User talk:Ngng: Difference between revisions

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Revision as of 05:06, 23 September 2009

Welcome!

Hi Ngng -- we're excited to have PCSX2 Wiki as part of the Wikia community!

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-- Catherine Munro <staff />

Hi, How do you add images to the bottom of the game's page ?

I have put up Scooby-Doo! Night of a 100 Frights, but it's not showing up in the "Playable" list. Just wondering if, where it shows "Status" when editing a page, I put Playable instead of a number, which I see you used a number when I viewed your Drakan page.

Cheers, DKTronics 11:55, September 20, 2009 (UTC)

Yep! Put '2' there to make it playable (maybe I should mention it somewhere?). To put (screenshot?) pictures to the bottom you'll have to add this codes:
<gallery>
Image:<Put you image name here>|<any comment (may be ommited)>
</gallery>

Try it out! :) --Ngng 12:05, September 20, 2009 (UTC)

Cheers, I think you should put up a list of what each number means. Are they on a sort of sliding scale ? 1-3/4/5 ?

Cheers for the image links, I'll give that a try, hopefully not breaking anything ;)

DKTronics 12:47, September 20, 2009 (UTC)

Ha! Noone can break wiki, it's just impossible :). The numbers are: 0 -- broken, 1 -- in game, 2 -- playable. --Ngng 12:52, September 20, 2009 (UTC)

Hi, Cheers for the reply on adding a new game.

I already tried, earlier on, to add a page from a game already up. I simply highlighted everything and done the usual ctrl+c ctrl+v, clicked preview but instead of showing a similar page to the ones up, it simply showed a page of the text I'd pasted in, although I never committed the saved page.

I'll give another try, cheers.

PS, I know this is easy stuff for you, but remember I've never done anything like this before, ever. I'm more into building hardware, keeping up a Youtube page, video work with avisynth, heck I can write my own complex scripts for avisynth, and playing games across many platforms. But I learn quickly, and pick up on stuff I enjoy doing.

Well I've learned this all myself in last 2 month + the wiki markup in last four days. You're not alone here :)

Ah, I see that wikimedia is a bit over it's head with the new 'rich' editor... You'll need to switch to the ordinary (not reach version) in your preferences. It's on the page editing. Check out the box 'Enable rich text editing'. I'll not alter this new page you've created so you'll have a place to try... --Ngng 18:06, September 21, 2009 (UTC)


hi, have a look at Final_Fantasy_X_zero29 for my attempt at a game page design, it uses two infobox templates Template:Infobox_game_zero29 and Template:Infobox_region_zero29. i am aware of the fact that it still needs quite some fine-tuning, but it's enough to get a general idea about its final look. I tried to avoid those big infoboxes with all the info in them, because i think that my (or better the original wikipedia) attempt is way more flexible. i know that it requires the editor to have a bit more wiki knowledge than in your approach, but everything i used is explained in the little infobox "Editing Tips" on the left of the screen when editing, so it should be ok, i think. It's mostly simple formatting stuff, after all ;) zero29 19:38, September 21, 2009 (UTC)

Yep I've already seen your page and I'd say it looks most beautiful! As you've mentioned this way the users must know what they're doing and... Well, lets talk about it just after I'll finish my fighting with that categories adding stuff (it's geting out of hand). I'll tell you what I think and what would I propose to change. We'll to come to the consensus. Just give me a minute, ok? --Ngng 19:50, September 21, 2009 (UTC)

New Game pages design...

Ok, I'm done with these categories. Sometimes wikimedia frustrates me so much I wanna scream. And it still has a looong way ahead of it to become a comfortable tool. Lets now talk about your new design.
I like your page to say at least. It's a good work and invested time. These are my thoughts however:

  • Now users have to edit two templates instead of one. It maybe a bit confusing.
    • It can be addressed if we use one template but add variables like status1, status2, etc... Though it's not the best idea either.
  • Sadly only few games may receive this kind of attention so most of the time we will look at much less described pages
  • The main issue with this I think as it is not templated text. It is an article like articles in Wikipedia, but in Wikipedia mostly every article is different in contents and purpose and we're dealing here with many-many-many typical articles. The contents of this article can be copied and then modified by users but in this case it will defy all the benefits come with templates. It's structure cannot be changed quickly on every page, we cannot add some features in it, we cannot change designs everywhere at once, we cannot say add some logo pictures or cannot color this text. This approach is more than welcome with articles about Lilypad, GSDX, Jake Stine, the timeline of PCSX2 (granted they will be created) but with mostly identical games it is too expensive to edit!
  • The untemplated text is a chaos when it comes to the look of it. Not given the significant supervising most of the pages will eventually look different. Some will have deformed placement, some will differ only in punctuation, but they'll be different and thus will look like a chaos.


