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.

Standard suggestion: the unified Media Gallery
Ok, I've just finished my work with the video gallery template and I'm trying now to set the final standard for the Media Gallery. My suggestion:
 * Every page have a section named "Media Gallery"
 * In this section, by using the video gallery template, 3 videos will be randomly selected and displayed as the first three thumbnails (if the game page have less than 4 videos, the videos should be included with the normal YouTube template, as using the video gallery template will have no utility with less than 4 videos)
 * After the first 3 videos thumbnails, we'll have countless screenshots included through the Image template
 * By using these templates, we make sure that all thumbnails (both images and videos) have the fixed size of 300px.
 * If the game page have more than 3 videos (and use the video gallery template), after the Media Gallery section we'll have another section named "More Videos" with links for the another videos.
 * At least in my desktop, running at 1440x900 this isn't an issue, but if necessary, add a    after the first 3 videos thumbnails to fix any issue we could have with the floating elements in computers with higher desktop resolutions...

Take a look at Template:VideoGallery/test, is the SSBB page using the standard I'm suggesting. It's already using the random thumbnails feature, but if you guys want to see another example in how the video gallery template works, take a look at Xenoblade Chronicles. Well, what do you guys think about this standard? I think we can already start using it. - Jhonn (talk)

Well, personally, I still prefer smaller thumbnails for screenshots. The goal is to have a fair amount of them, and we could end up with quite a few. Plus the isolation between screenshots and videos is very clean and organized. And well, I just think it looks nice. So, in my opinion, I'd rather we go with something other than the media gallery. As such, I'll suggest an alternative like what I proposed before: 200px thumbnails for screenshots in a gameplay screenshots section, and then the youtube template with 3 ~300px videos and then links in a gameplay screenshots section. Let's see what everyone thinks between the two of them. And no matter which standard we go with, you did awesome work Jhonn. - MaJoR (talk) 01:46, 14 November 2012 (CET)
 * Ok, my only request is to ALWAYS use the image template or one of the two video templates (using video gallery template only if the page have more than 3 videos), no matter which standard we go with. The thumbnail size can easily edited, directly in the template, by replacing the 300px tag with the desired size and changing the 275px tag with the desired size minus 25px (for example, to make the template generate 200px thumbnails, we should have 200px in the first tag and 175px in the second). This request is to make quicker fixes in future (like what was done with testing section) and because using the  tags or calling embedvideo directly gave me countless issues with floating elements and made the thumbnails size be "fixed" with a smaller size, even when specifying a higher width... - Jhonn (talk)

I'm in agreement that the screenshots/video thumbnails should vary in size to more easily distinguish them. Related to such I think separate Gameplay Videos/Gameplay Screenshots sections make sense. I'm still unclear we will ever have that many screenshots though, since the few for Resident Evil were all we ever got previously. Having the VideoGallery template is very nice though. Thanks so much for working it out John. It resolves my primary prior concern of not wanting to have to take time picking and choosing videos (though we probably still need to generate some rules to restrict videos, such as ones that point to pirated content in their descriptions/initial comments).Kolano (talk) 02:23, 14 November 2012 (CET)
 * There are TONS of screenshots on the screenshots forum thread. I have dialup, so I can't do it, but someone could very easily port those over. - MaJoR (talk) 03:06, 14 November 2012 (CET)

Well, I guess we have a consensus then? Separated Gameplay Screenshots and Gameplay Videos, with 200px for screenshots using the image template and 300px for videos using the video template? Any comments on specifics of that? Hmm, maybe we should make a new template just for screenshots, for the 200px and to remove descriptions. That way we could keep the image template as an optional choice for bug images and the like? MaJoR (talk) 08:24, 17 November 2012 (CET)
 * Ok, this is the standard. We can start commiting this standard in the game pages. I'll make the Template:Image more configurable when I have free time, specifically, to don't include the caption (screenshot only mode) via a template parameter... For now, just use the template without any tag in the second parameter, when I implement this, the caption space will be automatically wiped out) - Jhonn (talk)
 * Glad you are adding a way to remove the caption space, I tried to get it sorted but failed, badly. Hmm. One little problem: almost all of the videos on the wiki have been changed over to the youtube template thanks to Kolano. Should we just use that, or go with the video template? - MaJoR (talk) 09:36, 18 November 2012 (CET)
 * We should use the video gallery only if the game page have more than 3 videos... The rest of the pages, with 3 videos or less, should just use the YouTube template... I think there is no way of checking this instead of manually checking every game page to see which page have more than 3 vidoes, and then, updating it to the video gallery template =/   Jhonn (talk)
 * *tries it. Oh... Set it to just one video and it generates 3 copies of the video. Crap. That complicates the standard a bit... - MaJoR (talk) 02:17, 19 November 2012 (CET)

