Talk:Main Page

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New Main Page layout.

I'm working on a new Main Page layout. Found here: [1]. So I was wondering if it would be possible to apply something like this ([2])? Preferable (http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:NoTitle) --Kokkan 16:34, 18 September 2012 (EDT)

Looks good to me, just one thing: why is the OpenXcom logo displayed? Hobbes 09:11, 4 October 2012 (EDT)

That was just a aesthetic choice. =) --Kokkan 12:36, 4 October 2012 (EDT)

I see :) Well the thing is that it's that placing that logo there is going to bring a lot of attention to that project. My question was if that was intentional or not. Hobbes 12:43, 4 October 2012 (EDT)

Kokkan, would it be possible to squeeze the 'featured article' on the corner below the 'UFOpaedia News' (probably enlarge the corner)? I like how the new design has a compact look to it and to me it would look better if the 'featured article' was integrated with the news sections. Or probably even switch its position and put it on top rather than the 'UFOpaedia news' Hobbes 12:57, 4 October 2012 (EDT)

Right now it depends on the width of the browser and the content in the Featured Article. I might be able to set some auto-width on the XCOM New window. --Kokkan 09:11, 5 October 2012 (EDT)

I was wondering if it wouldn't be better to bring up the Enemy Unknown 2012 table as the first table, at least for some time after the game is released. With my current maximum resolution both tables still appear one over the other, and I think the UFO Defense table might need a little reorganization and after it is done both games go back to being side by side. Or any other ideas. Hobbes 20:15, 8 October 2012 (EDT)

What?! This layout should work with all resolutions down to 1280x720 without stacking items. So it should be fine on everything except the smallest ( <11" ) notepads and pads. --Kokkan 04:49, 9 October 2012 (EDT)

My resolution on my monitor is 1280x1024 and both tables are stacked. Hobbes 05:00, 9 October 2012 (EDT)

Same issue here with the overlapping tables, and my screen's 1024 pixels wide. Doesn't look any better on the tablet. Quick solution: Break the table out and have it on top ala the original's old main table, and have the original follow immediately after.

A while back I had wanted to redesign the front page but had to shelve it (and then quickly forgot about it). That was to make the main page just contain the news and a list of box art for the various games that point the users to separate main pages for the different titles, allowing the main tables for each title to be a bit more elaborate. Perhaps this might be a good time to resurrect that concept? NKF 07:15, 9 October 2012 (EDT)

I'll place the EU 2012 table on top of the original game table (*sniff* *sniff*) for now until a permanent solution is found or the issue is fixed. I'm good with that solution or any other.

Quick fix: I've moved it to the Featured section. Hobbes 08:03, 9 October 2012 (EDT)

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Hi folks, I think the partition to having the XCOM 2012 on its own main page is a really good one... now, folks can go to town on it, without having to keep touching the original fansite per se. But it is still kept close by having a highlighted announcement - Thanks for that, Kokkan! Some other comments:

It's UFOpaedia

• Do we need two "action" pictures at a time? Maybe we could have one, and use it to help balance the X-COM and the UFOpaedia news so that both "sides" of the news end at about the same place. For that matter, either side of the news could otherwise be tightened up, or expanded. But I wish they both ended at the same place so the main page looks more professional.
• This is the time to make the standard for the new XCOM 2012 pages. Can I please ask that, for the URLs themselves, we not put parentheses around EU2012? I see it leading to a lot of hassle because ultimately there will be citations in citations in citations and other future complexities, including for other sites trying to cite us... parens just make everything more difficult and clunky. If you agree but say "but it'd be a hassle to fix it now", I say that's the wrong answer because it's about to explode (I'm sure!!!), so it's really now or never. Just append EU2012, without parens... everybody can figure out what it means. :)
• I'm not sure just how/when it happened, but there's a lot of "Ufopaedia" on the main page. We use the original game as the convention setter, right? It's a minor thing, but still, we should have a convention, one way or the other. Does someone think it should be Ufopaedia?
• To me, the brief OpenXcom logo nip slip (laugh) raises the issue that I wish we highlighted these efforts better... maybe they could use a little shout-out at the bottom of X-COM News section (just a very brief mention or link - little or no write-up), instead of the tiny section they now have, way at the bottom of the main UFOpaedia page.

