User talk:Echelon/Archives/1

No contract; limited license

Hiya Ech, I whipped up a nice disclamer using Wikipedia's one. Seems nice, let me know what you think (and sorry for using up space on your talk page):

Please make sure that you understand that the information provided here is being provided freely, and that no kind of agreement or contract is created between you and the owners or users of this site, the owners of the servers upon which it is housed, the individual StrategyWiki contributors, any project administrators, sysops or anyone else who is in any way connected with this project or sister projects subject to your claims against them directly. You are being granted a limited license to copy anything from this site; it does not create or imply any contractual or extracontractual liability on the part of StrategyWiki or any of its agents, members, organizers or other users.

There is no agreement or understanding between you and StrategyWiki regarding your use or modification of this information beyond the GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL); neither is anyone at StrategyWiki responsible should someone change, edit, modify or remove any information that you may post on StrategyWiki.

Trademarks

Any of the trademarks, service marks, collective marks, design rights, personality rights or similar rights that are mentioned, used or cited in the articles of the StrategyWiki website are the property of their respective owners. Their use here does not imply that you may use them for any other purpose other than for the same or a similar informational use as contemplated by the original authors of these StrategyWiki articles under the GFDL licensing scheme. Unless otherwise stated StrategyWiki is neither endorsed nor affiliated with any of the holders of any such rights and as such StrategyWiki can not grant any rights to use any otherwise protected materials. Your use of any such or similar incorporeal property is at your own risk.

--Tapo 21:43, 7 January 2006 (EST)

Lookgs great Tapo! I like that a lot! We'll probably need an agreement like this in the future... --Echelon 19:38, 7 January 2006 (PST)

Hey Ech. I made a few changes after you went to bed.

On the Main Page I lifted up the categories a bit and seperated out the main welcome message from the mission statement.

I added a little more to the Help:Contents page that should enable more people to get up and running if they're unfamiliar with wikis. I also created a sandbox for people to mess around in.

I created a quick index and linked to it from the main page, below the system categories.

Let me know what ya think. --Doozer 00:25, 7 January 2006 (PST)

Very, very nice work, Doozer! I'm especially happy with the Help:Contents! Everything on the front page looks much nicer, too! Great job! --Echelon 11:49, 7 January 2006 (PST)

GNU License and copying from Wikibooks

I have uploaded the GNU Free Documentation License to Strategy Wiki - it needs to be closed to editing. I was also wondering about the disclaimer at the bottom of the Main Page, I have been moving a Wikibook (Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas) and all of it's content is freely distributed as long as it's linked to original, mentions FDL, etc. - all of which are adhered to on the first page. Is this okay or should I stop moving pages? There doesn't seem to be any legal issue or is there another reason? Jackhynes 09:23, 11 January 2006 (PST)

I think we will be fine in moving this, but I'm going to need to make a template to denote articles that came from Wikibooks. I was just pointed out to this issue last night, but I think using other GFDL content will help this wiki in its initial growing phase. --Echelon 11:44, 11 January 2006 (PST)

GamerWiki

Hi, Echelon, I just wondered if you had seen GamerWiki, another type of gaming wiki? StrategyWiki is an excellent resource, keep it going. -- Tyagi 05:25, 21 January 2006 (PST)

• Tyagi, looks nice. I suppose we'll both be growing quite a lot throughout the year. Best of luck with GamerWiki! :) --Echelon 21:54, 21 January 2006 (PST)

Thanks. We do need additional contributors to keep the flow of new information in to GamerWiki. If StrategyWiki would like to collaborate on anything, or would like to direct link to our information on hardware or software information, that would be great. It may allow you guys to concentrate on the guides aspect rather than other areas such as hardware specs/details/rumours and game reviews/release info etc. -- Tyagi 00:15, 11 February 2006 (PST)

You asked for my AIM

AIM misbeliever01

E-Mail xfollowtehreaper@hotmail

i made the nintendo, sony, etc company pages

My contact details

Sure, you can reach me at [1]. Garrett^Talk 00:34, 7 February 2006 (PST)