Media Gallery standard: the final consensus
Well, about 1 month of discussion and a lot of working in various templates. Here is the final consensus: That's it. I already fixed everything in the templates and updated Template:VideoGallery/test to fit in this standard, I think this should be the standard template, so we can start commiting this damn thing in all pages (c'mon guys, this discussions is taking too many time!) But since this is a community driven project, I'll ask again: what do you guys think about this standard? Any objection? - Jhonn (talk)
 * Every game page will have 2 sections: Gameplay Screenshots and Gameplay Videos (in this order)
 * In the gameplay screenshots section we'll have countless screenshots, all of them MUST BE embedded using the image template, with no caption, at 200px size.
 * In the gameplay videos section we'll have countless videos, all of them MUST BE embedded using the video gallery template which will automatically choose 3 random videos to embed as 300px thumbnails and add the rest of the videos as links, below the 3 thumbnails, by calling.
 * The gameplay videos section should ALWAYS use the video gallery template, even if the page have less than 4 videos (the template automatically handle these cases now)
 * EXTRA: for bug images and things like that, we should use the image template with a caption. Then, the thumbnail will be set as 300px, with the caption in one line (getting automatically truncated, if necessary). I'm setting this thumbnail as 300px to distinguish them form the screenshots and gameplay videos and because a lot of pages already uses the 300px size when an image is embedded with a specific problem. Also, having 200px screenshots for the bug images make the caption too small.
 * Works for me. It's very easy to use, I like it. I have one tiny nitpick though: is it necessary to have the "cap" separated in the video template? Stuff like  |vid1=R9u_BJXRyuI|cap1=super smash bros brawl in 3d dolphin emulator  could very easily be  |vid1=R9u_BJXRyuI|super smash bros brawl in 3d dolphin emulator  instead, unless there is something in the template to prevent it of course. It's just a little nitpick. Awesome work on the templates Jhonn. - MaJoR (talk) 23:22, 19 November 2012 (CET)
 * Well, the way how templates work doesn't allow it. I can get parameters without any prefix by using, , etc, but since the template randomly select one of the N videos that have been included, I cant "find" the number that correspond to the capN parameter of the selected video (because this number vary depending in which entry the template randomly selected). To avoid these kind of issues, we need to declare the parameters, allowing to get the capN by using regardless of what location it's defined, so, from my knowledge, there is no way of implementing this... - Jhonn (talk)
 * Gotcha. It's fine, it's very easy to use now. - MaJoR (talk) 02:59, 20 November 2012 (CET)


 * Unless delroth is able to filter the rest of the screenshots out, we might have to limit the screenshots, since it'll really mess up the game threads in the forums. As for the video section, are you able to hide the rest of the links, leaving only the embedded videos visible? That would make things much cleaner, and will let you put the video section above the screenshot section, since it'll be a hassle to scroll down to the video section if the screenshot section becomes huge. Last, but certainly not least, I would like to say you've done an amazing job with the video template Jhonn. ─ Garteal (talk) 16:13, 20 November 2012 (CET)
 * I've updated the Template:VideoGallery/test with you suggestion Garteal. Looks good to me, because it already prevent any future issues with the Gallery standard if we have too many videos or too many screenshots. So, I'll commit this to Project:Wiki Conventions and then, we can start using this as the final standard for the media gallery... - Jhonn (talk)


