:24, 31 July 2006 (CDT)

Ds buttons are up. Sorry it took so long. Oblivion=awsome. --blendmaster 12:48, 8 August 2006 (CDT)

Those are great! Done in black and with a few additional buttons they could cover GB/GBA and all Sega systems other than the Dreamcast, so maybe that could be your next project. Garrett^Talk 19:05, 8 August 2006 (CDT)

I'm not sure myself whether PC keyboard images would be useful, but if anything, images of a mouse with various buttons highlighted and ones with arrows indicating movement of the mouse or the wheel in different directions would certainly be nice. DrV 10:37, 8 August 2006 (CDT)

That's a really good point. I'd say we could do PC images by making some general keyboard button images and having the template put the appropriate text on top of them, with perhaps proper images for special buttons like the arrow keys and enter. I'd definitely be for mouse images; they'd be useful. :-) --DrBob (Talk) 11:02, 8 August 2006 (CDT)

Yeah, those would be good. I'll have to make some of those. One way to do the keyboard images would be to have just a base keyboard blank, and use it for a background for a span with centered text, and just replace the text one top of it. It wouldn't look as nice as svg text, but it would require a lot less images. That system would still probably require special spacebar, capslock, and other nonstandard size keys to have their own special image. --blendmaster 12:48, 8 August 2006 (CDT)

Actually, somthing i just thought of for the non standard keyboard buttons, is if you had a image of the leftmost side of the key as an image, and a extremely long right side image of the key as the background, then, the background would slide out however much to cover the entire text. --blendmaster 12:52, 8 August 2006 (CDT)

If you feel a fluid CSS approach is required, I'll knock something together once you've got some images done. It would have the central part repeating, as opposed to being really long (so you could just make it 1px wide ;-) ). --DrBob (Talk) 12:56, 8 August 2006 (CDT)

I uploaded a standard looking keycap here, so if you want too chop it up and work your css magic, go ahead. I still need to work on a way to represent mouse stuff in 24 pixels or less. --blendmaster 15:48, 15 August 2006 (CDT)

Here are NES and SNES control images. I'll get gb* stuff up soon too, because they are pretty much just a recolor of the nes ones. --blendmaster 15:48, 15 August 2006 (CDT)

Cool blend, awesome job. I could finally correct the Legend of Zelda controls thanks to you. Any luck with the Street Fighter II controls? Procyon 16:05, 15 August 2006 (CDT)

For street fighter, all you need is fairly generic directions, maybe with an arcade joystick in the image, a punch and a kick, right? Also, do you know of any other special arcade fighting games that have other special buttons, like a throw or grab button? I'd like to put them all under a {{arcade}} template with joystick directions, the most common special action buttons(kick/punch/throw), and a whole bunch of generic colored buttons. So if you know of any other fighting game controls, or significant special arcade controls, let me know. I'll start on the joystick and fighting buttons. --blendmaster 16:57, 15 August 2006 (CDT)

I'll break it all down for you in your talk, cuz I'd love to help you with this. Procyon 17:47, 15 August 2006 (CDT)

Great! A couple of thoughts, though; the directions are white while the neutral Dpad is black, and for the SNES you've got an X instead of a Y. Otherwise an excellent job. :) Garrett^Talk 16:10, 15 August 2006 (CDT)

The Neutral one is supposed to look nicer, while the directions are outlines so you can tell what they are better. I suppose I could change them to the same color, like the ds ones, with a different arrow thing. I'll do that. I also fixed the snes x and y buttons. I didn't rasterize the right svgs. --blendmaster 16:38, 15 August 2006 (CDT)

Okay, all the dpads look like the ds ones now. --blendmaster 16:57, 15 August 2006 (CDT)

Great job! :-D --DrBob (Talk) 16:29, 15 August 2006 (CDT)

Yeah pretty much just a recolor. The Gameboy micro buttons may not be the most representative of the gameboy line, but they sure do look nice. And i guess i'll change the dpad here too, because its also the same. --blendmaster 16:38, 15 August 2006 (CDT)

New Namespace?