MediaWiki 1.6

There is a newer version of MediaWiki. We have recently upgraded to this version at SporeWiki because of the default values for templates option which may or may not be really useful here, I'm not active enough to know. But with that option a kind of "if" template could be made that would allow a template to have information if a certain value is given, if it isn't, the template wouldn't have that info. I'm not sure if that's useful to you or anyone here, but it was useful to us, and was definitly worth the upgrade, plus, there are a host of other features in the upgrade. I'd recommend checking it out :). -- Mason11987 ^{(Talk - Contributions)} 16:34, 4 May 2006 (PDT)

Nice, thanks for the heads up Mason! An <if> construct would make working with templates so much easier! --echelon ^talk 18:52, 4 May 2006 (PDT)

Cool, I took the qif template code from wikipedia to put it on sporewiki, and I could integrate it into some of your templates here until people get a grasp of how it works (it is fairly strange until you look into it quite a bit).  :) -- Mason11987 ^{(Talk - Contributions)} 08:32, 8 May 2006 (PDT)

Intro Pages on Guides

You kind of look like you're in charge, so here goes. It looks like the vote on ditching the intro pages has come out unanimous, I was wondering if we could have an official decision rendered or just figure out who and how to redo the layouts.--BigCow 17:23, 25 May 2006 (PDT)

Yeah, we're going to fully ditch those. I have something of a plan that I've been discussing with Garrett that I hope to implement soon. I'll try to make a presentation this weekend. echelon 22:22, 25 May 2006 (PDT)

Pages to delete

As a result of many hours of hard work, I've collected quite a number of pages which need deleting. They've all been marked with the delete template, and are in requests for deletion, so could you go through them all and (hopefully) delete them all please Echelon? Thanks. :) --DrBob 13:25, 28 May 2006 (PDT)

Taken care of! Thanks for tagging them, that must've been quite a task! :) echelon 14:20, 28 May 2006 (PDT)

Thanks for that. I went through the entirity of Special:Wantedpages (roughly 2500 pages in the list) looking for links to all sorts of bad stuff, and found lots of it. I thought I'd finished, but I've now noticed that half the RuneScape stuff is actually filed under Runescape. :-( --DrBob 14:29, 28 May 2006 (PDT)

I've now accumulated some more pages to delete. I think I might be getting lazy with the reasoning for them, but they should all be obvious anyway. --DrBob (Talk) 03:51, 17 June 2006 (PDT)

I'll get to it! Thanks for compiling the list, I know that must be exhausting work! echelon 11:44, 17 June 2006 (PDT)

comment left on my talk

I responded to the comment you made on my talk [2]. -- Mason11987 ^{(Talk - Contributions)} 23:16, 20 June 2006 (PDT)

Licensing

The GNUFDL template isn't really that useful, since all users who have edited here since it's inception through the change to the SWPL edited under that license, and afterwards the SWPL won't be a useful template. Also, afterwards the CC templates as well as the GDFL templates will be meaningless because they are more restrictive then the site license which would mean you couldn't actually release your edits under GNU FDL because the site would force you to do the SWPL. Now and afterwards the public domain template would be useful because it shows that while you do have the rights given by the site (all editors here do) you waive them. You can't put a more restrictive license template up and gain more rights if the site doesn't allow them. So you should probably only have up the CC one and the SWPL one, after the transition, you won't need any of them, unless you wanted to waive some of your SWPL given rights, in which case you'd have to go down to public domain (unless there is something less restrictive then the SWPL will be). -- Mason11987 ^{(Talk - Contributions)} 00:32, 26 June 2006 (PDT)

That's a very good point! I guess I was getting a little too abstract, thinking that GFDL-only wikis may want to use my content so that I should license it under the GFDL. But I assume they could import SWPL or CC content, right? I'll consider removing them tomorrow, my head hurts and I need sleep. :P echelon 00:54, 26 June 2006 (PDT)

If a GFDL-only wiki would like your content I imagine they would simply have to attribute you as the SWPL dictates, which is very similar to the GFDL stuff. -- Mason11987 ^{(Talk - Contributions)} 08:12, 26 June 2006 (PDT)

I'll go through and remove these soon then and let those who use them know why. They're pretty much useless. echelon 11:05, 26 June 2006 (PDT)

