Project:General Discussions

This page is meant to be a hub for general discussions about this wiki, it's use and it's editing. Feel free to use this page to note wiki problems and leave messages for the community. Feel free to add/revise sections as necessary and move items that have been completed to the "Completed" section below.

Bots/Scripts
Now that we actually have access to the wiki on a basic level, I'm been investigating how to automate tasks here around the wiki. Stuff like updating the list of games, manipulating categories, on and on could be done wiki-wide with a script. We could potentially even kill spambots with it (or at least flag them to make clean up easier). There are all kinds of things we could do. Now obviously, I'm an artist, not a programmer, so my contributions to this are limited. But I can learn things quickly. Anyway, I think this could go a long way to help us save a ton of time in large scale modifications, and let us do things like updating game lists more often. For reference, here are some bots and scripts I found while looking around: Bot Status - Bot list sorted by edits - User Scripts List - User Scripts Tutorial.

Delroth and the devs brought this up, cause well, they are too lazy to do manual edits :P. Our needs would probably be better served by scripts than bots, but, having stuff done automatically might be nice sometimes. So, what do you guys think? Do you want bots and scripts, and if so, what would you want them for? - MaJoR (talk) 14:51, 14 December 2012 (CET)

Talking about bots, I wrote a simple script to update the Template:CurrentGitRevision page automatically when a commit is pushed to the Git repository. That should be one less thing to worry about. delroth (talk) 03:35, 5 January 2013 (CET)

My grocery list of scripts: I asked Delroth about the revision template recently. He said he could get it working with the new site in no time, but since that would cover only a tiny fraction of revisions, I told him to wait till he can put in a complete solution that ties to google code. To be honest I'd prefer the main site just be updated to go back all the way but eh, that isn't in their plans. - MaJoR (talk) 03:25, 7 January 2013 (CET)
 * System to allow the revision template to understand GIT codes, restoring it's functionality from before the GIT migration
 * Script to collected and create GameIDs and direct them to relevant pages

I have a list of about 300 gameids which should redirect to existing Wiki pages. Could someone review http://codepad.org/RKdGIvUF and tell me if it's ok to mass-create these pages? delroth (talk) 19:54, 2 February 2013 (CET)

Talked with him about it in the channel. Everything either checks out or will create a double redirect. So, he'll upload it, and then we'll check the double redirects to fix any issues. Simple enough. - MaJoR (talk) 14:20, 3 February 2013 (CET)


 * I should actually be able to check for double redirects pretty easily. The bot will do it automatically. delroth (talk) 15:49, 3 February 2013 (CET)


 * Done! I also fixed all the other double redirects at the same time. delroth (talk) 07:46, 4 February 2013 (CET)

I also have some cron scripts listing stuff to do on the Wiki: for example:
 * http://wiki.dolphin-emu.org/missing-gameid.txt GameIDs missing a redirection, from the "Go to Wiki" menu in the emulator
 * sXAP52, r8pj01:Capitalization on these ones is odd, we have an entry for SXAP52 and R8PJ01 not clear what's with the lowercase letters
 * £×Uº²�, ŽÔç_ìÂ, èl9/C, +¾‹Ešn,#•Wõ�d:These have various odd characters.
 * Most other residual ones I'm having trouble aligning to a known game title, they don't seem to show up on GameTDB.
 * http://wiki.dolphin-emu.org/missing-redirs.txt All game pages which don't have a 6 chars GameID redirecting to that page
 * Peach's_Castle: Seems to have the invalid ID "00"
 * System_Menu: GameID for system menu wads is blank
 * Toy Wars:These don't have disk images and are just distributed as resources /w DOL files
 * Call_of_Duty:_Black_Ops/sandbox_(Wii): Sandbox pages should generally be isolated, there's no gameid for the sandbox
 * Channels use 4 character IDs, and aren't filtered from the 6 char list. Will need to avoid filtering the few non-Channel games, (i.e. History Channel ??? and Pokemon Channel). Dolphin seems to postfix these with "01", but was unclear how we want to handle them here.
 * http://wiki.dolphin-emu.org/compat.txt All values found in ratings pages (should have only 0/1/2/3/4/5 ideally)
 * http://wiki.dolphin-emu.org/unknown.txt Games with rating 0 (unknown)
 * http://wiki.dolphin-emu.org/review.txt Games with rating 1/2/3 not updated for 4 months (listed because some of these games might be fixed now)

Tell me if you need more. delroth (talk) 23:06, 3 February 2013 (CET)

Another thing I will automate: editing infoboxes to add the link to the forum thread when a forum thread exists. Trivial to do with access to the forum database, just needs some infobox template parsing... It's on my TODO for tomorrow. delroth (talk) 07:46, 4 February 2013 (CET)

One thing I'd like to get a bot/script to perform would be mass search and replaces. For instance, we noticed a frequent mis-capitalization of Single-player as Single-Player. It's easy enough to search and find most instances of this, but actually editing/saving each page is tedious.Kolano (talk) 07:17, 7 February 2013 (CET)

Importing game banners on the Wiki
As you may have seen on the forums, I've been crowdsourcing the collect of game banner images (the 96x32 images used in the Dolphin game list). These images should probably be hosted somewhere on the wiki like the covers, but I don't know how you want to handle that. Could someone look into adding banners for a few games? I will then use a bot to import everything.