I've been thinking about the possible problems with the "game index" we have at Special:Allpages and Special:Allpages/C. Using these two search methods to find the title you are looking for is confusing, since all subpages of guides are listed first. What if we create a new namespace (hence it would be searchable) called "GameInxex" and create pages that correspond to the index pages for the guides themselves. Examples would be GameIndex:The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time and GameIndex:Half-Life. Using this method, we can create a full, easy to search index of all the titles that exist in our wiki. Thoughts? I may make a demo to see what you think. ech elon 17:55, 22 July 2006 (CDT)

Here's a demonstration. Compare with the main index. ech elon 18:05, 22 July 2006 (CDT)

That would be good. I can't see any negatives to it, unless you specifically need to search for a subpage. --blendmaster 22:10, 22 July 2006 (CDT)

Nice, but does it have to have such an ugly name? Why not "Game index" (similar to "User talk")? --DrBob (Talk) 01:38, 23 July 2006 (CDT)

I was thinking in camel case because I'm a programmer :P If you think "Game_index" is superior asthetically to "GameIndex", I'll change it. ech elon 01:06, 24 July 2006 (CDT)

I do, because when it's displayed as text on a page, it won't have the underscore. ;-) --DrBob (Talk) 04:02, 24 July 2006 (CDT)

Renamed! Also, I just created the Portal: namespace Mason's request on my talk page. ech elon 06:16, 27 July 2006 (CDT)

Why have both? I would think the portal namespace would be better for both purposes. (It's more standardised with other sites such as Wikipedia.) :-) --DrBob (Talk) 08:51, 27 July 2006 (CDT)

But wouldn't a "portal" for every single game be overkill? I was thinking portals would be limited to Zelda, Final Fantasy, Dragon Quest and the like. If the portals concept is used for every game, wouldn't it lead to redundancy? People may put content in the portal that should go in the guide. ech elon 08:55, 27 July 2006 (CDT)

Sorry, my mistake. I thought they were both doing the same job, but now I see the distinction. Ignore me please. :-P --DrBob (Talk) 15:00, 28 July 2006 (CDT)

I don't see a lot of use of the gameindex feature outside of the search (In which case every guide made should just have a redirect from that namespace). The Portal namespace should just be for getting a group together to work on a set of guides. Either a series, or even a console. I imagine there will be some kind of portal hierarchy here as developed at wikipedia. With a portal dedicated to, the Halo games for example. Portal:Halo would be a kind of "child portal" to Portal:Xbox. Basically a way to discuss the guide as a whole and easily discuss organization issues or drives to improve portions of the games in general. Also a Portal could also be the place were people can simply talk about the game or whatever, since the talk pages for the guide are for talking about the guide, but that's just something minor. -- Mason11987 ^{(Talk - Contributions)} 09:53, 27 July 2006 (CDT)

ImageMap Extension

I think the ImageMap Extension could be useful. However I think the coords should instead be retrieved from a normal page using the "raw" action (ala CSS/JS). This would allow diffs and the like to be used, and it would be much simpler than using the upload form and worrying about tracking down misnamed unused map files and all that. It might need tweaking later on when SVG is working, but for now I think this is the only change it needs. Garrett^Talk 01:46, 23 July 2006 (CDT)

Looks good, but it is a MediaWiki 1.5 extension, and we're on MediaWiki 1.7, so I don't know how compatible it'll be. --DrBob (Talk) 01:49, 23 July 2006 (CDT)

I love the possibilities of this extension. I'll see if I can manage to get it to work with a reasonable level of compatibility. ech elon 01:16, 24 July 2006 (CDT)

Error: Must specify an image in the first line.