To do list

I added the older versions of the sporewiki todo templates that don't have the dynamic nav feature (which I may try to implement soon), and I put one on your userpage page, normally those are left on talk pages, but I figure I shouldn't change your userpage TOO much :). I use it on my talk page on sporewiki and it is very useful and will be moreso when I get the dynamic nav stuff set up. Let me know what you think. And this of course isn't just for user pages, this could be put on any of the guides that need specific stuff, and I think it may be even more used here then on sporewiki :). Let me know what you think. -- Mason11987 ^{(Talk - Contributions)} 08:22, 26 June 2006 (PDT)

That's pretty slick Mason! Not only will this help users organize their own todo lists, but this is an excellent way of organizing todo lists for the guides themselves. Very, very useful! :) echelon 11:04, 26 June 2006 (PDT)

SW and SW

I was looking at the stats pages of sporewiki and strategywiki and they were almost exactly the same in most statistics, and I thought that was pretty sweet and amusing. Although strategywiki has about 3 times as many members, which means it won't stay as close for long lol. Just thought I'd share that.

Mason11987, I've seen SporeWiki a few times before and I think it's a really cool project! They've given me a few ideas for StrategyWiki, and I hope that we can only provide the same kind of help or ideas if they ever need it of us. echelon 01:52, 4 July 2006 (PDT)

I've taken a few ideas from here and implemented them there. I can assure you I will write an exceptionally good guide about Spore when it comes out :). -- Mason11987 ^{(Talk - Contributions)} 13:35, 4 July 2006 (PDT)

Estimation on PNGs?

Hi Echelon. I know that you already know about this problem, and I really don't mean to be a pain in the ass about it. I was just curious if you had any guess or estimate as to when the PNG problem would be resolved? I love the site, and I love contributing to it, but I haven't continued with my work since I have been unable to upload PNGs. I know you're very busy with the site, I was just hoping for a good word. Thanks very much.Procyon

You motivated me to look deeper into the source of the problem. Turns out that it's the fault of the Mime Magic setup. It's fixed now! :) echelon 17:47, 22 July 2006 (CDT)

You rock Echelon! Thank you very very much for taking the time to solve this! Procyon 09:55, 23 July 2006 (CDT)

Not a problem! I was wondering what was going on myself. :) echelon 01:05, 24 July 2006 (CDT)

Finished guide

Hey, echelon. This may sound odd, but I have, in my opinion, finished my Adventures of Lolo 2 (Japanese) guide. I'm wondering is there anything to do from here? I cannot think of anything to add to the guide nor do I believe I missed anything. Hope to hear from you. --Sivak 01:03, 25 July 2006 (CDT)

Sivak, excellent work! I see that you've applied the All_Game_Nav, so that's good. My thoughts as to what you might want to do next is create a work-in-progress Eggerland series hub that includes links to all of the related games and similar strategies between games. We haven't really discussed how to best do this, so why don't you create what you feel works for Eggerland and we'll discuss the results of that as to how to apply it universally to all games. (I'm currently imagining something that may work for the Zelda series, but I have no firm results.) If you don't want to do this right now, I would probably move on to the next game that you enjoy. :)

Again, excellent work on the guide! We'll probably make it the guide of the month! :) echelon 01:12, 26 July 2006 (CDT)

Well, I don't know. DrBob suggested a category that contains the stuff. What I was thinking of doing is indeed using that category as it'd make sense, but maybe another few pages such as: [[Eggerland series/Basics]], [[Eggerland series/Characters]], etc. I'm more inclined to just call it [[Eggerland series]], but I don't know. I should get all the material I wrote at Wikipedia and move it here. --Sivak 09:30, 27 July 2006 (CDT)

Portal

In scanning some of my watched pages I found the comment above, you should make use of a "Portal" namespace for game series. For example, having a Portal:Final Fantasy would be useful for editors looking on helping out on those guides or even for readers looking for stuff about those games. Overall I think it'd be useful, I think the model of portals on wikipedia is a good thing to work with to get something that would work here. -- Mason11987 ^{(Talk - Contributions)} 02:15, 27 July 2006 (CDT)

Sounds like a solid idea. I'll do it! :)

Uncategorized Images

I requested this feature be added at bugzilla for mediawiki and they did so, here is the attachment they created. [3]

I didn't personally install this on sporewiki but it was installed and it works great and is incredibly useful. I'm sure you realize the usefulness of this and I Hope you can get it in ASAP. -- Mason11987 ^{(Talk - Contributions)} 02:27, 27 July 2006 (CDT)

