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New Affiliation[edit source]

Dear MetroidWiki,

I just created my account so I could propose a new affiliation. I am here, talking on behalf of Icaruspedia of NIWA. Since it has been claimed that the Metroid and Kid Icarus are sister series, it would only be fitting for us to take on that tradition. Kid Icarus: Uprising in particular mentions the Metroid series quite a lot, especially regarding a certain enemy called a Komayto. With all this similarity, I find it baffling that we aren't affiliated already. I hope you accept,

JORDAN DEBONO (talk) 17:10, 20 July 2012 (UTC)

I personally believe we should affiliate with your wiki since both wikis are under the NIWA wiki, not just for the Komayto relationship. IceBlue (talk) 22:01, 20 July 2012 (UTC)

unfortunately I cannot provide any hyperlinks for you to access. The Captcha is preventing me from continuing and I cannot seem to get the test right. I'm sorry for any inconvenience.

An affiliation beside NIWA? I really don't see why not :] --Malake256 {Talk | Contribs} 22:55, 31 July 2012 (UTC)
Excuse my slow understanding, but are you positive with the affiliation or not? I can't tell if your against it or not due to the emoticon you entered. Sorry about this,
JORDAN DEBONO (talk) 15:56, 2 August 2012 (UTC)
I think he's genuinely supporting your suggestion. I'm indifferent myself, but if everyone is for it then that's fine with me. :) Embyr 75  --Talk-- 02:38, 3 August 2012 (UTC)
That's great! I will inform an active administrator on Icaruspedia so that necessary procedures can be made. JORDAN DEBONO (talk) 07:49, 3 August 2012 (UTC)
Sorry about this delay, but could you give us your banner so we can add it to our list of affiliates. Our Public Affairs Director Starphoria will do the rest. Thanks, JORDAN DEBONO (talk) 16:58, 7 August 2012 (UTC)

Hopeful return[edit source]

I recently purchased Other M. If I can muster the courage to play the game without going catatonic or something I'll add to our content. MKMetroid mf Sprite.gif 21:46, 8 September 2012 (UTC)

Your bravery will be long remembered! Embyr 75  --Talk-- 15:40, 9 September 2012 (UTC)
Well past the evil scene. My eyes... they burn. MKMetroid mf Sprite.gif 01:30, 12 September 2012 (UTC)

MediaWiki 1.19.2[edit source]

We've upgraded to MediaWiki 1.19.2 and upgraded all the extensions to the latest versions. Let us know if you see any bugs or issues. -- Prod (talk) 16:00, 16 September 2012 (UTC)

NIWA Check in request[edit source]

Hello, I'm dkpat from Golden Sun Universe/NIWA. I recently made a thread on the NIWA Forums that requests that an admin from each wiki "check-in" and give an update on their wiki activity. I would appreciate it if someone from Metroid wiki could check in. Thank you. (I tried to link directly to the post, however, the Asirra extention prevented me from doing so. Please also check on this and be sure you are using the standalone version, not the version included with Confirm Edit, which is known to have this problem) Dkpat (talk) 16:56, 25 October 2012 (UTC)

Checked in on NIWA. Not sure how to check on the extension you mentioned. Embyr 75  --Talk-- 00:20, 26 October 2012 (UTC)
It's something that Prod would have to fix. I checked the Special:Version page and you are not using the standalone version. Just try to get him (or someone with server access and mediawiki know how I suppose) to check it and fix it. Dkpat (talk) 15:31, 28 October 2012 (UTC)

Area Articles[edit source]

This is going to be the start of a somewhat coherent attempt at seriously expanding and improving the content, organization, and overall quality of our articles based on Areas. What I would like to do is outline some of the biggest problems these articles face, some of the potential solutions, ways to improve the categorization of these articles, and other issues for discussion.

Problems[edit source]

  1. Inconsistency in organization. This is a major problem even just among Metroid Prime Areas, which are probably the most organized and consistent of them all. This also is a problem for the Fusion and Other M Areas especially, which are built by the Federation beforehand and therefore are difficult to organize in the same way.
  2. Combining story elements, descriptions of the area, and basic in-game facts. This is something most, if not all, Area articles are terribly ineffective with. For instance, Chozo Ruins lumps the backstory, architecture, and then more backstory all into one general section, then goes on to describe the environment and general area by discussing the enemies present and the items in the game without really using either to relay information effectively.
  3. Categorization. Category:Locations is simply a mess, and it's got all the Areas just lumped into the parent category, while smaller locations like Glacier One get the nice, easy-to-navigate, specific categories.