I propose that we template your currently untemplated page. It does not matter that it would (or would not) increase the number of mini-templates. And it's not necessarily will look different. After all the plain article of yours is that same 'candy' structure of mine WITH the difference that you have actually added some good and useful comments to it. Dont like my candyfloss, it's ok with me, I dont really care how these pages will look if only they will have that good info on them.
What do you think?
I have to say I'm going to sleep now and will see your answer only tomorrow. --Ngng 21:07, September 21, 2009 (UTC)

sorry, but that's exactly my point. you have no idea how much attention every article receives, that's why an open structure is way better. more popular games like ffx will of course draw more interest than less known games, but your template tries to "hardcode" a minimum page size for those lesser known games by including a huge table with few or rather useless info in it. if noone provided info like recommended specs/plugins/etc. for a game, yet, there's no reason to clutter the page with a template to pretend something different. and don't underestimate your visitors, if the wiki works the info will come, i for myself plan to include a similar amount of info for all the games that i own, and even in my ffx article there are still sections that would need to be more thoroughly explained ;)
just to make this absolutely clear: i am not an enemy of infoboxes, there is clearly a use for them in a wiki, but i tried to include them ONLY for short and static facts like the game ids. plugin recommendations e.g. might change with every revision, and you often need to state a reason for your choice, so you will need quite some commentary space for all the sections.
just try to include all the info on my page into your template and you'll see the limitations of it ;)
well, let's see if we're able to create a "more" templated version of it, but without at least the option to extend it at will it won't be feasible for the topic of your wiki, i fear. The "Performace comments and warnings:" section of your template will start to look overcrowded quite fast and still cover only a tiny fraction of the useful additional info about a game. zero29 22:33, September 21, 2009 (UTC)
It's a bit narrow view when you're saying that the former template will look bad after expanding, I disagree here. Well, actually I will include all your info to the current FFX page to show you that this approach is livable. Yes, we're yet to see the detailed article on any game. And yes, it doesn't mean such the articles aren't coming, but I'm having a hard time to believe there will be so many of them even with the good attention from the public. This information about the games is too statical and too scarce to be expanded into free paper view. This is a table info we're talking about and you propose that we're to write the entire poem again and again for every row of this table.
And please address also my last two agruments.--Ngng 05:12, September 22, 2009 (UTC)
i added responses to these arguments in the next section -- zero29 19:14, September 22, 2009 (UTC)

While that FFX page looks good, it resembles Wikipedia too much, and to be honest, if you want to go down that road then you might as well just stick to Wikipedia itself.

I like things simple, too much info and things start to take too much time. I have nearly 50 original games here with me, some are borrowed but most (85%) are mine, and theres no way I'm going to do complex pages like that for that amount of games, I just don't have the time.

If you want to go down that road, then best of luck to you, but I'll not bother as I've got too much going on right now. DKTronics 21:20, September 21, 2009 (UTC)

You don't have to fill up all info about the game. His page is not really that different apart from the look. We're not talking here about forcing anyone to do anything like adding too much info on every game. Every bit of information is appreciated. --Ngng 10:05, September 22, 2009 (UTC)
i made the template especially with the "original" in mind, as it makes it easier for visitors to orient themselves. that does not mean we have to copy wikipedia, but you will need better arguments than "it resembles wikipedia too much" to justify a change. remember, you don't have to fill out all sections of my page layout, if you don't feel like providing any info about specs or plugins or speed hacks, just leave it empty. someone else might take her/his time to add that later. if you only want to add the most basic info about a game, then my template requires exactly the same amount of work as the current one. one copy & paste and filling out the sections. that's it ;) zero29 22:33, September 21, 2009 (UTC)

This is my first time using any wiki, so what I really, really like about Zero29's page is it's direct edit mode. I prefer his version just for this mode alone, but I also find it easier to browse the page and find my info. Not rama 11:20, September 22, 2009 (UTC)