 * Whoa whoa, why are the screenshots below the videos? *looks* Oh... Well... I disagree with this. The screenshots are smaller specifically to address this problem. And as Kolano said early, we probably won't have tons of them anyway. And this solution creates a bigger problem than it solves; it creates a mental disconnect. Having the video links so far away from the video thumbnails is simply making the links disappear, camouflaged in a sea of text below it. I don't think the composition works like this. The only way to avoid that disconnect is to keep the the videos all together. Honestly, if we are going to worry about this, then the best solution for this would be to just go ahead and set up a proper gallery like the videogallery and get it over with. - MaJoR (talk) 07:19, 21 November 2012 (CET)


 * I agree with Major. Separating the video links into a separate section seems silly, and the extra title just eats up more page space. Kolano (talk) 07:48, 21 November 2012 (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.

Moved to a new server
We've just moved to a new server, and the new wiki administrators (Parlane and No cluez) are actually Dolphin developers, so any problem what we found should be quickly solved now if compared when Mamario was the only admin. Now, we have a better spam blocker powered by reCaptcha, but some pages needs to be updated since some pages moved to other locations (in fact, all pages of "Dolphin Emulator Wiki" namespace was moved to "Project" namespace). Also, any link to the old server (dolphin-emulator.com) should be changed to the new site (dolphin-emu.org)... | Jhonn (talk)
 * All links to the old server have been fixed. The only place where "dolphin-emulator.com" is mentioned, on the entire wiki, is on this page. - MaJoR (talk) 01:01, 3 November 2012 (CET)
 * ...Or not. Crap. It's going to be hard to find them with this crappy search function. It showed it was done! Oh well. I'll keep at it. - MaJoR (talk) 09:45, 3 November 2012 (CET)
 * Ok, I think I got them all. I can't find any more with any search results. Phew - MaJoR (talk) 06:42, 6 November 2012 (CET)

Forum Integration
As has been announced, the plan is to use the wiki for game pages and tutorials on the forum. Win for everyone. I talked about it with the devs, and it should be pretty seamless; the wiki in form and methodology will not change, they'll just have easier access to our world for popular games. But they did have a couple of little things they wanted. First, is more screenshots. No complaints there, and that can easily be added with a gallery. The second is collapsible and collapsed-by-default testing entries. Alot of testing sections run really long on some pages (just go to a zelda game...). Delroth believes he can make it collapse on just the forums (I have no idea how that would work), but uh, do we want it to just be there? I mean, they are REALLY long on alot of pages. Collapsing the testing entries would make for alot cleaner pages... The last thing is they want links to any custom texture packs that are available. Should be simple enough, do it like the patches on Xenoblade Chronicles.

So, here's what we need to figure out. We need to get a screenshot standard set up. The only spot on the wiki with screenshots I know of is Resident Evil, and it's really old. Make them 300px perhaps? We also need to figure out how to collapse testing entries, and if we want to collapse it here and there, or just there (if that's possible). And we need to agree on patches and texture stuff, but I think it's pretty easy to say just go with the Xenoblade style. Oh, and once we get things settled, someone should probably write up a wiki 101 for the forum. Probably me, since I've been doing a lot of the go between, and suggested it... Well, what do you guys think on all this? Delroth said he's going to work on it tomorrow, this is going up FAST, so let's try to jump on it as best as we can. - MaJoR (talk) 14:06, 6 November 2012 (CET)


 * This is indeed a great change, which will prevent double and outdated work. Thanks for suggesting it MaJoR! I agree with some of the testing sections being too long. A simple way to reduce them is to delete the ancient testing data and useless testing without proper descriptions. You are referring to the thumbnails for the screenshots right? The Resident Evil ones look good, but there's a bit too much padding for my taste between the screenshot and the outer-box. I'll help with the wiki 101 for the forum if someone makes a start. :P As for the high resolution texturespacks. I think we should create a section for them under each game which has packs available. It'll be more organized that way. - Garteal (talk) 14:14, 6 November 2012 (CET)