Is this only for MediaWiki 1.7? I installed it (and edited the other files), yet it doesn't seem to be noticed. echelon

Our uncat'd images page, and our version page. We have an older one then you. I think there was more then just that file, but they seemed to remove the bug from bugzilla for some reason...eh... I'll try to look around again and see if there was anything else. But it definitly should work here. -- Mason11987 ^{(Talk - Contributions)} 09:44, 27 July 2006 (CDT)

Actually, their entire bugzilla system seems down, last time I checked it. It gave me nothing but MySQL errors. Anyway, I think you're right. We're missing something that isn't in those files. echelon 16:38, 27 July 2006 (CDT)

Their Bugzilla seems to be back up. :-) --DrBob (Talk) 20:31, 4 August 2006 (CDT)

Thanks, I'll try to get this installed soon. :) echelon 01:52, 7 August 2006 (CDT)

I've finished the installation, and the page is accessible at Special:Uncategorizedimages. --DrBob (Talk) 10:11, 22 October 2006 (CDT)

Status request

Hi Echelon. I wanted to ask you a question that I feel a little embarressad to ask. But I was wondering if I could be promoted to SysOp. I find that I go to DrBob with a lot of requests and little things, and it's not that I mind doing that, I just wonder if he wouldn't prefer it if I could take care of a few things on my own. I'm a 30 year old programmer, with 5 years in the gaming industry (PS2 and Xbox development.) Video games is my life long hobby, and I was one of the earliest contributors to gamefaqs.com ( http://www.gamefaqs.com/features/recognition/212.html ). I love this site and I'm dedicated to contributing to it (such as the proposed Fighting Moves Guide.) I would primarily use the status only to aid my own individual work, and not to interfere with anyone elses unless it was vandalism. I won't be hurt or feel rejected if you decline, I just thought that I would ask for the sake of convenience. Thanks very much! Procyon 12:36, 5 September 2006 (CDT)

You have put more than enough hard work and enthusiasm into your contributions to StrategyWiki, so I see absolutely no problem with this at all. Giving you a SysOp position would better enable you to assist others as well as do move/delete/etc operations. Have at it, and thanks for the awesome work! :) echelon 19:55, 5 September 2006 (CDT)

Thank you very much Echelon ^_^ You won't regret it! Procyon 21:05, 5 September 2006 (CDT)

Partnership with Bulbapedia?

Hi Echelon! I know you've been busy, but I wanted to ask you about your thoughts on something that I've been looking in to. If you follow the Community issues thread that I started, "New Pokedex or Partnership?", I've been hoping to form a partnership with the Bulbapedia Wiki project. And I went to their forums and asked how they felt about it, and they seem quite receptive to the idea. You can read that here to see what they had to say. But before I did anything formal, I felt that I must run this by you first and see what you had to say. If you were against the idea, I would drop it immediately. But if you'd like to give it the green light, just let me know, and I'd be happy to make the arrangements. Thanks Echelon! Procyon 20:01, 29 September 2006 (CDT)

I was actually reading the topic about this on Community Issues earlier, and I certainly have no problem with this idea. It could be a good thing to create wiki partnerships; this grows the network of information available and helps promote both of our wikis. If their administration likes the idea, I say go for it! echelon 00:26, 30 September 2006 (CDT)

OK, I went ahead with a formal proposal to Bulbapedia. My proposal was designed to be completely symmetrical for both sites. They have one change to the original proposal. You can read it here. All in all, while it's not what I would have wished for, I think it's a fair request based on the amount of editing they might have to do to existing pages. Are you OK with their amendment? Procyon 22:16, 30 September 2006 (CDT)

Sorry to butt in, but is it a good idea to say that every time a Pokemon is mentioned we'll link it? I would think it would be more appropriate to just link a Pokemon the first time it's mentioned in a section, for example. --DrBob (Talk) 05:56, 1 October 2006 (CDT)

DrBob has a good point. I guess my proposal was a little too general and overachieving. I'll submit DrBob's idea as our ammendment to section II. Procyon 08:19, 1 October 2006 (CDT)

Maybe a better solution would be to stick a {{wikipedia}}-style box that links to their Pokedex on the front page of our Pokemon guides, and they could do the same on their game info pages. (Eg [4], [5], etc. would each lead to their respective guides here.) echelon 01:09, 2 October 2006 (CDT)

