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Removing All Featured Projects from Sidebar

We had another request to add an entry to the Featured Projects sidebar (LWOTC) and since we now have a Featured Projects page I've been wondering if it wouldn't be better to remove all the current Featured Projects from the sidebar and put them in that page, for several reasons:

1. The wiki has always been focused on the games and not on fan projects.
2. There are wiki-relevant sidebar links that keep getting pushed downwards everytime a project is added, like languages or tools.
3. With the reboot of the franchise and OpenXCom, a lot of fan projects are in the works.
4. While we provide a space for their subwikis if they need, the wiki was never a hub for fan projects and to publicize/monetize them.
5. Those projects typically came and use our space but I can't remember any who contributed to the wiki's main pages about the original XCom games, other than placing links to their projects on the original game pages for publicity.
6. A couple projects have also left and set up their own wikis, without ever bothering to at least delete their content once they stopped updating it, since they decided they didn't want to be here anymore when they didn't get the publicity they wanted.
7. UFO2000 & UFO:AI have zero or limited development for years - they're dead or almost.
8. OpenXCom and OpenApoc already have links for their subwikis on the UFO and Apocalypse tables.
9. Having Long War and Long War 2 then leads to other large projects like Long War Reworked and Long War of the Chosen also wanting the same attention/publicity. All of those could have also links for them on the Enemy Unknown and XCOM2 tables.
10. And the Featured Projects page could be reworked so that they are properly grouped together according to their specific game that they originate from and it could also include a short description about their scope and objectives.

Ideas/Comments? Hobbes (talk) 06:07, 4 January 2022 (CET)

Featured Projects on Sidebar

I was requested on Discord by user Ucross to add to the Featured Projects section of the sidebar the mod that he is working on called Long War Rebalance, which is a mod of Long War, and thus a mod of XCOM: Enemy Unknown, and I refused the request for the same reasons I already presented below regarding the Piratez mod for OpenXCom. It's arguable for the same reason that Long War shouldn't on that list for the same reason, it being a mod, but since Firaxis gave the official recognition to both Long Wars, and even gave support to Long War 2, that's the difference I see between Long War and all the other mods made for all XCom games, and thus worthy of recognition as significant contributions by and for the community. The same reason behind UFO2000, OpenXCom, OpenApoc and UFO:AI, they are all entire new XCom games built by teams of fans, and the first three are playable, and you can create mods for them. OpenXCom and OpenApoc are in active development. As for personal projects to be present on that section, I can think of a ton of projects related to XCom that would deserve to be there, and that would make that list endless an unpractical. And at the end, the objective of this wiki is to inform about the games. Hobbes (talk) 20:28, 27 September 2020 (UTC)

It still would be nice for players to be able to find all of the mods/projects that this wiki hosts. What about something like: "Other Projects" where it's a page that lists all other projects occurring for other games? Just a suggestion. Feel free to ignore me. =D Ucross (talk) 16:33, 12 November 2020 (UTC)

I am rather partial to this solution myself. The wiki does need to keep its main focus tight as far as its main content is concerned. But nothing says we cannot have a page that acknowledges and point to other projects of interest. NKF (talk) 04:10, 11 November 2020 (UTC)

Server Move

In the near future we're going to move to a new server (hosted by NineX) because of the constant site outages and other technical/security issues that have been affecting the wiki since the last year. NineX currently hosts the OpenXCom forums and site, so I feel that it will be a good move since the OpenXCom community has been the most active in keeping the old XCom games alive.

However we're still not sure if we're gonna be able to keep the old domain (www.ufopaedia.org) or if it will be necessary to move to a new one, and ask everybody to update their links. We're trying to keep the old domain, but right now the choice is to be between keeping things as they currently are, or get the technical/security issues fixed and get back the wiki properly working, even if that means losing the domain and the traffic.