Here you go. :) ech elon

This is interesting! ech elon 08:47, 27 July 2006 (CDT)

That is awesome...wow...very very very cool. I'm going to have to try to steal that. :-D. This may be one of the most overall useful changes this site has received in quite some time. -- Mason11987 ^{(Talk - Contributions)} 09:48, 27 July 2006 (CDT)

Cool, but I don't think it's that useful. At least not the most overall useful. It just seems kind of like an excuse to put more images in a guide. I guess it would be sorta useful in a game like Oblivion to include a imagemap of the ingame map in the table of contents, but "overall useful", no. --blendmaster 14:55, 27 July 2006 (CDT)

Yeah, it's more "cool" than useful. I don't think we should ever use the extension exclusively either--more of a supplement to other content. I may create a maps section of the Ocarina of Time guide. ech elon 16:40, 27 July 2006 (CDT)

Bah on both of you. I think it's cool, and it's original and is very unique for a wiki, you don't see image maps on guides very often, and the ones that you do see it on (some IGN ones) work very well for a TOC sometimes. It seems very intuitive and while saying it is the most useful is overkill, there havne't been a lot of distictive additions to this site that you don't see many other places. But thanks for killing my excitement :). -- Mason11987 ^{(Talk - Contributions)} 01:43, 29 July 2006 (CDT)

There is a problem with this, and that is that images used in this fashion are listed in the unused files list, and are likely to get deleted by a dozy sysop. (I just managed to delete the example Echelon previously posted above.) --DrBob (Talk) 13:32, 11 August 2006 (CDT)

Well, there's two ways to correct this: the one way is to rework the extension as I suuggested above (the images themselves should also be retrieved this way), and the other is to manually include Image: links tagged with display:none. I tried to make a template to automate this but for some reason it didn't work. Garrett^Talk 17:01, 11 August 2006 (CDT)

I was thinking something along those lines. If echelon'll let me at the code, I'll give it a go sometime. (It's going on my todo list, anyway.) --DrBob (Talk) 04:18, 12 August 2006 (CDT)

Making a series overview

I've been doing work on the Adventures of Lolo 2 (Japanese) guide and it's nearly done (98% in fact). My next planned project was to do an overview for the whole Eggerland/Lolo series which lists instructions, info on monsters, gameplay tricks, etc. I was thinking of simply creating an article called "Eggerland series", but was uncertain if that would be the way to go. I chose Eggerland as that was the original name of the games in the series. Just wondering what I should do. Also, is it acceptable to use art from the manuals? --Sivak 00:22, 24 July 2006 (CDT)

Is it okay to create an overview? Absolutely! I think that's an excellent idea. But we do need some kind of disambiguation method. Perhaps Eggerland_(overview) is a good method of doing this? I am not certain. We should get lots of opinion as to what the appropriate method should be, because once we settle on a standard we'll have to stick with it. My main concern is making sure that disambiguations and overviews remain easily accessible and placed in standard locations. If we create a Zelda overview, where should it go? Zelda is taken for disambiguation purposes, and it's best not to crowd it with overview data too. Zelda_(overview)?

As for manual art/scans, absolutely! Fair use! :) ech elon 01:11, 24 July 2006 (CDT)

I think the best thing to do would be to create a series category (similar to Zelda) and a series page (similar to Zelda) which itself would redirect to the series category, but then put overview information on sub-pages of the series page, and link to it from both the appropriate guides, and a ToC in the series category. That'll keep it all nice and self-contained, and avoid polluting the place with all sorts of bracketed names. :-) This should also be done for series such as Nintendo's Mario (etc.) games – which share characters like there's no tomorrow – and Zelda. --DrBob (Talk) 04:05, 24 July 2006 (CDT)

Mason recommended I create the "Portal" namespace, so I recommend you do two things:

Create Portal:Eggerland and store common info there.
Create Eggerland as a disambiguation.