When the import will be done I will be able to add the banners to the new Dolphin website compatibility list: http://dolphin-emu.org/compat/ :) delroth (talk) 05:22, 5 February 2013 (CET)


 * A rough idea would be using the game ID as filename (like "G8ME01.png") and including the ID somewhere (like as an hidden parameter in Infobox VG). Banners maybe different based on release (NA/EU/JP), so, I think we should have a preference, like NA first, then EU, then JP. The 4th digit in the game ID reveal this (E for NA, P for EU and J for JP). Well, what I'm trying to say is: if the game has been released in all territories, use NA banner. If it was released only in Europe, use EU banner. And, if released only in japan, use JP banner.


 * Also, adding all banner images in a category would be nice, like [Category:Banner images]. Well, I'll try to exemplify this in a sandbox... Jhonn (talk)


 * I've thought about putting the banners in the infobox, but I haven't come up with a method that is actually useful. Let me explain. Our brains respond to visual stimuli far better than text. That's why a collection of icons on the desktop is better than a big list of words. Our brains are trained for this stuff. So, in the list inside the dolphin emulator, the job of the banners is to give a visual reference of the game, to exploit our how brains work and help us find stuff faster. On the wiki pages though, cover art already does that, and far better than the tiny banners. Banners on game pages would be kind of redundant. But we could use them in the same way that dolphin does... Banners would be pretty awesome in compatibility lists. Imagine the wii article with banners in it. It would give that quick visual reference that the lists need. I think it would be great there. - MaJoR (talk) 18:34, 6 February 2013 (CET)

---

Actually the banners wouldn't show up in the infobox with the covers, I proposed having Game ID as a hidden parameter thinking in easily getting this ID for use in other template, but this is completely out of question now (after some tests I found that there isn't any way of getting a parameter from infobox VG template in another template). So, my initial idea now is: Then, delroth could hotlink the banner images from wiki, this way we could share only one copy of the banner in the main site and in the wiki aswell. Jhonn (talk)
 * Have the Game ID as file name (like G8ME01.png), and add all banner images in a category (Category:Banner images)
 * Prefer NA banners, then EU banners, then JP banners
 * Add the banners in the main lists too (GameCube, Wii, etc.) -- Something like delroth is doing for the main site

A user had started to gather banners here previously. The banners from his minor effort to do so are categorized as "Title images" and can be found. See them here, http://wiki.dolphin-emu.org/index.php?title=Category:Title_images. I've added John's recent upload to that category.
 * "Banner images" seems a more accurate category. We can move them to the new category, as we have only a few images uploaded... - Jhonn (talk)

My feedback here would be:
 * We'll need to decide if we want all the banner images or not, in some cases there may be 5 or 6 of them per game disc. Since we may be likely to only use one image I'm not clear it makes sense to capture them all.
 * If we wanted to use these on game pages I'd suggest they be tied into the "Release" section, where it may make sense to capture a title image per region.
 * Tried in a sandbox and the infobox got somewhat "ugly" (at least in my opinion). If we're going to use the banner in infobox, putting only one banner image in "see also" section (before the links) seem better. - Jhonn (talk)


 * Judging from our current banners, the images seem a bit overly compressed (even though we've re-saved them as PNG to avoid compounding artifacts). Likely not a big deal, but we should try to make sure to avoid compressing them further and increasing artifacts.
 * Well, from what I've seen, all banner images delroth got with "bannerget" were extracted directly from the Dolphin's cache file, so, it's compressed only one time. - Jhonn (talk)