I personally prefer the 2nd option since we need a wiki that is 100% available for both consulting and editing information, like it did in the past. Hobbes (talk) 14:17, 25 January 2018 (UTC)

Temporary Domain

We completed the server move thanks to NineX, who also upgraded the wiki's software. The process required that we moved temporarily to a new domain, ufopaedia.info, but we'll return to our old domain, ufopaedia.org, as soon as the process is complete. Thanks for your patience :) Hobbes (talk) 21:40, 28 January 2018 (CET)

Migration finished. ufopaedia.info is redirecting to ufopaedia.org. Mediawiki software have been upgraded to latest version , and whole site audited. NineX (talk), 13:27, 31 January 2018 (CET)

Piratez in featured projects?

It seems out of place that piratez has it's own table on the UFOpedia, and uses (Piratez) to distinguish its own pages, but is not listed on the featured projects. Going to add it if nobody objects. The rationale for adding Long War in this talk pages history (Huge makeover of the original version) pretty much goes doubly so for piratez. Greep (talk) 21:57, 5 May 2019 (CEST)

Only admins can edit Featured Projects. And I object to it.

I proposed to add Long War because it was the only major mod available to EU/EW, and even got recognition and compliments made by Firaxis (with Jake Solomon joking that he was the guy that designed LW's beta), which was then extended to hiring the LW team to make official XCOM 2 mods for the game's release. So LW is really something special that deserved to get its own recognition.

Piratez is just one of several total conversions available for OpenXCom, and the intent is not to list all mod projects on Featured Projects, Because then X-Files, Hardmode or Area 51 would also qualify, being also expansions on their own right, although without Piratez's popularity.

Not to mention that there are other current XCom games like XCOM 2 that have also their own mods. So, if Piratez is added, what happens if someone else from another XCOM game, or current projects being developed like OpenApoc, decides to ask for his major mod to be added?

The primary intent of this wiki is the XCOM games, and Featured Projects is a way to recognize the hard work and dedication of a few fan projects, OpenXCom being one of them - and if you add Piratez then you're basically saying that Piratez is at the same level as OpenXCom, when Piratez wouldn't exist if there wasn't OpenXCom to begin with.

Finally, pages with their own suffix (Whatever) don't necessarily translate into Featured Projects, check the existing Interceptor and the Enforcer pages, it's more of a matter of internal page categorization. Hobbes (talk) 23:23, 5 May 2019 (CEST)

Ah okay, but I'm not really convinced, this feels like a matter of scale. I'm not trying to get it added as a featured project because I'm a fan, it just doesn't seem right to not have it there regardless of those reasons. If you look at something like UFO:AI or OpenApoc, on the main featured bar, they're almost completed unupdated and tiny. If the idea is that Piratez should have it's place on this wiki, and not on it's own wiki, then it really should have a place on the main page. If it's not, why is it even on here with hundreds and hundreds of pages? I type in just about any search for x-com related things and see a bunch of piratez pages in the autocomplete. If X-Files, Hardmode, Area 51 had hundreds of pages on the wiki, I'd recommend adding them as well, though they don't. Anyways, just my thoughts, I won't push this anymore. Greep (talk) 01:53, 6 May 2019 (CEST)

Edit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Orphan explains the argument more. It The piratez main page is a huge presence on the wiki, and is essentially unaccessable on the wiki. Which is just not what wikis are about. Greep (talk) 01:59, 6 May 2019 (CEST)

There are a lot of interesting points in your reply, that I'll try to answer separately to those, since some I have already considered myself.

UFO2000 and UFO:AI are dead projects, UFO2000 had its glory days more than 10 years ago (I was heavily involved with it) and it is playable (although hardly anyone plays it) and UFO:AI was never finished, so there's really an argument there whether both should still be on Featured Projects. OpenApoc on the other hand is actively being developed right now, they have their own Discord channel and it might take a while, but the general feeling is that one day it will reach 1.0 status, like OpenXCom did.

Piratez section on its wiki grew up by itself out of the OpenXCom until now, Dioxine or anyone ever asked permission, that I recall, but since we got the space and it is XCom related, no one objected, and the community is pretty supportive of each other's projects.