 * About the test entries, they're built based on a predefined table (from the template)... Before the server change, I've implemented show/hide functionality to the navigation templates (Template:Navigation). The navigation templates are based on tables too, so, implementing this functionality to the test entries shouldn't be hard... Adding this to the To Do - Jhonn (talk)
 * Ta Daa, all testing entries of the wiki now are collapsible and, by default, load hidden when someone access the page. The only thing changed was the table header and a new line was added because we can't choose in which column the show/hide "button" appear (it'll be always the first). Looked better and more suggestive for me having a row named "Test entries" (or whatever you guys want to) with the button than having the button on the side of Revision column collapsing all other columns together... Any suggestion or objection? Something you guys think that need to be changed? - Jhonn (talk)
 * I have not much to add since it's perfect in my eyes. Very clean solution aswell. Nice job Jhonn! -Garteal (talk) 21:38, 6 November 2012 (CET)


 * I've testing some concepts and now I have the following suggestions: first, I think we should completely remove the column "Tester" from the test entries. I never saw utility for this column, and since we're going to have the wiki pages linked to the forum, this would only cause confusion, like forum members adding their nicks to the tester column and we being with a lot of red links pointing to these users that doesn't exist on the wiki.
 * Second, since some pages have only Videos and others have only Screenshots, I think we should merge the two sections in only one section named "Media Gallery, using the standard 300px size for thumbnails, etc. Actually, I commited an example in the sandbox of Resident Evil, the screenshots have a little big margin and aren't aligned with the videos, but in case we use this concept, I would make a template to simplify the usage of the screenshots (something like Template:YouTube, requiring only file name and caption) and add the proper CSS styles to make videos and screenshots aligned. What do you guys think about these suggestions? - Jhonn (talk)

Whoa, that was fast Jhonn. Sweet! I really like the testing work. Though it might be nice if it remained the whole length of the page when collapsed, for consistency, but that's just nitpicking. I disagree with you on the tester column. It goes to an automatically generated contribs page here on the wiki, not to a forum link or anything else. That's why there aren't any red links right now. I think it's nice, cause it shows who made the edit, and what else that person did. I like it. As for your ideas for the media gallery, I'm all for it. Most pages only have a few videos anyway. But yea, it will need to have the alignment fixed and stuff for that. Today is a little busy, with voting and all, but I'll jump into the work as soon as I can. - MaJoR (talk) 23:30, 6 November 2012 (CET)
 * In this case, let's leave the tester column as it is now. After the forum integration is complete it would be nice to provide a comment somewhere warning the visitors to only add her/his nickname on the tester column if he/she have a wiki account corresponding to this nickname, so, we avoid the red links. Just to be sure: when you say "it might be nice if it remained the whole length of the page when collapsed" you are referring to the table width right? In this case, a simple CSS style should do the trick... I'll (try to) fix this and also mess around with the alignment and position between videos and screenshots when I get more free time, so we can finish a standard for the upcoming media gallery - Jhonn (talk)
 * As delroth said, too many videos. I ran into the hangups, but I thought it was because of dialup. So, what do you prefer? Purge all but 3 videos? Or have 3 videos, screenshots, then links to more videos? I'm a little on the fence on this one. If we have more video thinks, a joined media gallery is probably a bad idea, and better to have screenshots then videos, I'd think. Hmm... - MaJoR (talk) 01:46, 7 November 2012 (CET)


 * I like the media gallery suggestion Jhonn. I do think there has to be a limit though. Also pondering about what MaJoR suggested. Perhaps we should limit it to screenshots only? Or if we also want videos, there should be a maximum limit of 3 of them or so. What will we do to the rest? Delete them? Or link them somewhere below the embedded? --Garteal (talk) 13:13, 7 November 2012 (CET)

Standards for Videos and Screenshots
Alright guys, let's get the whole video and screenshot thing settled. I've added some screenshots and created a Brawl Sandbox, and we can use this to finalize how we want to do it. The idea is that it has no cap for screenshots, but they are 200px (we can always add a cap), and presented in a gallery. Embedded videos are 300px and use the youtube template, and are capped to 3 videos per page, with links to remaining videos. (I have no idea how we'll pick which videos are shown and which aren't, but, yea. HD receives priority?) Gameplay videos are presented after screenshots because the links disrupt the flow of the page, having it go from thumbnails to thumbnails makes a cleaner look. And last but not least, screenshots have categories. Wii screenshots, GameCube screenshots, etc etc. So guys, do you like how it's done there? Any changed you'd like? - MaJoR (talk) 12:54, 8 November 2012 (CET)