 * Though I would like to see them on the game list pages, adding 600+ image loads to the page may have a significant impact on performance/load times. The list pages are already fairly slow today (I'm guessing from the many ratings loads), so we should be careful. Kolano (talk) 21:21, 6 February 2013 (CET)
 * Yep, this is true... Completely forgot the loading times when I suggested this - Jhonn (talk)
 * There might be a way to get this to be fast with a custom MediaWiki extension and some CSS sprites usage (basically, only one large image would be loaded for each list page). I could learn how to do that if you think it would be a nice addition to the compatibility lists. delroth (talk) 00:52, 7 February 2013 (CET)
 * The list table is rendered through MediaWiki markup, I'm unsure if we can mess CSS sprites with MediaWiki formatting without major issues. However, if this can be done without loading issues, the main list is the best way for having the banner images (better than in infobox VG) - Jhonn (talk)
 * This is a good point... Dialup user here so, a giant image would SUCK for me. Lots of smaller images are easier to cache. But a thousand banners on the wii page would suck no matter what for me. - MaJoR (talk) 04:50, 7 February 2013 (CET)

Recent Discussions
Below is listed only what was discussed last month. You can search the archive for what was discussed since General Discussions page was created.

Infobox Automation
Uh, your changes are breaking a few things. I'll just show you. Any time I make an edit, I get stuff like this: Metroid Prime: Trilogy. The stuff in the genre area is added as categories, except that area doesn't follow the category conventions. The only solution is to remove the existing categories and modify the genres area to fit the conventions. Of course, the vast majority of game articles' genre areas don't follow those category conventions... - MaJoR (talk) 05:54, 1 December 2012 (CET)

I'm working through correcting the genres now. Kolano (talk) 05:55, 1 December 2012 (CET)

Cleaned up all the genres responsible for red-link categories, and performed some other general clean-up of the genres. Genre stuff should now be a bit better, but there's a bunch of remaining tasks... Kolano (talk) 08:05, 1 December 2012 (CET)
 * Merge Platform and Platformer genres
 * Ensure all sports genres are labeled as such, similar genre grouping edits needed elsewhere as well (Role-playing, Shooter, etc.)
 * Purge in page genre categories / transfer to infobox genres section
 * Better review available genres for each game an populate as appropriate

Wait wait wait. Why are you removing ALL game categories? That is extremely limiting. Putting them all in the infobox means you either can't do additional categories for connectivity, or you get messy results like, well, "First-person action-adventure, First-person shooter, Action-adventure". Long enough? What about Wii Sports? "Sports, Party, Tennis, Boxing, Bowling, Baseball" And you don't want me to list Wii Sports + Wii Sports Resort.

Ok, let me just be frank, I didn't like this idea in the first place. Automated infobox categories is limiting for genre blending titles such as this. But it does have some value, as everyone forgets those categories but us, so I see why you did it. So, I think it can work if we're flexible. So like, have "First-person action-adventure" in the infobox, and additional categories to help with navigation and inter-connectivity be nice and neatly tucked away on the bottom, where they belong.

Oh, and sorry about that Prime 2 edit. I thought I screwed up, and it didn't occur to me till later that you made changes behind me. Maybe it's meaningless, but I think it's important to handle stuff like this without edit wars, so I try to avoid stuff like that. - MaJoR (talk) 08:53, 1 December 2012 (CET)

You're right in my thinking regarding the automation, most pages were very inconsistent between their genre/modes/categories listings. The automation makes it easier to see and maintain our current genre lists and keep things consistent. I'd generally prefer to avoid the duplication of genre information around a games page, so in most cases I'll prefer to just have a long genre's list in the infobox. Having it mixed around the page is confusing the novice editors, who may not notice the multiple edit locations. Even Wii Sports + Wii Sports Resort, the longest current genre list, only ends up taking 5 lines. It's controllers section is 4 lines, so it's not without precedence, and such only occurs on a few pages (the Deca Sports titles are another problematic case).

Also, generally, I'm not sure I'm a fan of the the german-like mashed together genres vs just listing each of the multiple genres that are mashed. In many cases, it seems to be a marketing ploy to some degree, but as said previously including them generally doesn't terribly effect anything anyway (i.e. an additional line of genre listing is not a big deal). Another option here may be to just hide the "genre" line in the infobox, since the info will be represented as categories now anyway. Alternately I can likely work out something to reduce the font size if more than a certain limit of genres is listed.

Was hoping to work on series categories next, and perhaps dev/publisher ones. Please let me know if you want me to hold up on such prior to some further conversation/agreement? Kolano (talk) 09:20, 1 December 2012 (CET)

I think you have a good idea overall. This could really help expand inter-connectivity and give us a more consistant setup. That's awesome. That being said... I'm an artist, so the flow and structure of the page is very important to me. Still, "Sports, Boxing, Bowling, Golf, Baseball, Tennis, Swordplay, Wakeboarding, Frisbee, Archery, Basketball, Table Tennis, Golf, Bowling, Canoeing/Kayaking, Cycling" is an absolute disaster. And I know I know, the input list is long, but it's just that game, and there is no alternative for it. With genres, there is.

