Metroid Wiki:Discussion Center

Welcome to the Metroid Wiki Discussion Center! Use this forum to ask the staff and other senior community figures Wiki-related questions, to alert others to major issues, or make suggestions that would affect the Wiki on a large scale. Before posting a new question, please examine the Help Guide to see if your issue is addressed there. To facilitate ease of browsing and replying, please: Place your question at the bottom of the list Place the title of your question == between pairs of equals signs == Remember to always sign your posts with name, date and time (by adding: ~~~~)

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• 2012-2013 (July-July)

Template change project

A while ago we started the task of phasing out the artwork, logbook image, screenshot, and sprite templates in favor of the more universal source template. While we have made progress, these templates are still on over 1000 pages. If anyone would like to assist me in their removal so we can finally finish this project, it would be greatly appreciated. MK 00:19, 17 July 2013 (UTC)

It's on my to-do list, too. =P —Embyr 75  ^--Talk-- 18:30, 17 July 2013 (UTC)

Made this, it should help with the project. Everything is now all in one place :)MK 00:59, 21 July 2013 (UTC)

With template:Sprite killed in action (yay!!!), I would like to focus our efforts on Template:logbook image now. This one will take a bit more work cause we also need to make sure we're using the wonderful image that Dany36 provided and not ones from Metroid Database. MK 04:35, 25 July 2013 (UTC)

Featured Content

Hey, I thought I'd bump a conversation started here regarding the front page. Reading the whole conversation would probably be better, but I'll try to summarize the main points. Quoth myself:

To summarize the conversation above, the discussion suggests:

1. Coming up with some sort of rotation schedule for featured content
2. Finding a way to make "Remember Me?" more sustainable

As for the featured content, ideas included:

1. Rotating on a by-visit, weekly, or monthly schedule
2. Creating a tabbed template for the main page, giving users the ability to toggle through articles/images

The only suggestion for expanding the "Remember Me?" section was:

1. Allow inclusion of any editor-original topic related to Metroid, turning the current "Remember Me?" articles into a series within the Wiki Exclusive umbrella.

Eventually I created the two tabbed templates currently on the front page for Featured Articles and Featured Pictures, but I figured those templates would be a temporary measure. That discussion was a while ago and was basically just me and Bop1996 throwing ideas back and forth, so I'd like to get more input since there's been a refreshing surge of activity here recently. Any comments on either topic? —Embyr 75  ^--Talk-- 01:30, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

Featured Article/ Main Page content

I am going to propose that we give admins autonomous ability to promote featured article. There are two few users to vote, and there are only three active admins, I think we can each trust each others' judgement on placing articles in the featured pool and this way it can be updated with more frequency. I really don't see a situation in which one of the admins chooses and article and it turns out to be bad. And in the worst case scenario, we can rescind whatever article was chosen. If a non-admin wants an article featured, I think he or she can simply ask an admin, and in that case the admin can decide whether or not the article is worthy. In most cases I imagine, the admin would probably give a yes vote. At the very least, I propose a two admin yes count, though a one admin decision I think would work fine. Also, we should have a consistent featured pool, somewhere between 3 - 5 articles/pictures. --Malake256 ^{{Talk | Contribs}} 04:20, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

I think I like the idea of having two votes from admins, otherwise there really wouldn't be a point to nominating things, and I've always thought giving people the ability to vote on nominations was a good community builder. I think an alternate to this would be to create a time restriction on how long an article can be up for nomination. If it has significant support by the time the time limit is up, it can be featured even if it doesn't have five votes.

As for the consistency of the featured pool: do you mean a consistent pool of things to be nominated, or a consistent pool of things featured on the front page at one time? I'm not sure I like the idea of limiting how many things we keep featured on the front page. I assumed that once we grew to that point, where there was more articles or pictures than could be reasonably stored on a tabbed template, that we'd move to a different sort of rotation. Just because we have more featured articles or pictures doesn't lower the quality of the articles/pictures that were initially featured, and we should still draw attention to them. (Disqualifying featured content because it no longer meets our standards for what's considered good enough to be featured is another matter.) —Embyr 75  ^--Talk-- 04:36, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

Two admin votes sounds good to me, though I wouldn't mind the occasional user opinion or two if they are available (just to say what they like or don't like about it, I'd appreciate their insight). A time restriction can definitely be made for the duration of nominations, perhaps a month? I don't mind a slow growth for the articles and images considered "Featured", just as long as it is a growth, we definitely need to have extra scrutiny on their quality to make sure they are the best we've made. MK 05:08, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

I think three months would be a good amount of time, since people kind of flow in and out around here. Give them a chance to voice their opinions. Also, I think the same rule should apply for opposition votes: Two or three opposition votes by admins (or even non-admins) should disqualify a nomination. (That's already in the rules. :P)

Also... any comments on the section above concerning featured rotation options and ways to make the "Remember Me?" section of the page more sustainable? Bop1996 and I had a long conversation about it a while ago on the Main Page talk page... —Embyr 75  ^--Talk-- 02:59, 20 July 2013 (UTC)

I think it's a little difficult to sustain when people, as you said, flow in and out. It is fun to write, but after the first couple it felt forced rather than fun. If we came up with a specific schedule on releases, I might be more inclined to write. Otherwise I think it'd be best to drop it and/or replace it with something else on the main page. We could go for a more simple design on the main page, maybe a lot smaller or something. --Malake256 ^{{Talk | Contribs}} 21:49, 20 July 2013 (UTC)

Editorials like this aren't easy to sustain, while I think they are cool, I wouldn't mind discontinuing them indefinitely. A slight redesign of the main page would be interesting Malake, there are a few old things on the community bar that need to be removed that we discontinued a while ago. And on the topic of the featured pictures... can we also change it so we don't have to give a critical analysis of a picture? I can't think of what to say sometimes...MK 00:42, 21 July 2013 (UTC)