So, did this follow through or what? I'm needing an update so I know wether or not to link to them in the Pokemon guides. :/ --Sekoku 10:22, 21 October 2006 (CDT)

Layout change suggestion, would like your input

On the project boxes (stub, needscat, ect.), if you could give your input here it would be appreciated. -- Mason11987 ^{(Talk - Contributions)} 10:25, 15 October 2006 (CDT)

I'll respond to this tonight; I gotta run to classes. Sorry! echelon 07:29, 17 October 2006 (CDT)

User CSS and SVG

We really urgently need user CSS and SVG enabled. See here for user CSS and these two are for SVG. --DrBob (Talk) 12:04, 15 October 2006 (CDT)

I'll get on this tonight! echelon 07:21, 17 October 2006 (CDT)

Should be done... Let's see. echelon 23:49, 17 October 2006 (CDT)

Aha! The reason we disabled user css is because it turns links red. Have a viable solution for that? echelon 23:51, 17 October 2006 (CDT)

Which links? -- Prod 23:56, 17 October 2006 (CDT)

Oh, you mean from purple to red..I've just been using monobook due to the lack of user css/js. -- Prod 23:57, 17 October 2006 (CDT)

Well the css causing the color can be found here afai can tell (I'm a newbie at this stuff >.>). -- Prod 00:25, 18 October 2006 (CDT)

Probably not the best place to discuss this, but I've wanted to ask - any reason we don't use a more noticeable color for missing pages? I don't personally think that the default shade of red would clash too heavily with the color scheme, but I'm no expert. The reason I ask is, I am red-green color blind, and I can't tell the difference between the link colors. --inarius 01:42, 18 October 2006 (CDT)

Wouldn't allowing user css allow us to customize that link? I'm sure DrBob can change the "default" setting if he knew that was a problem. -- Mason11987 ^{(Talk - Contributions)} 09:17, 18 October 2006 (CDT)

I have no idea where the default css is stored... I may try to hunt it down and kill the red links. echelon 09:38, 18 October 2006 (CDT)

Yes, I could change the behavior with user CSS. I think all that would really be required would be to add something like a.new {color:red} to my BlueCloud.css. But I didn't feel like messing with the default scheme. I can tell a moderate difference in the brightness of the two colors, and usually just mouse-over to see which it is. Also, to clarify, red-green color blind doesn't mean I can't see red, it mens that if the difference between two colors is only in shades of red or green, then I will have difficulty distinguishing them. So I have trouble seeing the diff between blue/purple, green/brown, and so on. It's the most common form of color-blindness. -- inarius(T) 10:31, 18 October 2006 (CDT)

Inarius, go to Special:Mypage/BlueCloud.css (or Special:Mypage/Monobook.css if you're using Monobook), and add a.new{color:purple;} to it (replace "purple" with whatever colour you like, using hex colour codes if you need). :-) --DrBob (Talk) 11:04, 18 October 2006 (CDT)

Layout suggestion

I would appreciate it if you could give you input on some recent layout suggestions I have made. Thanks! --inarius 16:44, 16 October 2006 (CDT)

Great suggestions, inarius! I'm behind them 100%! echelon 07:28, 17 October 2006 (CDT)

Please check out the recent updates to the Article Tags Toolbox proposal and let me know what you think of the current version. Thanks! --inarius(T) 12:38, 20 October 2006 (CDT)

Sysop

Thanks :D. I will use my powers only to annoy! er.. I mean I'll do my best to put these powers to good use. -- Prod 23:57, 18 October 2006 (CDT)

I'm sure you will. ;) echelon 00:00, 19 October 2006 (CDT)

I might as well horn-in on your reply... Thanks from me too! I appreciate it, and hope you'll be pleased with my efforts to help. --inarius(T) 00:45, 19 October 2006 (CDT)

Main Page Icons

Hi echelon, I know you asked for some a while back, so here are some ideas:

• Announcements
• Collaboration of the Month
• Most Promising Guide of the Month/Guide of the Month
• "What makes StrategyWiki different?" section

I'm not completely happy with all of them(especially the StrategyWiki difference one), but I like the announcements and promising guide of the month ones myself. Any suggestions? --blendmaster 22:24, 29 October 2006 (CST)