If by Auto-Complete you mean Google's search bar then the reason why you get so much Piratez results associated with XCom is because it uses your past search history and page views. I don't get any Piratez results when I search for XCom things because I don't play Piratez (and I don't play LW or LW2 also, but I suggested that they should be added because of their importance).

And this brings me to another important point, which is that Piratez includes content that some people don't really think belongs in an XCom game, namely it being about space pirates, slaves and mutants against aliens, and with the nudity involved. I know it takes place in an alternate universe where XCom lost the war, but if Firaxis announced that XCOM 3 followed Piratez setting, there would be a huge fan backlash because XCom has almost always been about an international, semi-clandestine organization of humans fighting aliens, and never required nudity to be atractive. Piratez setting and aesthetics appeal to a lot of people but to a lot of others it doesn't, even inside the OpenXCom community.

And for instance, I'm the lead developer of Area 51 that was mentioned before, and while it expands the base UFO: Defense game like EW or LW did, if not more, I do not think it should be on Featured Projects because of all the reasons I mentioned before. As a developer I'd love it to be more publicized, but here I need to think first as a wiki administrator, and like I said before, this is an XCOM wiki since it was created 15 years ago, not an OpenXCom one. If this was a wiki dedicated to OXC, then Piratez, Area 51, Tech-Comm (another total conversion I'm working based on the Terminator universe), Warhammer 40k, Dune, and all other major projects, XCom based or not, would belong here, but it isn't.

Finally, we're not talking here about a single orphan article. Orphan articles mean that they can only be accessed by searching the wiki since there aren't any links to them anywhere. Piratez can be accessed through here https://www.ufopaedia.org/index.php/Mods_(OpenXcom). The issue really is that you think Piratez should be more advertised on the wiki by adding it to Featured Projects, but as I said before, it is questionable whether it deserves to get that sort of attention on an XCOM wiki. Hobbes (talk) 05:37, 6 May 2019 (CEST)

Heh, well in any case, looks like someone else added it to featured projects about a year ago: it's just on the featured projects at the very bottom of the page, along with all the other featured projects but with piratez squeezed in haha. Somewhat tangential but a bit on topic: Maybe the front page should just have a section at the top listing all the relevant games on the wiki? I remember like a decade ago when it was just the 1994 version/TFT and Apoc and the main page was very organized and clear, but it's really not now what with the tables of nearly every game on the wiki on the main page and some random lists in random places. Case in point: Piratez is already considered a featured mod by someone and neither of us noticed until this point, nor did I know even enforcer or these other spinoffs existed that you mentioned earlier existed or were on the wiki at all. In any case, glad to have talked this out. Greep (talk) 11:21, 6 May 2019 (CEST)

Bluh, one last point, I promise. I think maybe your having made/worked on a huge mod might be influencing your decision: you make it sound like it'd be a bad thing if all OpenXcom mods were featured and I don't think this would even be bad at all. E.g. a lot of games wikis list basically all the relevant large mods for the game in a very visible place. Example: https://rimworldwiki.com/wiki/Main_Page has a link to a list of pretty much every major mod visible up front without needing to scroll down. To me it just seemed odd specifically for piratez here since it also had a huge space on the wiki, but I don't see an issue with Area 51, Warhammer 40k, etc having a visible place.

XCOM 2 section problems

Hi guys,

I've noticed that there's loads of problems in the XCOM 2 sections - misspellings, orphan pages, a lack of organisation, and so on. Even the term "MEC" was spelt wrong in a page title. I've been tackling a few of these issues, but I'm just thinking that this isn't worth having because Fandom have their own wiki at [1] and they've got nearly everything down already.

What are we trying to do here - dedicate this wiki to the old X-COM and a few mods (ahem, Long War), or adding in Firaxis's new XCOM grouping?

Just a question in editorial direction.