As far as the Remember Me section, I wasn't thinking of having you continue to write those. I think it's a little impossible to write in such a narrow topic indefinitely, and on one's own. It was more like... why not make it a place where users could submit creative articles, (For example, I'd be interested in writing something on the Theoretical Physics of Interdimensional Travel, as seen in MP2), and we could feature interesting, fan-made articles on Metroid related topics? On Zelda Wiki these are called "Wikiexclusive" articles. They are a lot of fun to write and to read. Then all of the currently existing articles in the section could be part of a Wiki Exclusive "series" (written by Malake, and called "remember me"), but the following Wiki Exclusives could be written on a variety of topics by various people. That's just one option, though, to keep that section alive. (It'd be renamed, probably, of course). If we were to redesign though, I guess we could just abandon that project.

I'm not sure what you mean about the critical analysis of a picture...? —Embyr 75  ^--Talk-- 02:02, 21 July 2013 (UTC)

I apologize there, a bit of confusion on my part lol. I don't know why but I thought that I had to give much more detailed opinion as to why it should be featured. As for the editorials, I'll go along with whatever we agree upon. I have no strong opinions either way. MK 00:07, 23 July 2013 (UTC)

I like the idea of having a general creative outlet rather than having the section be specifically about old and obscure metroid things. Though I think there is plenty of relevant material for that in Metroid, giving a section where users or even just readers can submit anything would be cool. Like maybe even an entire chapter of fanfic can be used to cross promote. And we can always keep remember me? As a 'type' of submission. It would be fun to write about the physics that would be involved in some of these things :D Names? Metroid related? Or something like ZW's exclusive? --Malake256 ^{{Talk | Contribs}} 08:11, 23 July 2013 (UTC)

You can check out ZW's page on Wikiexclusives for more info on what they do there, we may be able to use a few of those guidelines for our own version (One of the most creative articles I saw was "The Science of Cryobiology in Zoras," cuz, you know, they get frozen a lot. :D). I definitely think these kinds of articles should be subject to admin review before being published. And I think we should still encourage references (where applicable). Any ideas for a name? Metroid-related ideas off the top of my head are... Mission Logs, Metroid Wiki Data (or just Wiki Data/Logs/Lore), or maybe Wiki Artifacts. I admit they're a bit cheesy and I'm totally open to different ideas if none of those are appealing. —Embyr 75  ^--Talk-- 16:25, 23 July 2013 (UTC)

I think we can lay down some of ZW's rules for a base. I'm liking this idea --Malake256 ^{{Talk | Contribs}} 22:52, 24 July 2013 (UTC)

I made a rudimentary Help Page in my Sandbox. Any comments or changes? Also, any thoughts on a name? I'm thinking something logbook-y sounding. —Embyr 75  ^--Talk-- 00:28, 25 July 2013 (UTC)

I propose calling it... The Daily Beetal! (horrible title, please don't choose that...) Do you have any specific titles you want to propose? And I think it looks nice so far, a change I would suggest is maybe having a staff vote on it instead of just one staff member. MK 00:37, 25 July 2013 (UTC)

Yeah, sorry, I didn't make myself clear. As on ZW, I intended all the admins to weigh in (but for the writer to send it to just one of us. Simpler for them). I'll rewrite that section in my sandbox to make it more clear. As for names, I posted a couple above (Logbook-related names, like Metroid Wiki Data/Logs/Lore/Testaments/Research Data or just Wiki Data/Logs/etc), but I'd like to hear some other suggestions if you guys have any... —Embyr 75  ^--Talk-- 01:28, 25 July 2013 (UTC)

New Templates

Prod has made some new templates that will serve as replacements for old templates or ease the coding in others.

• {{Game-color}} will replace most color templates
• {{Game-link}} will replace colored game link templates
• {{Game-key}} is to be used in other templates to simplify the game linking

I'm still trying to figure out their usage so that'll be coming soon. MK 04:28, 24 July 2013 (UTC)

And just an FYI, I will preserve a listing of all the colors on something like this, probably on the game-color template page itself. MK 04:36, 24 July 2013 (UTC)

Life form category refinements

So Malake and I been working on further refining our category system and we have two proposals to make. The first is removing the wildlife categories, replacing them with the already existing life form categories. The reasoning behind this is to simplify that system a bit and certain things like transplanted species or Pirates don't really work in those categories.

The second is a reworking of the categories themselves. We've been working on some revamps here. More information is on that page, but the most recent revision is much more organized in my opinion.

Any input on this would be greatly appreciated :). MK 20:27, 28 July 2013 (UTC)

I really like revision 2. I think it's simple and elegant. But we need to rename the "sentient/non-sentient" categories; sentience is basically having consciousness, so being unintelligent doesn't mean you're non-sentient. :P Also, sorry about being inactive all weekend, I was outta town. —Embyr 75  ^--Talk-- 00:50, 30 July 2013 (UTC)

Room articles

Hey guys, I haven't done much here lately since I've been doing plenty of work at Nookipedia (where I'm an admin), and I still have plenty of unfinished work here. I was wondering if any of you guys could help me out with the room articles. To make things easier, I have a preferred order of the room articles under "Current projects" on my user page. I would greatly appreciate any help with these projects while I'm at Nookipedia, and I may return to add more content to these articles as well. --_{Wookiee 123} 01:15, 30 July 2013 (UTC)

Hey, good to see you around! Expanding content and adding images to the room pages is definitely on my to-do list. Hope you can come edit with us again really soon! —Embyr 75  ^--Talk-- 02:16, 30 July 2013 (UTC)