No, I really like these! They could really add some flare to the homepage. Would you float them to the right or left of the sections? I say we should go ahead and try them out. echelon 08:59, 30 October 2006 (CST)

What thinky ye both? I've put them on the main page. --DrBob (Talk) 11:30, 30 October 2006 (CST)

I like the Announcements one, a reminder of "The good ol' days" :P. They all look good though and make the main page look nicer :). -- Prod (Talk) 12:36, 30 October 2006 (CST)

They look fantastic--I think they're just what the homepage needed! Excellent job, Blendmaster! echelon 21:13, 30 October 2006 (CST)

Contribute to abxy.org

Hi Echelon. By any chance, do you have any need for more bloggers? I wouldn't mind taking a crack it at. Aside from my contributions to SW, I'm also the new editor for Retrogaming Times Monthly (RTM), which is more of an e-zine format, but I have experience writing little articles and such. Let me know if you're interested in signing me up. Thanks Echelon. Procyon 15:00, 14 November 2006 (CST)

P.S. I am planning on mentioning StrategyWiki in the next issue of RTM.

Procyon, I would really appreciate your contributions to Abxy! I really see StrategyWiki and Abxy as one entity, so it's great that you guys have taken notice of the website and are wanting to help out. As the website grows, I think we can build a huge and useful resource for gamers that far surpasses IGN/Gamespot/whatever. It's just going to take a lot of hard work and effort to build up, and it starts with this initial, somewhat slow-paced phase. I think you'd be able to help provide a lot of momentum, since we're certainly going to need a lot of stories--and a lot of contribution.

If you have an ABXY account, I'll go ahead and add you to the editor usergroup. echelon 01:35, 15 November 2006 (CST)

Thank you so much Echelon. I really appreciate the opportunity and your faith in me. I'm gonna give it everything I have. Having been a game developer for a number of years, and having a number of friends at a variety of studios, I can lend an inside voice that so many other gaming blogs are missing. I'm all set up with an account on abxy as Procyon, and I look forward to posting. Procyon 08:07, 15 November 2006 (CST)

Game Index

Mind if I delete everything in the game index? -- Prod (Talk) 14:53, 17 December 2006 (CST)

Yeah, in retrospect it's not useful. I'll help you with it. echelon 17:09, 17 December 2006 (CST)

ABXY.org

Thanks for taking care of the Game index, it's replaced by Category:Games anywayz :P. Have you had a chance to consider Going mainstream #4 (event)/#7 (skin)? Also, I was asking about interlinking with ABXY. I'm more specifically wondering about having a forum for each game. I know people like discussing each specific game, and I don't think using the talk page is a very good way to do it. As ABXY seems to be building up, would it be possible to add a "Discuss" link to the AGN on the main pages which links to a section on ABXY where this can be discussed? Something like forums.abxy.org/game-boards/GameX which can be easily added to the main AGN template. Or perhaps /game-boards/##### where there is a .php page that all games link to which will convert the game name to the relevant board (would be useful if the page is named wrong to begin with). -- Prod (Talk) 17:54, 17 December 2006 (CST)

Prod, thanks for bringing this up! I may as well announce it to everyone. This week (and the few that follow) is going to serve as a highly active development period for Abxy. We're going to revitalize old code, create the brand new "Abxy Connect" feature (sort of like an Ajax-powered XFire), finally porting all of DSmeet's posts/etc. into Abxy, and more closely integrating StrategyWiki and Abxy. We're shooting to unveil Connect on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day, and the rest of the features will follow pretty quickly thereafter.

The idea to link guides to the forums is a great one, and I'll definitely use it! We will have a forum for each game, though I still have to figure out the mechanics (board per game or per system per game?). As for a StrategyWiki skin redesign, what would you guys like to see in that?

Finally, a formal relaunch for StrategyWiki/Abxy should be around early January, if all goes well. We should have them firmly integrated as one package at this point. echelon 22:43, 17 December 2006 (CST)

Sweet, sounds awesome. I don't think this is gonna be much of an everyone who will see this, perhaps just those of us who watch Special:Recent changes. :P My suggestion for how to separate boards is, board per game, sub-board per system. As for skinning, if whoever designed this one helps with the next one it should be great ;). -- Prod (Talk) 00:29, 18 December 2006 (CST)