I really like having an overflow of sorts for odd pages like this. Sort of how wikipedia handles it, and closer to our original. Whenever someone adds a new game article (other than us regulars), they would just put in what wikipedia has, or nothing at all. I don't think that making it consistent will have any impact on that. And it would give us a much better look to the page. So, for Wii Sports Resort, just have the primary category (Sports) and then fill in all the little blanks we want for interconnectivity. That is much much nicer. - MaJoR (talk) 10:31, 1 December 2012 (CET)

I fear we loose the advantages of the automation and end up with inconsistent pages if we operate in a mixed mode. This only seems to be a real issue with ~10 pages, which also seems far too few out of the 1000+ total to be much put off by. Hopefully we can get some input from others. Kolano (talk) 11:18, 1 December 2012 (CET)

You know... if we put the platforms back into the infobox, we could get rid of all category additions to the bottom of the page. It would simplify game page creation, especially when pasting from wikipedia. Not to mention help newbies, since it's one less thing to worry about. We could just tell them to delete the non-Nintendo platforms, instead of telling them how to make categories, where to put them, and what categories to use. - MaJoR (talk) 03:31, 7 January 2013 (CET)

Compatibility List PAGESINCAT
Virtual Console says "This lists 24 titles released on Virtual Console for the Nintendo Wii video game system". ...there is way more than 24 games in that list. It is, of course, because of the pages in category function. Only 24 virtual console pages have been made, but there are hundreds available which exist on the list as empties. This quirk is present on almost all of the compatibility lists right now, as there are a ton of empties all over this wiki thanks to scripts which added games to the list to keep it accurate and encourage people to add pages. I support that concept: filling them in slowly over time sure beats trying to do it all at once. The pages in category issue could always be solved by making tons of pages fill empties, but uh...

1. It's a lot of work, even if the pages are blank except for the categories

2. Newbies don't know how to approach blank pages, which means we either do more work now (no blank pages) or later (fixing problems from blank pages)

3. by the time the wiki's list is updated, that's thousands of empties to fill, so yea, alot of work.

Really, we'd need scripts to do this effectively, and that means figuring out the scripting API, getting delroth's and parlane's help, and alllll that. Without scripts, that means making thousands of pages manually, and that would take obscene amounts of time, even if they are blanks (something I think is quite dumb). So yea, making that PAGESINCAT thing display the right number is a absolute gigantic mess, so I say let's just avoid the problem entirely and remove the PAGESINCAT bit from all the pages. I don't think anyone is going to object to me saving us obscene amounts of work, so I'm going to just remove it. But in case anyone has alternatives, and because the tiny edit summary blank couldn't fit the explanation, I'm putting it here. - MaJoR (talk) 12:00, 4 December 2012 (CET)

Suspicious Users
I suspect a spammer is trying to build up some user accounts. These users have odd names that seem randomly generated, and were created without performing any edits:
 * Racn42pysi
 * Jan5318bwi
 * WoodrowWcx
 * Boscaposi
 * Gaye6z37ge
 * Err225deki
 * Con67sy5ba
 * Jan3jvudju
 * Sig96yx8gi
 * Joh4hvfuke
 * Fra5befxli
 * DarleneLfy
 * Yacht member1
 * Simsmagic
 * Mer8qq9ysh
 * Wal6291kst
 * Civ1994
 * Cprs (This ones a bit different than the others, and may be unrelated)
 * Teoberpriller98
 * Seloy93
 * Cukali36
 * Caphung49
 * Hbryon39
 * Filorraine31
 * Tplautz19
 * Shstoermer22
 * Mtamie82
 * Mr.Shibby (This ones a bit different than the others, and may be unrelated)
 * TopFunny525
 * Tohemmings32
 * Rkisamore30
 * Tahuna16
 * Qusills78
 * BrandenTd (This ones a bit different than the others, and may be unrelated)
 * Xiao21
 * Sowestrum37
 * Duflorentino31

Which covers the suspicious ones over the last 100 user registrations, though there are many more of these. I'm reluctant to perform preemptive blocks, but have a feeling we'll still be cleaning up after spammers for some time if we don't.Kolano (talk) 08:56, 24 November 2012 (CET)

It is probably someone failing to use the SEO spambot tools properly, and not a nefarious plot for later. After all, I've never seen a spambot come back later, they have always always joined then immediately spammed. Here, you should read this article, it gives a ton of information on the kind of spam we get here at the wiki. - MaJoR (talk) 12:04, 4 December 2012 (CET)

Solved by the change to question based captchas. Fixed by Delroth in late December of 2012. No new suspicious users or spammers are being made, but the old ones remain.