Possible Solutions[edit source]

  1. Create a standard that can be adapted to Metroid Prime Hunters planets, Metroid Fusion sectors, Super Metroid areas, and Metroid Prime 2: Echoes areas alike. This would likely have to have a good deal of discussion beforehand, but it would drastically improve how effective our area articles are at actually providing a coherent source of information.
  2. Probably one of the biggest parts of the possible organization standard. This should be done so that we place proper emphasis on important elements of the area, source it all well, and make it possible to get whatever kind of information someone would be looking for on an area page.
  3. Reorganize Category:Locations. This also impacts things like Category:Aether. What I'd like to do is set it up so that you can find locations by looking through them by game or by where they are in relation to other locations. For instance, Category:Rooms in Agon Wastes would be part of a greater category called Category:Agon Wastes, which would also contain things like Category:Agon Wastes Life Forms. Category:Agon Wastes would be part of Category:Aether, which is part of Category:Locations in Metroid Prime 2: Echoes. This may wind up intersecting with some way of organizing creatures and the like, but that's another project.

Issues to clear up[edit source]

  • Agreeing on a common standard for organization. Should be discussed in detail, and then whatever we decide should be applied soon afterward to area articles.
  • Agreeing on a good recategorization system. Needs discussion.
  • Sources. This is something I think everyone agrees is something we need more of on these articles, but while there's no end of sources for articles like Phazon Mines or Chozo Ruins, the Fusion or Super Metroid sources would probably take a bit more poking around in dialogue, manual, or website info.

Hopefully, this giant wall of text is comprehensible enough that we can get some serious improvements out of it. I'm entirely open to discussion, suggestions, revisions, and the like, so long as it happens. Bop1996 (Talk | Unfinished projects) 18:20, 19 November 2012 (UTC)