Again, the above points are minor... the big thing is the new place from EU2012 (great idea!). Thanks!! -MikeTheRed 14:24, 4 October 2012 (EDT)

We can set the hight at fixed values, but I really don't see a point to it. Since the size of the content will change. I prefer the parentheses in the naming, it clarifies what game the page relates to, and I don't see an extensive problem in linking to pages. Like ( Enemy Unknown). On the UFOpaedia & OpenXcom logo, I fully agree. --Kokkan 09:11, 5 October 2012 (EDT)

One easy trick to link pages with the (EU2012) suffix is to open the top page on the category, which usually contains a list of all items related with that subject, press edit and then copy/paste the links. Hobbes 09:19, 5 October 2012 (EDT)

XCOM Sidebar logo

One possibility I thought of would be to replace the old logo/badge on the upper left corner of the wiki with the newer XCOM badge. Here's some options:

Anymore ideas? Which would be best? Hobbes 13:44, 4 October 2012 (EDT)

The game logo is much cooler, while the insignias seem much more real-to-life. That said, I vote for cooler. The essence of the old X-COM was how scary cool it was. -MikeTheRed 14:33, 4 October 2012 (EDT)

I say keep the old X-logo, show the roots and lets not take over the entire wiki with EU2012. Use the new logos at appropriate EU2012 pages. --Kokkan 08:55, 5 October 2012 (EDT)

Not selling ourselves completely eh? ;) Well I just have to say I love the yellow and black insignia - that's probably the first XCOM logo/icon I really enjoy :) Hobbes 09:15, 5 October 2012 (EDT)

Showing roots is good, too. The gold one does not seem as high-rez as the other... can we get it any better? -MikeTheRed 09:55, 5 October 2012 (EDT)

Disambiguation of 1994 vs 2012 Entries

See for example the Sectoid entry, where a link to Sectoid (EU2012) has just been added as the first line of the entry. Are we going to do that for every entry that has the same name in 1994 as in 2012? That's a lot of minor edits someone will need to make! And putting these cross references under See Also would be less intrusive. But maybe a lot of enquiries from new site users are going to be related to EU 2012, and they will be confused if the cross reference is not clear and up-front. Let's agree a standard approach for this. As an alternative we could use disambiguation pages that show links to both the 1994 and the 2012 versions. Instead or as well, we could start moving 1994 pages by appending (EU1994) to the name. That's also quite a lot of work, but may be clearer in the long term. Even more work comes in if we were to use for example Sectoid as the disambiguation page, because that would mean rewriting all links to Sectoid in all the 1994 entries of the Ufopaedia. Thoughts everyone? Spike 03:56, 19 October 2012 (EDT)

On a related point - do we really need to append (EU2012) to every entry? I would think it's only necessary when the same term is used in both games. So it makes sense for Sectoid, but not so much sense for Gollop Chamber. I would suggest that for a term that is definitely unique to EU 2012, the (EU2012) suffix is not required. But there should always be an EU 2012 Category tag on the entry. Spike 06:28, 19 October 2012 (EDT)

If we don't tag everything now, do we risk the same issue we're running into with UFO Defense? Also, the new Sectoid page has a space between EU and 2012. No other new page has that. My OCD is making me want to stab people. Is there a way to edit it to not have a space? As far as which way to go, I prefer disambiguation pages much like wikipedia does, but that typically requires tagging both. I would be happy to do the leg work and chase down all the 1994 ones but I don't like how EU1994 looks (especially since it says 1994 in the Games column to the left [sorry - fixed that - Spike] ) and I don't know how to update page names. --PixelOrange 06:34, 19 October 2012 (EDT)