 * If we don't have a cap, it will increase the loading time of the page depending on the number of screenshots and their quality(lossless PNGs, etc). Imagine if there's like 10 3MB shots in there. In order to address that, we either have to limit the screenshots to JPG only to reduce the filesizes and loading times, or have a reasonable cap. I like the 200px size for screenshots. The only thing that remains is the padding of it, which iirc, Jhonn was going to address. As for the videos, the three that should be embedded have to be recorded without any emulator glitches (if possible) and has to be high quality videos (if possible). We'll have one video for each type, eg: one video showing the gameplay, one the intro, one shows the battles. 300px seems reasonable to me. And yes, I like the cleaner approach as well, so good job on that MaJoR. As for the screenshots category, are they meant to show a giant gallery of every games' screenshots? - Garteal (talk) 13:16, 8 November 2012 (CET)
 * For the record, screenshot thumbnails are generated automatically by the wiki, and they are extremely small. Dialup can load that sandbox in no time, trust me. In fact, I just downloaded one just to check. 4KB. Yea, that'll bring your browser to a crawl :P. Anyway, we can have any as many screenshots as we want on the page, without worrying about load times. The only reason for a cap on the videos is because they were causing a stall as browsers loaded them, due to the crappiness of the flash plugin. As for the one video of each type thing, I don't think that's a good idea, simply because we only have so many videos to pick from. I think we should just pick the best ones, taking into account HD, any glitches present, and overall quality of it. - MaJoR (talk) 13:46, 8 November 2012 (CET)
 * Okay, I didn't know the wiki generated the thumbs, so that's good news. Alright then we'll see how it plays out without the cap. And yes, we don't have videos for every game, but I hope people will post their videos here now that the forum threads also link to the wiki. If there are enough videos then what I said could be applied, if you all agree with it ofcourse. I just think that it'll be more interesting to have different parts of the game shown than just the same gameplay style. Generally we'll want the best possible videos to show off Dolphin yes. Glad we agree. :P - Garteal (talk) 13:53, 8 November 2012 (CET)


 * OK, here are my thoughts:
 * Number of items:
 * As already mentioned, the in wiki image resize should handle screenshots fairly smoothly, unless someone goes really crazy.
 * It would be preferable if an ad hoc number of things could be used for either, though I understand the limitations of starting up many copies of the Flash player. The ideal here might be to generate a fancier embedvideo go between template that could:
 * Accept an arbitrary list of videos (preferably inclusive of those outside of YouTube).
 * Select a random position in the list (1 to length-3) if longer than 3 elements.
 * Display 3 videos from that position
 * Perhaps if we really wanted to get fancy actively rotate through the full list of videos
 * ...the main goal to enable long video lists without requiring significant admin overhead to review/prune them.
 * Listing videos post embedded videos: Not sure how much I like this, since it will mean going through some process to review and select how to handle each new video >3.
 * Pruning/Selection Rules (Though I don't like them):
 * I don't think the videos should necessarily be "recorded without any emulator glitches", unless we intend to separate bug related videos into the problems section. Some games simply can't be played without glitches, and I'd still like to capture video of them. Also some glitches can be difficult to describe/communicate outside of videos. Perhaps this is just a matter of where glitchy videos are located on the page (Gameplay Videos vs Problems).
 * HD/Higher resolution should be preferred
 * Non-camera sources should be preferred (i.e. there are a number of videos recorded with handheld cameras that tend to be of low quality compared to in machine captures)
 * Outside of cases of compatibility losses (i.e. 3.0-113 breaks XXX, so we keep video from 3.0-112), videos of more recent releases should be preferred.
 * This one I'm cautious of, mainly since I feel the older videos do a better job of capturing past compatibility than test entries do. Again probably just a difference of where video links are included (i.e. Testing vs Gameplay Videos)
 * Videos with only game audio preferred. Various videos have mic'd in audio usually irrelevant narration or simply loud environments, which should be avoided if possible.
 * Video is embeddable. Apparently some videos can be configured to not be embeddable, refer second video on Super Mario Galaxy 2.
 * Unrelated Side Issue: In the current layout for embedded videos when videos wrap they sometimes position oddly. This is due to using floats to position them and some boxes being of different height. The frame box needs to have a consistent height for clean wrapping with floats.
 * Kolano (talk) 20:10, 8 November 2012 (CET)