--SpeedofDeath118 (talk) 17:08, 16 December 2019 (CET)

I think the question is more, what are you interested in doing? Hobbes (talk) 23:11, 16 December 2019 (CET)

The Wiki was set up long before the reboot series, so you could say the classics were its original focus. However it would have been remiss to not accommodate the new games as they appeared. However the wiki thrives or declines entirely on the input of the people that make use of it. If the interest and willingness is there, the sections will grow. If not (looks at the early spinoff titles), then perhaps not so much. NKF (talk) 07:31, 17 December 2019 (CET)

Enable dark mode theme?

Would it be possible to add a dark mode option to this wiki? Something like these: https://help.fandom.com/wiki/Converting_to_hydradark https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Skin:Timeless/DarkCSS

Hi and thanks for asking but after consultation with NineX, we don't have the resources (someone experienced with Mediawiki) to keep the UFOpaedia.org updated to the latest Mediawiki releases. Otherwise, the odds are that things will start breaking with UFOpaedia.org if we change the custom skin, which has happened to other wikis. Hobbes (talk) 23:32, 25 October 2021 (CEST)

I see a "Skin" option when I navigate to Preferences > Appearance (https://www.ufopaedia.org/index.php/Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-rendering ), but no options other than the default appear. -JimmAYY2 (talk) 19:38, 23 October 2021 (UTC)

New and old images not showing?

When adding images to new pages that I've been editing I've noticed some images will never be displayed properly, this includes new images I've uploaded and old images from years ago that I've simply linked in a new page

On this page:https://www.ufopaedia.org/index.php/Lab_Ship You can see that while the 'side view' image loads in correctly, however the terrain map images fail to load properly, spouting errors. These are all new images.

Conversely on this page: https://www.ufopaedia.org/index.php/Battlescape_Strategy_(Hardmode)#Disembarkation_Strategy While most of those images are also new, the third image is the very old 'motion scanner' image from the vanilla wiki that has been around for a decade, it is also failing to load.

I've no idea why some images will work and other's won't. I have also tried to do the edits and upload new images from entirly different devices and computers but to no avail.

Just reporting the issue. Cheers Steelpoint (talk) 17:52, 3 June 2022 (CEST)

I just tried to see the image being hosted of the LabShip that wasn't displaying on the gallery and it didn't also load, with the similar error message. Since all the majority of the .pngs you upload seem to be correctly appearing, I'd advise to recheck those .png files. Hobbes (talk) 03:38, 5 June 2022 (CEST)

I've tried taking a new image on a different machine and have re-uploaded it to no avail, I've even taken a new image and converted it to a different file format but it still produces an error output. I've even uploaded the images to different websites to see if there's a problem with the files but the other websites display the image with no issues.

If we check some of the older pages I made, using the same program to get the UFO images, the images uploaded just fine as evidenced here: https://www.ufopaedia.org/index.php/Sentry_Ship

I'm just not sure of the issue or if its even one on my end due to how random the issue is. If it was just affecting images I am screenshoting from 'MapViewer' then I'd say that's it but its also cropping errors for a wide range of images from different sources. Steelpoint (talk) 12:11, 5 June 2022 (CEST)

I think I might have encountered this bug years ago but I think it got eventually for the images to appear. Try using .jpg instead? Otherwise, I'm afraid I don't have a clue of how to solve it. Hobbes (talk) 17:33, 9 June 2022 (CEST)

Have you guys found any solution to this ? Horace vr (talk) 11:57, 5 February 2023 (CET)

Thumbnails issue

Horace vr (talk) 12:41, 4 February 2023 (CET)

I am seeing issues with thumbnail creation, for both old and new pictures

For example here: https://www.ufopaedia.org/index.php?title=Template:Research_required_(LWR) If you try to thumb the picture (by adding a pic size), you will get an error;

This happens with existing pictures (I tried to restore the original pic) and to new pics (Event research2.jpg is a pic I uploaded a few days ago)

This could be related to the issue reported earlier by Steelpoint: https://www.ufopaedia.org/index.php/Talk:Main_Page#New_and_old_images_not_showing.3F