I think that'll work nicely. ech elon 06:17, 27 July 2006 (CDT)

I actually went ahead and started this. I figured I'd break the ice sooner or later. What I've done is created Eggerland as the name and put in some content. Naturally, not everything is done yet, but it's a start. I was hoping to get some opinions. --Sivak 01:15, 29 July 2006 (CDT)

What is a spoiler?

Spoiler warning! This section of the article contains spoilers, or hints about the game's storyline or progression.

You might want to skip down to the next heading if you do not want facts about the game's storyline or plot revealed to you.

So does that mean that locations of pickups and things aren't spoilers? I'm going through the list of items and there are lots of tips like "You can find this here...." or "You get this after you complete this mission...." These all give away game information, just not parts of the story. At some point users have to accept that they're coming to this site to get game information. I'm just looking for some guidance on what's too much spoiling. Right now through my own fault there are two item pages, one without location info and one with. I guess I should merge them, but I'm debating whether a spoiler-free list is useful, too. Sympleko 12:16, 24 July 2006 (CDT)

I wouldn't classify the locations of items as spoilers. What I personally would call a spoiler would be telling the ending of the plot (if it's not obvious) before the end of the walkthrough. At the end of the walkthrough (i.e. in the logical place) and if it's appropriate, telling the end of the plot would not be a spoiler. Anywhere else, however, it would. --DrBob (Talk) 16:19, 24 July 2006 (CDT)

Renaming images

Should I create a template that adds a category to images or pages that need to be renamed? I'm thinking that there shouldn't be any text that shows up on the page, just a category for maintenance purposes. There are a bunch of images that should be renamed at some point because of ambiguity and I think if we place them in a category it'll make it easier later (unless I'm missing something already there for this purpose). Images especially need it because they cannot simply be moved and renamed, they have to be re-uploaded which requires downloading the original image.--Duke Ruckley 14:51, 24 July 2006 (CDT)

I was thinking of doing such a template myself actually. By all means go ahead and make one. :-) Make it include the pages in Category:Pages needing renaming. --DrBob (Talk) 16:21, 24 July 2006 (CDT)

Problem (again) with the infobox

http://strategywiki.net/wiki/Final_Fantasy_VII

View that page on monobook and understand my dillema, we'll have to make sure this works on all skins before we apply something like that. -- Mason11987 ^{(Talk - Contributions)} 02:18, 27 July 2006 (CDT)

Individual pages for individual developers?

I've noticed that in a couple of a games, only a couple of people or sometimes one person created the game, and I wasn't sure if I should create a separate page for that person. A good example is the list of developers on the Star Sonata page. Should we create separate pages for each developer or no? --Antaios 19:07, 27 July 2006 (CDT)

Personally, I don't think we should. Maybe a link to their wikipedia article, but there's no need to include info on lots of different developers in a strategy guide. If you do however, it should just be a short bio with links to the guides of the games they've created. --blendmaster 21:28, 27 July 2006 (CDT)

Creating a page for each programmer is overkill, so I suggest we stick with creating pages only for companies themselves. On another note entirely: Look at the Star Sonata homepage! They're linking directly to SW now. That's pretty cool! :) ech elon

That is cool. Maybe for branding purposes you should ask them to make sure the link text says "StrategyWiki" in it. Sympleko 08:26, 28 July 2006 (CDT)

Abandon Relicensing for Now?

I keep imagining the legal hurdles that will face us if we try to design our own license, and it is beginning to make me wary of designing the Open Media License at this point in time. Even in running a draft of the OML past debian-legal, we probably would want a lengthy review period in order to ensure that it is legally sound and does everything we want. All of this takes a lot of time, which does nothing to speed up the progression of StrategyWiki. (Which I have mistakenly been putting off in trying to complete this license.)

In addition to this, the problems with actually relicensing our content itself is a nightmare. Sure, most our contributions are from a core group, but there have been a lot of edits made by transient editors as well. That's to say nothing of the content we've gotten from Wikibooks! One of the editors there has pointed out a big issue--keeping two different types of licensed content on the same wiki and adhering to the GFDL license for Wikibooks content will be extrodinarily difficult. Someone could mistakenly copy GFDL content from Wikibooks around StrategyWiki without knowing about the consequences thereof, thus causing us a lot of licensing problems. Especially if we don't find out about it until the abuse has spread beyond our control.