First of all, I'm all for recategorization. But I'm not sure I entirely agree with the idea of a standardized layout for organizing Area articles. For example, certain places, such as the Chozo Ruins you mentioned, are full of backstory, from everything to Chozo architecture to religious significance. On the other hand, areas like Magmoor Caverns or the Impact Crater would need to be organized completely differently because of how different they are as in-game entities. All I'm saying is that standardizing Area articles, which cover things that can be so completely diverse, might be short-sighted, or worse, restricting.
I'm not sure I see the benefits to standardizing the layout of these articles at all. Can you volley an argument for why this is necessary? You often use the phrase "ineffective," but I fail to see exactly to what you are referring. You make it sound as though the Chozo Ruins article, for example, is randomly sorted, whereas, upon closer inspection, it's actually written linearly (Founding -> their architectural legacy aka "What they did after they founded it" [which could conceivably go under the Environment heading] -> the Corruption and Space Pirate arrival, followed by the Environment heading, which covers everything as it is during Samus's arrival). Now that my opinion is way out there, I'd love to hear further evaluation from you. Anything to better the wiki! Embyr 75  --Talk-- 20:47, 19 November 2012 (UTC)
Well, I had been hoping that whatever layout we come up with would be flexible enough to compensate for the discrepancies between Areas with massive background history and Areas with no real background at all, for instance. Every Area may not have enough info to form a coherent "History" section, but they should all have at least enough to give a general layout and description of the area. Some articles may require more detail of the way technology is integrated with the Area, while some may need detailed descriptions of the Phazon growths all over the place. At the very least, having some sort of base standard that all area articles should be up to par with seems optimal. Even if this standard can't just be rigidly applied to every article, at least they'd have something in common, and they'd be much easier to read and use for information if that was the case.
As for the Chozo Ruins article, I really like how good a job the article does of describing what the Chozo did there before the Leviathan strike. However, the "Architecture" section, I think, would be better if it was either incorporated with the description of the area or written more like it's part of the entire narrative the "History" section writes. But I digress, since going over it now, it's not horribly disorganized, especially compared with the way other Area articles just stick a few paragraphs in there with both story and gameplay elements there wherever they can fit without really differentiating between any sort of description at all.
So the takeaway from all this, I suppose, is that I'm definitely willing to concede that a rigid standard would be a very bad thing for our Area articles, but I still maintain that having some sort of baseline standard that provides the basics of what an Area article should have and what kind of information goes with what would be very beneficial. Bop1996 (Talk | Unfinished projects) 23:05, 19 November 2012 (UTC)
I'd agree with all that. You're right, providing at least some sort of requirement skeleton as a baseline, upon which editors may salt and pepper as needed, definitely sounds like something we could use. Did you have a rough draft in mind already? I'm all ears. =) Embyr 75  --Talk-- 00:02, 20 November 2012 (UTC)
Well, I have a few basic ideas for a good skeleton. First, if an area can, it should get a section devoted to the background of the Area, organized chronologically, and adapted to fit the needs of the article in question. For instance, Agon Wastes would get a pretty sizable chunk dedicated to the Luminoth settlement there, the history before the Leviathan strike, during the war with the Ing, and after the Space Pirate arrival. Brinstar, on the other hand, would maybe get some details from the game manuals of Metroid and Super Metroid, some manga refs, and that'd be all. Sectors like Sector 1 (SRX) would get brief sections dedicated perhaps to the noteworthy Fusion or Other M plot events that occur there and maybe a mention of how the sector was set up by the Federaton beforehand.
After that, there should be some section(s) devoted to describing the area in detail in terms of its appearance; layout, architecture, general types of terrain, structures, whatever. Again, the sub-headers can be customized to fit whatever the Area is like. Obviously, we aren't going to want detailed descriptions of biological features in Phazon Mines or industrial complexes in Phendrana Drifts.
A bit of a quandary I'm having at the moment is whether to give the inhabitants/mechanoids/military forces in each Area a section of their own, or to incorporate those into the sections about the area's layout and such. I can see benefits and drawbacks to both, so it might be best to work with those on a case-by-case basis for each Area. In either case, it'd be best to give a nice description of the creatures, mechanoids, or things like Space Pirate forces in each Area at some point in the article. Also, somewhere, probably its own section, there should be something about the upgrades, but I'd like details about acquisition kept to a minimum since there's other pages that should go into more detail about that sort of thing.
Also, there should hopefully be a gallery on each page and references for all these sections, as those are fairly important, and other side info like that.
After that, the categories mentioned earlier should be applied so that the Area gets some sort of game-specific category as well as categories based on geographical location. I believe I went into more detail on this earlier in this topic.
I'm entirely open to suggestions, feedback, comments, whatever on this. No matter how you slice it, this is a pretty big project and an equally big set of changes, but I hope this will drastically improve our content in a type of article that is pretty underwhelming as things stand right now. Bop1996 (Talk | Unfinished projects) 23:01, 21 November 2012 (UTC)
Well it looks like you've given it a lot of thought! Everything sounds good to me so far. I don't have much of a comment besides "I agree," except on sections concerning creatures/mechs/military section. That's a toughy. I think it makes sense to add a section wherein we can note every enemy that appears in whatever area, purely for the sake of having all the info we possibly can for an area. But the question is how. I'm not loving the idea of a long, bullet pointed list. And descriptions of each enemy will get pretty long winded. On Zelda Wiki (did you see another reference to ZW coming? :P) they've been using galleries in place of lists, which looks a lot nicer (it's what I did on the Luminoth Technology page). So that's an option. The same thing could be used to list upgrades, with the image, name of the upgrade, and number of them (as in the case of Missile Expansions). Unless you have an idea that might work better? Embyr 75  --Talk-- 00:11, 22 November 2012 (UTC)
I like the idea of having galleries for those things, the only problem would be getting some nice transparent sprites/logbook images for all of those, which is really something we should theoretically have anyway, but we don't have as many of those as we should as of right now. In any case, provided we don't get any new additions to this discussion in the next few days, it's looking like we should be good to move forward improving Area articles soon. Bop1996 (Talk | Unfinished projects) 19:39, 23 November 2012 (UTC)

Massive Reorganization of Category:Locations[edit source]

I came to the discussion center to create a topic on this, but turns out it was sorta already here. I have been reorganizing Category:Locations and a couple other categories. I guess I sorta just started doing it instead of gathering opinions, but I just wanted to categorize some Fusion locations and built off from there. Now that I've started though, I want to get it going and see what people think. For one, I'm giving each major location its own category, such as Cat:Chozo Ruins or Cat:Sector 1. These each are going to reside within categories of where they spacially reside, Chozo Ruins goes within Cat:Tallon IV and Sector 1 goes in Cat:Bottle Ship. I can see that this may seem to get redundant, but it is the most thorough thing I could come up with that could remain consistent between different games.