And what do think about housekeeping the pages that have no common structure? Sigh... This is a matter of taste I think. And now I come to think of it, I'd table even those issues down (and I will try to in my version) so the whole page would look like a table because it's a game card and not a free article, one of the 1500 similar game cards (do you really think there will EVER be 1500 articles about games here?). If you're talking about Table Of Contents mentioning browse, I think it's more than useless on such a small page. I even forced it to disappear in my version. Anyways, the sooner we'll come to a decision the better because I'm feeling that I'll be quite busy with something else soon. --Ngng 15:38, September 22, 2009 (UTC)

Fusing a bit ...

Take a look at this page. It's not yet perfect but you'll see some benefits of this approach when you look in source code. It's the same old box after all. I've not modified anything and just copied all your text inside suppressing Table Of Contents which IMO looks ugly there. I'm not discussing here the need of "issue types" (it is not so clear to me) and some additional trivial details.
I can also say it for myself I would not even consider to write this for Drakan. Yes, there are small glitches in GFX: weird texturing, sun through the walls, some trees look awful, in some places the ground shows through the floor. It's not that important for the user. It can be mentioned like say "as of r14xx GSDX shows some minor GFX glitches". --Ngng 06:55, September 22, 2009 (UTC)

ok, one final attempt ;)
• i like your merged infobox on the right, would have don't it almost exactly the same, if i knew how (i'm currently not in the mood to dive into the conditionals of wiki markup), a splitted version was just faster for my draft ;)
• first: you completely left out my "plugin recommendations" and "performance tips" info :(
• second: the example page contains only an infobox for one single region currently, imagine the page with all three region boxes in it. it will instantly be longer and harder to read than my version, without even providing more info.
• third: i had a look at the page code and wow, your template is getting more and more complex with every revision. perhaps you think a bit different about that, but you are the author of it, try to see it from my, the editor's/reader's perspective. you will need quite some comment lines to explain all the fields that can be filled out, and it would take considerably less time and code lines to just explain basic wiki to the editors instead. and i guarantee you, that will not be the last revision of it ;) is it extensible, btw, e.g. would issue10/11/12/n work, too?
• fourth: you currently focus too much on the needs of your editors by trying to template the whole game page, but more important is the perspective of the visitor, your wiki audience. formatting is very subjective, i don't want to argue on that, but i think you are disregarding the need for a readable page layout too much at the moment. the infobox tables in their current state "break" the whole layout of the text body of a page: first the introduction in usual wiki style, then the infobox tables for all the regions of the game and then back to the common wiki style for the "known issues". i know that this is not a question of hard facts, but my eyes surely don't like these breaks.
• fifth: probably the most principle and most important aspect, you're currently trying to create a "template to cover them all" (shameless "lord of the rings" reference :D ), but you cannot succeed in that. because if you would, then you would have created a whole wiki inside a wiki, just with unnecessary limitations. and then you could just use the original wiki instead of your templated one. what you don't seem to see is, that the template you're craving for is already there: it's called the wiki ;) the wiki we are all currently editing already is the template, the toolbox, that enables us to easily gather, sort, connect and present the info. which doesn't mean, that you shouldn't extend it with your own templates, but only for those cases where such a template is a useful addition to the already exisiting tools, like with the infoboxes on the right. i'm absolutely on your side when you think that my page needs quite some work to be a useful template, but i think that your template is an unnecessary attempt to kind of "reinvent" the wiki itself, and your recent extension to your template made me even more convinced of that ;)
• sixth: on your centralized "housekeeping", that is a nice feature for you the owner alone, but as long as it limits the editing possibilities and makes the info harder to find, it's not a nice feature for your editors and readers. and please, don't always assume that the amount of attention for many game articles will be that low, how can you know that before even trying? it will grow with time just like any wiki, if you are forcing it to be finished in some weeks by limiting all game pages to a game card, then it's no wiki, period. organic, or as you might say "chaotic", growth is not only unavoidable, it's the soul of a wiki. of course there will be differences between the articles, noone is forced to use your current template either and would still be able to create a useful game page from scratch, right? would you just delete or completely overwrite her/his submission then?
• as i already said, if we're able to create a fully templated version of the game page without limiting it's extensibility, i'm in. if not, well, then we'll just continue to use your template ;)
• btw, i like the TOC, as it allows one to directly link to subsections of the page, like http://pcsx2.wikia.com/wiki/Final_Fantasy_X_zero29#Known_Issues e.g.
• damn, almost forgot: the issues i included for ffx are just the most popular thread topics for this game, they are posted several times a week. i think that the ability to link to this wiki for those "more than only known issues" would be a nice feature over repeating the same solutions again and again. i would really like to see at least some of the game pages here as game specific faqs, that was my aim with the ffx page. not all games need this amount of info, right, but games like gt4, persona or gears of war e.g. do, imo. if we all take our time to create high-quality pages with all the available info in them, i'm quite sure that referring to this wiki could become almost semi-official. -- zero29 19:14, September 22, 2009 (UTC)