I suggest we wait to write the Open Media License once StrategyWiki has actually grown. And when we do this, I suggest we have TWO wikis--one being specific to the Open Media project--until all of our guides are under the OML in order that there will be no license contamination. Perhaps a setup such as open.strategywiki.org, and this present GFDL URL.

In closing, I think we should abandon our hopes to relicense the wiki under the Open Media License for now. We should remain GFDL and focus on the growth and expansion of our StrategyWiki project first and foremost, as I think it is the best possible thing we can do for the time being. Regardless of the problems associated with the GFDL, what is the bigger problem? Having a large GFDL wiki full of completed strategy guides or having a small wiki with only a few half-completed Open Media License guides?

What do you say to this proposal? If we do this now, I say we go ahead and get rid of all the GFDL templates, SWPL templates, and SWPL licenses. ech elon 22:05, 31 July 2006 (CDT)

Despite the fact I've only been here for 4 days, seeing that template everywhere and not being able to do anything about it is somewhat annoying. Therefore, I say yes. Postpone the legal stuff. --RovingRoflguy 14:50, 1 August 2006 (AEST)

OK. It does seem to make more sense. I can't see much point in keeping the templates in place, due to the fact that when we do eventually relicense, everything will have changed. Hopefully we'll be able to do it better then. :-) --DrBob (Talk) 05:27, 2 August 2006 (CDT)

As discussed on IRC, yes I also agree with this. Garrett^Talk 16:24, 2 August 2006 (CDT)

Done. The GFDL template is now depreciated. ech elon 18:12, 2 August 2006 (CDT)

So now that its postponed, when is it going to be finalized, especially if echelon wants to release his gamespot/ign open media site by the time the tokyo game show gets here. Thats in about 2-3 months, right?--blendmaster 09:58, 3 August 2006 (CDT)

I think we can hold off the Open Media License for much, much longer. Our concern is with growing the wiki now. As for the website we're building, that should be done in time for the Tokyo Game Show. I'll try to give you all an early preview of it. :) ech elon 14:34, 3 August 2006 (CDT)

Yeah, we probably shouldn't worry about it too much for now. As long as we have a general GNU license, we should be fine. EDIT: Never mind, I didn't notice it was already deprecated. --Antaios 15:42, 3 August 2006 (CDT)

Rename the license?

I don't like "StrategyWiki Public License", for several reasons. First, "Public" is unnecessary and might make people think there's some connection with the GNU GPL; also including our name is a mistake. As echelon said, "Imagine if all wikis used a single license and it made copying possible between all wikis. Wouldn't that be awesome?" Yes it would, but I can't imagine other sites would be particularly keen on using a license that so openly belongs to another site. Dropping the Public and removing our name from it are primary goals if we want anyone but us to ever use this. Garrett^Talk 04:39, 2 July 2006 (PDT)

So you'd have it called "License" then? :-P I agree with you here, and I think now is the time to change the name if ever, before it gets too complex. --DrBob (Talk) 04:52, 2 July 2006 (PDT)

Guys, check out the suggestions in User:Echelon/Open Media! Leave comments on the talk page there. ech elon 23:53, 5 July 2006 (PDT)

Open Media License

I wanted to involve everyone in writing and commenting on the "Open Media License" that I am drawing up. (I think it may be a better alternative to "StrategyWiki Public License".) You can see it here. If you wouldn't mind taking a look over it, making notes of your thoughts and ideas for improvement, and even working on it, that would be excellent. I want to slim it down quite a bit so it's a small license. Once we have a more polished and refined version, I want to show it off to Debian-legal and ask for their assistance in making this thing real. We'll of course want it to conform to all of their standards, as I generally agree with Debian-legal on most licensing issues. ech elon 01:32, 22 July 2006 (CDT)