On another note, I gave each Game a category, to contain categories such as "Images from Metroid Prime" within it. Lists such as "Glitches in Metroid Prime" should be categorized here as well. I'm thinking much of the categorization gets clearer as we go on, naturally, but wanted to log here when and what is happening.

One more thing, when we get into these massive edits, many of us can clutter the Recent Changes with a mass amounts of very similar edits. Its not that important, but if it bugs anyone, maybe we can give admins access to one Bot account just to remove the clutter. I don't really care either way, but was throwing it out there in case it bugged anyone that the RC is basically useless for a short period of time. Sorry for the long post, cheers :] --Malake256 {Talk | Contribs} 18:39, 2 April 2013 (UTC)

MediaWiki update 1.20.4[edit source]

Our FB post says this update makes the diffs easier to read, but I find it much harder. The layout is fine, but the colors are really hard on the eyes: lime green on white and dark green on dark purple? Not so great. Any way we can change this? Embyr 75  --Talk-- 04:07, 20 April 2013 (UTC)

You can try some new colours in your user css (let me know if you need help with that). If you can find some good ones that work, let me know and I'll update it. -- Prod (talk) 17:37, 20 April 2013 (UTC)
Woah you're right, I'll see if I can find a color --Malake256 {Talk | Contribs} 19:45, 20 April 2013 (UTC)
Fixed it, it appears to be causing other things to go wonky as well though, like {{nav}}, but I'll see if I can fix them as well :] --Malake256 {Talk | Contribs} 07:43, 21 April 2013 (UTC)
Thanks! -- Prod (talk) 02:43, 25 April 2013 (UTC)

Image Claiming[edit source]

This may be less of a question and more of a comment. So on gimp, on some of the gifs that I work with, there's a comment section somewhere where it by default says "Created by GIMP". I used to change it whenever I remembered to "Created by Malake256 for Metroidwiki.org using GIMP" or something along those lines. I never thought it would pop back up but I came across a couple of these: [1], scroll down to the "Metadatos" and click "Mostrar datos detallados". This is the Metadata hidden within images, and on this guy you can read that Malake256 created it. I don't really mind that our homies at MOver used a sprite or two, especially considering they are really good at citing their stuff, but I think we can use that to link to MW using the hidden data. By pasting [metroidwiki.org] in the metadata, we can have a hidden link to MW whenever anyone uses the image. It's the kind of stuff that a google crawler would come by.

Also, I think there may be some sort of categorizing application of this. Maybe we can use the metadata to tag certain images? Whatever the case, this was more of a point of interest and kinda funny than anything :] --Malake256 {Talk | Contribs} 03:53, 29 April 2013 (UTC)

Interesting find! I think you can change the comment default by going into the "Preferences" under the "Edit" tab, and going to the "Default Image" section. I haven't tested it, but I've changed my default to something along those lines, just in case. I wouldn't have any idea how to apply the metadata to categorizing. But very interesting indeed! I just saw one of my much-slaved-over transparent images at "another website" the other day. If only I had known! lol. Embyr 75  --Talk-- 22:39, 29 April 2013 (UTC)
That sucks :/ Well what I was thinking is something related to the search bar. When you search something, I think it will pick up what's written within the metadata. So if we search for say "Red Elephant" and there isn't a page on red elephant, the picture tagged with Red Elephant in its metadata would show up in the search. I don't really know how this would apply to anything too practical, but maybe we can come up with something sometime later. --Malake256 {Talk | Contribs} 18:56, 30 April 2013 (UTC)

Caching[edit source]