I'm sorry, but you seem to want YOUR way or no way, and as far as I'm concerned, I don't like it and never will, period. This isn't an argument, this is MY opinion. If you want to go down this road then why not go and create your own wiki ?

To me, all this completely unnecessary information will go wasted on idiots who won't bother reading them.

As far as I'm concerned, thats enough for me. I'm out, and you 2 can carry on squabbling until you both either sort it out or let it die.

DKTronics 19:26, September 22, 2009 (UTC)

Come on, I'm still to change a thing and you're already thinking about leaving. A bit too hostile. Please believe me, I'll resolve this matter in the most smooth manner possible! :) --Ngng 19:52, September 22, 2009 (UTC)

Keeping up and finishing...

• first: you completely left out my "plugin recommendations" and "performance tips" info :(

They're still in the box.

• second: the example page contains only an infobox for one single region currently, imagine the page with all three region boxes in it. it will instantly be longer and harder to read than my version, without even providing more info.

I'm balancing now on the verge of leaving only one infobox per game, so the comment field will provide any necessary info (if it's necessary).
hm, might be a bit tricky with games that have serious differences in emulation compatibility between regions, like the dbz game iirc. but there's always the known issues section for that ;)

• third: i had a look at the page code and wow, your template is getting more and more complex with every revision. perhaps you think a bit different about that, but you are the author of it, try to see it from my, the editor's/reader's perspective. you will need quite some comment lines to explain all the fields that can be filled out, and it would take considerably less time and code lines to just explain basic wiki to the editors instead. and i guarantee you, that will not be the last revision of it ;) is it extensible, btw, e.g. would issue10/11/12/n work, too?

Yes, but I'm having some second thoughts about issues at all. Do we really need them? The prefered way for me is to set up the comment (it can be long and can contain any kind of formatted text like yours) as it was done earlier. So IF the author WANT to set some extensive comments he or she will write them to the field provided formatting them anyhow they want.
well, it is at least an option to extend the page with custom content. let's see if it works.

• fourth: you currently focus too much on the needs of your editors by trying to template the whole game page, but more important is the perspective of the visitor, your wiki audience. formatting is very subjective, i don't want to argue on that, but i think you are disregarding the need for a readable page layout too much at the moment. the infobox tables in their current state "break" the whole layout of the text body of a page: first the introduction in usual wiki style, then the infobox tables for all the regions of the game and then back to the common wiki style for the "known issues". i know that this is not a question of hard facts, but my eyes surely don't like these breaks.

Yes, that's why I'll remove them completely. As I said before these are not the articles we're talking about here. These are the static tables. Articles about PCSX2 should be of the ordinary text. And that will be much more appropriate both for visitor whose seeking to find info on various games in the same places and for editors.
ok, fine.

• fifth: probably the most principle and most important aspect, you're currently trying to create a "template to cover them all" (shameless "lord of the rings" reference :D ), but you cannot succeed in that. because if you would, then you would have created a whole wiki inside a wiki, just with unnecessary limitations. and then you could just use the original wiki instead of your templated one. what you don't seem to see is, that the template you're craving for is already there: it's called the wiki ;) the wiki we are all currently editing already is the template, the toolbox, that enables us to easily gather, sort, connect and present the info. which doesn't mean, that you shouldn't extend it with your own templates, but only for those cases where such a template is a useful addition to the already exisiting tools, like with the infoboxes on the right. i'm absolutely on your side when you think that my page needs quite some work to be a useful template, but i think that your template is an unnecessary attempt to kind of "reinvent" the wiki itself, and your recent extension to your template made me even more convinced of that ;)

I disagree here. I'm not inventing anything, I'm presenting the static tables somehow.
ok, this is where we completely disagree with each other. let's just leave it at that and go on.