Cutscene transcripts

Some of the pages (e.g., Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas/Big Smoke) have verbatim transcripts of the cutscenes included. Besides being formatted like a screenplay (way too much space for a web page IMO), this seems like a copyvio to me. Should it go? Sympleko 07:12, 26 July 2006 (CDT)

Ya, it should go. It is completely unnecessary and is not useful to the user of the website anyway. It doesn't give any hints or tips on how to play the game at all. Plus, it just doesn't look very good.--Duke Ruckley 07:55, 26 July 2006 (CDT)

I agree on all counts. Can somebody delete Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas/In the beginning/Cutscene then? It's all transcript. I already orphaned the page. Sympleko 11:59, 26 July 2006 (CDT)

Done :) --Duke Ruckley 12:18, 26 July 2006 (CDT)

You'll also want to see what links to the cutscene templates, do what's necessary with those pages, and then delete the templates themselves. (Danged dialup. :-( ) --DrBob (Talk) 13:40, 26 July 2006 (CDT)

Done, there was just one page that linked to the two templates in use, and I deleted it and the templates.--Duke Ruckley 13:49, 26 July 2006 (CDT)

Thanks for finishing what I started. Seems like it was only two pages. Sympleko 08:24, 28 July 2006 (CDT)

Image upload warning

I'm going through categorising all the images, and it's a pain. I have a horrible feeling that people are going to continue to upload uncategorised images, so why not put some Javascript on the image upload form which checks for a category link, and pops up a message box chiding the user if the output of ((form_contents.indexOf("[[Category")==-1)) || (form_contents.indexOf("[[category")==-1))) is true. --DrBob (Talk) 06:43, 2 July 2006 (PDT)

I suggest looking into the uncategorized images page sporewiki has set up and have that installed. But if this code gets put it, If you could explain how it's done, then that'd be appreciated echelon, thanks :). -- Mason11987 ^{(Talk - Contributions)} 16:42, 2 July 2006 (PDT)

I think we should do both. :-P The message on form submission to stop more uncategorised images being uploaded, and the uncategorised images page to help deal with the ones which have already been uploaded. Looks quite simple to install the uncategorised images page, and thanks must go to MediaWiki (and SporeWiki) for it. :-D --DrBob (Talk) 23:00, 2 July 2006 (PDT)

Both have been done. --DrBob (Talk) 06:15, 23 October 2006 (CDT)

Display bug with IE

I've been noticing this and felt I should bring it up. It seems the Header Nav template is causing it too. Anyway, if you look at a page in IE that has that template, it seems it is too wide and it causes the text under it to be sort of "cut off" by the table. Any text following the headers (the 2 equal signs on either side) is okay. I'm surprised this hasn't been addressed. --Sivak 14:18, 25 July 2006 (CDT)

"Cut off" by which table? I've just looked at Counter-Strike: Source in IE7 beta 2 and the Header Nav is too wide, but I'm getting no other problems with it. Could you perhaps link to a screenshot (or upload one as long as you promise to have it deleted afterwards :-P )? --DrBob (Talk) 14:29, 25 July 2006 (CDT)

I checked using IE6 on the EarthBound main page and I think he's talking about this: click here to see image--Duke Ruckley 14:54, 25 July 2006 (CDT)

Yeah, same here as dukeruckley. It seems the left edge of the main content has negative padding or something. But, it only happens on pages that have the Header Nav on them, as far as I checked. I looked at an ealier revision of EarthBound without the Header Nav, and it looked fine.--blendmaster 22:09, 25 July 2006 (CDT)

Ah. Are you sure this only happens on pages using Header Nav? I'll look into it later, but it's probably a symptom of one of IE's box model problems. :-( --DrBob (Talk) 15:01, 25 July 2006 (CDT)