We've started to notice that the wikis start to slow down on weekends when we hit our usage peaks. To help keep things snappy, I would like to add caching in front of our web server. However, this has one major downside: MediaWiki won't be able to keep track of how many pageviews each page actually gets. There's a sentence at the bottom of each page "This page has been accessed 1,304,179 times." That will no longer be accurate. This means the view count on Special:Statistics won't be updated as much (maybe 10% of our total views will be reflected there). What do you guys think, are these view counts that important? -- Prod (talk) 20:20, 3 May 2013 (UTC)

For the sake of boosting performance, I wouldn't think it's that important at all, especially since we can edit a message on Special:Statistics saying that it's inaccurate due to this reason. If it can speed it up, I think it's worth it! --Malake256 {Talk | Contribs} 22:14, 3 May 2013 (UTC)
View counts are interesting, but not important. I say, Away with them! :) Embyr 75  --Talk-- 23:29, 4 May 2013 (UTC)

I think we're still ok till about july/august, which is when our traffic spikes, so it won't be till then, but I'll go ahead with doing more research into it. Thanks for the input! -- Prod (talk) 01:41, 9 May 2013 (UTC)

Game Linking Templates[edit source]

I am here to speak out on behalf of laziness!! Ok, so, I don't like having to type ''[[Metroid Prime (game)|Metroid Prime]]'' every time I want to link to Metroid Prime. (I had to type it all out again! Argh!) I know it only takes two seconds, but I'd love to just be able to type {{MP}} and have that spit it out for me. Now be do have Template:Mp1, Template:Mp2, and the like, but these each have a unique color associated with them, like dis: Metroid Prime, Metroid Prime 2: Echoes. So, that's cool and everything, but let's be honest, it severely limits the usability of those templates. I move that we alter these templates so the fancy colors go away and they're more usable in the body of an article. If anyone objects to that idea, perhaps these fancy-color templates can be moved (to, perhaps, "Template:Mp1-colored" or something unoriginal like that) and use the simple abbreviations for a quick game-linking template. Thoughts? Embyr 75  --Talk-- 05:27, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

I was thinking the exact same thing. Lately I've been doing lots of work around Nookipedia, and they use this system for each Animal Crossing game. It does get tiresome typing out the game names, so I can see your point. --Wookiee 123 07:47, 16 July 2013 (UTC)
Well I kinda like the coloring so I would rather not get rid of it; though seeing as that's a pretty easy solution, I would comply with the removal of the colors if enough people go for it. Just creating new templates (like say {{MP1-QL}}) would also be pretty easy and I would prefer this over getting rid of the pretty colors. MKMetroid mf Sprite.gif 19:55, 16 July 2013 (UTC)
Alrighty, I have no problem keeping the pretty colors at all, so long as we can still come up with an easier game linking system. I think it would be really intuitive to use the basic abbreviations for the in-article game linking template (so {{MP1}} and {{MP2}} would produce Metroid Prime and Metroid Prime 2: Echoes). The colorful versions, on the other hand, aren't ever really used in an article, mostly just in other templates and navs, so I think we can afford to name those a little less obviously. Embyr 75  --Talk-- 20:50, 16 July 2013 (UTC)
k, <game>-colored looks good enough so I'll take care of that then. I'll also put them in the edit tools for added ease. MKMetroid mf Sprite.gif 22:29, 16 July 2013 (UTC)
Our server will have to "catch up" to the editing of all the templates so I'm not gonna do the changes all at once, just in case I break something. MKMetroid mf Sprite.gif 23:16, 16 July 2013 (UTC)
Just a note about these, please be sure to {{subst:<link template>}} on pages, for prettier less lazy looking links. MKMetroid mf Sprite.gif 21:28, 17 July 2013 (UTC)

Hey I have a question about that! I've seen this before and never asked. What does addeding the "subst:" actually do? Doesn't it produce the same template as writing the link template without? What's the difference? I'm not trying to disagree, I actually don't know lol. Embyr 75  --Talk-- 21:30, 17 July 2013 (UTC)

Subst places the coding of the template on the page so {{subst:mp1}} creates the full link to Metroid Prime once you save instead of just {{mp1}}. Because it places the exact coding, (minus stuff in noinclude tags) it shouldn't be used with all templates. MKMetroid mf Sprite.gif 21:43, 17 July 2013 (UTC)
Oooooooooooooooooooooooh. Ok, thanks. =P Embyr 75  --Talk-- 04:36, 19 July 2013 (UTC)