 * I like alot of these ideas with the templates. A way to automatically handle the 3 videos selected for embedding would be awesome. I'm not sure about the image template though. I know it's a work in progress, but it's currently not easier to use than a gallery, which is bad. It also is 300px only, which makes it somewhat inflexible. It would work well for bug images, but if screenshots are 200px and bug images are 300px, it couldn't do both. And I still think 200px might be better for screenshots so we can have more... I know everything is a work in progress, just you know, saying my thoughts. - MaJoR (talk) 22:53, 8 November 2012 (CET)
 * Well, I already fixed the alignment issue on YouTube template (this means that if you embed videos using youtube template and images thumbnails of the same size, they'll be aligned properly now). I'm still trying to develop a template to randomly select 3 videos (whenever a visitor access the page) and put the rest of the videos (if exist) as links. I'm trying to make it without using expensive parser functions, but implementing this aren't so easy. In the last case, we can embed only one Video thumbnail but instead of using a single video ID we use the ID of a playlist containing all videos of that game, or, search in MediaWiki for a Video Gallery extension (that we may ask for some site admin install) or some extension that make possible of doing a template that works like the Kolano suggestion (for me, the best until now). About the WIP Image Template, I can add an parameter for setting thumbnail type (like bug, image gallery, screenshot, etc.) and then we hardcode the thumbnail size directly in the template (like XXX px for bug, YYY px for screenshots, etc.). The most important part is to keep using small templates like YouTube and the WIP Image to make easier changing thumbnails size, position, etc in the future. For example, if all testing entries from the wiki has been hardcoded in every game page instead of being included through a template, making them collapsible would need editing every single game page (like we'll need to do when the media gallery standard is set). Since we used a template, a simple change in the template source made all game pages have collapsible test entries - Jhonn (talk)

Uh, guys... wiki activity has gone through the roof thanks to the forum integration, and all the youtube videos have been changed over (we'll have to clean some stuff up once things are all settled), on and on and on. But uh, we still don't have things set on how to handle everything! Do we go with a media gallery or gameplay screenshots/gameplay videos, do we have a limit on youtube videos, how is that handled? I don't mean to be a nag, and I know there is work to do first, as we need to investigate the randomizing and stuff, but still, stuff is happening, we need to get on this. Let's just keep moving forward. - MaJoR (talk) 04:45, 11 November 2012 (CET)

The media gallery will have both videos and screenshots right? If so, that would be a bit cleaner. Having only one category, with three videos on top, followed by countless screenshots. As for the limit, I think we've all mostly agreed to having 3 as a limit. I agree, the randomizing is a good idea, which isn't hard to implement, so we'll have to wait for Jhonn in that regard. In a nutshell: 3 videos(embedded) and unlimited screenshots, right? -Garteal (talk) 12:11, 11 November 2012 (CET)


 * Well, what about the additional videos? Links? Links would kinda ruin a media gallery. Plus screenshots and videos would have to be the same size for a gallery, and I was talking about using 200px. See, we have stuff to discuss. Oh, and don't forget Kolano :P. - MaJoR (talk) 12:26, 11 November 2012 (CET)


 * Ofcourse. We all have to be on one line for things to happen, so we'll discuss until that is settled. As for what I meant, I thought it was better to create a mockup then try to explain it. This is what I meant for the media gallery, or atleast, something close to that. So they don't necessarily have to be the same size. As for the additional video links, if we have Javascript/PHP support, that can be easily settled. Though we might have to create a location where people could contribute their videos to. - Garteal (talk) 12:48, 11 November 2012 (CET)