Why can't everyone just get Firefox? :p --Antaios 14:59, 25 July 2006 (CDT)

If only. However, we do have to support everyone. :-( --DrBob (Talk) 15:01, 25 July 2006 (CDT)

I put a screenshot of my own. It seems maybe the images on the left which make up the menu are overlapping somehow. Check the area I put a red box over. It gets "uncut" after a short way down. click here to see image --Sivak 09:42, 27 July 2006 (CDT)

I think you're probably right. I checked the same pages uses Monobook and there is no problem there, so it might be the skin itself.--Duke Ruckley 09:46, 27 July 2006 (CDT)

That's partly it (the top is a JPEG while the rest is a GIF) but that still doesn't explain IE drawing it too far to the left. Garrett^Talk 22:52, 27 July 2006 (CDT)

I notice that all these comments are from several months ago, but I just starting using strategywiki and I am having the same "cut off" effect. I can't change browsers because I use public access computers, and many of the computer settings cannot be changed (someone suggested that everyone use firefox, that's not an option for me). This cut off effect appears on almost every page I view in strategywiki, and just as described earlier it seems to cut off the leftmost part of the text at the beginning of each article, but further down the text appears fine. New User 03:30, 25 October 2006 (CDT)

I do need to get around to fixing this, but I think I actually deleted the screenshot of the problem that somebody contributed before. Would you mind screenshotting the problem and uploading it here, making sure to put {{delete|For demonstrative purposes.}} in the image description? Thanks. --DrBob (Talk) 07:06, 27 October 2006 (CDT)

I can't take a screenshot because I am using a public access computer. I am in a library, using the computer provided for patrons of the library. I am limited in the choices of programs I can run on this computer, and uploading files is not allowed. I can only describe the way it appears... it looks like this image has an area to the right of the blue borderline which is white, and that white mass of pixels is covering up a small part of the article's text. Further down the page, below the area where this image appears as part of the border/background, the text appears as it should. I hope that helps. New User 05:31, 30 October 2006 (CST)

I've taken a screenshot of the bug and uploaded it here. --aniki21 05:39, 30 October 2006 (CST)

Thanks. :-) I've taken a look, and -- without testing anything (hopefully this'll work) -- I've come up with something. New User, could you add the following to your user CSS?

#centrecontent
{
margin-left: -7px;
}

--DrBob (Talk) 11:17, 30 October 2006 (CST)

I pasted that into the css, and it didn't change anything. New User 02:31, 31 October 2006 (CST)

Did you do a hard refresh? (Ctrl+F5 on Windows). Garrett^Talk 03:14, 31 October 2006 (CST)

Yes. In fact, I am using a different terminal now and it still looks the same. New User 06:29, 31 October 2006 (CST)

You missed the capitalization. It has to be BlueCloud.css. -- Prod (Talk) 08:36, 31 October 2006 (CST)

I see. I didn't capitalize because when editing the page BlueCloud.css, a warning appears that says not to capitalize. Now, I have pasted the above in both css and still no change in the appearance of the articles. New User 03:11, 1 November 2006 (CST)

Should be fixed now. :-) --DrBob (Talk) 13:16, 1 November 2006 (CST)

I just noticed another display bug. It looks like on articles with a particularly large Header Nav template (that is, if the template is filled with custom links), the text of the links in the Header Nave overlaps with the [show]/[hide] switch in the right-hand corner. I have only seen this on this page, because I haven't seen another article yet with such a full Header Nav template. New User 03:39, 1 November 2006 (CST)

That one isn't only on IE, it's on any browser i think. Just resize your window and it will overlap. -- Prod (Talk) 09:03, 1 November 2006 (CST)

Fixed. :-) --DrBob (Talk) 16:06, 1 November 2006 (CST)

2006	2007	2008
January	January	January
February	February	February
March	March	March
April	April	April
May	May	May
June	June	June
July	July	July
August	August	August
September	September	September
October	October	October
November	November	November
December	December	December