• sixth: on your centralized "housekeeping", that is a nice feature for you the owner alone, but as long as it limits the editing possibilities and makes the info harder to find, it's not a nice feature for your editors and readers. and please, don't always assume that the amount of attention for many game articles will be that low, how can you know that before even trying? it will grow with time just like any wiki, if you are forcing it to be finished in some weeks by limiting all game pages to a game card, then it's no wiki, period. organic, or as you might say "chaotic", growth is not only unavoidable, it's the soul of a wiki. of course there will be differences between the articles, noone is forced to use your current template either and would still be able to create a useful game page from scratch, right? would you just delete or completely overwrite her/his submission then?

No, I will not do that, if the submission will be of a good value (not vandalism), I'll convert it and the user will understand how it should be done here. You must understand that every house has some rules/restrictions. Try to reedit a popular article in Wikipedia on your taste, deleting some parts changing the others -> breaking the style of the beast. Either you will be marked as a vandal or will be told to cease and your changes will be reverted in a second. I'm trying to keep this house as smooth for everyone as possible, you must understand me and accept it. Please.
yes, no freedom without any rules, i know that ;) but i still fear that your rather static game cards will discourage users to include more info than for the provided standard fields. because if already some random specs, plugin version and a little comment makes the page look as full as all the other pages, why adding more info? but again, that seems to be the main difference between our preferences.

• btw, i like the TOC, as it allows one to directly link to subsections of the page, like http://pcsx2.wikia.com/wiki/Final_Fantasy_X_zero29#Known_Issues e.g.

You can still link without the TOC. It's linked to headers not the TOC itself.
oh well, i had tried it on your page and it didn't seem to work, but the header is called "Known_Issues" and not "Known_issues", disregard that complaint... :D

• damn, almost forgot: the issues i included for ffx are just the most popular thread topics for this game, they are posted several times a week. i think that the ability to link to this wiki for those "more than only known issues" would be a nice feature over repeating the same solutions again and again. i would really like to see at least some of the game pages here as game specific faqs, that was my aim with the ffx page. not all games need this amount of info, right, but games like gt4, persona or gears of war e.g. do, imo. if we all take our time to create high-quality pages with all the available info in them, i'm quite sure that referring to this wiki could become almost semi-official. -- zero29 19:14, September 22, 2009 (UTC)

You can create any FAQ for your taste, it is always a good idea. And those issues can still be placed in comment section of infobox in full. But the only thing I'm really asking of you is that you have to accept my vision. Not on tables and such but a vision about housekeeping. There's a host and there're guests. Guests can do anything they like apart from breaking the windows and burning the house down. I have some hosting experience, I'm happy to have a guest that want to make the house better. The thing is: I've made my house painted in blue with the golded doors and the big brown roof, it's looking quite beautiful in the morning from the seaside. I've choosen the acute triangle for the shape of the attic and have made some additional changes to its design. Lets just keep it that way, ok? And I'll go make some good tea... --Ngng 20:45, September 22, 2009 (UTC)
i understand your approach and i absolutely respect your opinion, otherwise i wouldn't take my time to argue about it ;)
btw, what about a category like "low specs" to gather all games that should run on less powerful systems? there are already 2 or 3 threads with recommendations that we could include in this category. and in addition to that categories of all games with unknown status for a specific os? so that a user could easily find games that she/he could provide a status update for (win: unknown, linux: unknown, mac: unknown)? -- zero29 23:09, September 22, 2009 (UTC)
Low specs is a good idea but categories should be added by hands. Try it. About unknown status -- that's a bit different story it shouldn't be good to add them by hands (too much work), I can autoassign them but unfortunately the article has to be saved to update these categories. So either we'd need to save all 1500 articles only to have those 3 new cats or I'd need to export all pages into xml, update them and import again. The former seems too hard for a case the latter is also a kind of overkill (some new changes could be lost in a way and I've never tried that before). I guess it can be done when it's really needed. We'll see. --Ngng 05:06, September 23, 2009 (UTC)