Yes, we do need to keep the games a part to not run into conflicting pages/links. Hence we suffix ALL pages on the NEW game (EU2012); this is the simplest and most clear way to do it. It does make it a bit of a hassle to link stuff yes. Even if some parts are unique, keep with the naming convention to keep it all as clear as possible. No, There is NO WAY we can do the same for the original game, there is just to much pages and links (and if we start and don't complete or something goes wrong, the wiki is in a fucked up state). So all pages on Enemy Unknown without the suffix refers to the original game. --Kokkan 07:12, 19 October 2012 (EDT)

So, if we're not going to retroactively update the old Enemy Unknown, redirects at the top of every page is my favorite choice (just as they do over at wikipedia). It gives you a quick link right at the top of the page, it's non-intrusive, and it's easy to implement across the board. --PixelOrange 07:38, 19 October 2012 (EDT)

OK but that's only going to be workable for the EU2012 pages, right? Any modification to all of the EU1994 pages is a big task, whether it's a disambiguation link at the top of the page, or a systematic rename to suffix "EU1994" on to the end of the page name - the workload is similar. I guess we could take a policy that says - anytime you create an EU2012 page, check to see if an EU1994 page of the same name exists. If so, add disambiguation links to the top of both pages. Or, for that matter, Move the EU1994 page by adding the suffix to its name. By the way, Move is how you rename a page, and the old name is preserved as a redirect to the new name. Spike 08:12, 19 October 2012 (EDT)

I agree that disambiguation notices/links on top of pages probably is the best way to handle this (as in the Sectoid page). Moving and creating disambiguation pages is to much workload, and to have some (EU1994) pages and some without would be even more confusing. So I say no (EU1994) suffixes at all. --Kokkan 09:17, 19 October 2012 (EDT)

I don't think it's that cut and dried myself. Moving (renaming) the old pages is less workload than creating the disambiguation links. Also, adding the disambiguation links will disrupt the style / formatting of the existing EU 1994 pages which were not designed to have these links at the top, and which have had a lot of effort put into their layout over the years. Creating a disambiguation page with the "base" name, eg "Sectoid", the same name as the existing 1994 page, is a huge workload, because then all the links will break. Creating a new page called "Sectoid (disambiguation" and redirecting to it is not much better. A simple Move/rename will not break any links, meaning low workload - same as inserting a disambiguation link/notice. Keep in mind that the scope of the problem is only the pages for terms that exist in both games. "Sectoid (EU1994)" vs "Sectoid (EU2012)" is part of the required disambiguation workload. Heavy Cannon (unique to EU1994) vs Alloy Cannon (unique to EU2012) does not need to be part of the workload. It's a safe strategy to keep naming all new 2012 pages with the EU2012 suffix, but whatever method is selected does not need to be applied to all pages in both games. For example, we do not label all TFTD pages with (TFTD). We don't say "Tentaculat (TFTD)" and "Chrysallid (EU)". We do say "Zombie (TFTD)" and "Zombie (EU)" (even though the differences are only cosmetic). Spike 09:51, 19 October 2012 (EDT)

We already had this discussion a while ago because of Apocalypse and the common elements of the series that extend to it and TFTD. I don't recall the discussion but you guys mentioned the main topics but the idea was to start using the suffixes, specially when creating new pages, and not to worry about the existing pages because of the workload involved. It's basically to avoid the mess of the original game's pages regarding naming and to help categorize identify pages.

This method makes linking a bit harder but it's a matter of using a few tricks (which I already use when linking on the original game), like open and edit the section page (Soldiers, Weapons, Alien Life Forms, etc.) and just copy/paste the links you need. That's also why the section pages usually consist of lists of items.

Finally me and Spike can delete, move and rename pages, as an administrators so just let us know what you need :) Hobbes 11:09, 19 October 2012 (EDT)

I've been thinking about the effects these new XCOM games (EU 2012 and the upcoming FPS) may have on the future of the series. If XCOM sees more games even further in the future that involve the aliens from the original, I don't think links at the top of the page is going to do the trick. We should make disimbaguation pages now to pave the way for recurring aliens and items that may make an appearance in any potential future installments. Just a thought!--SuicidalSectoid 21:26, 19 October 2012 (EDT)

Another option that I've been thinking over is asking Pete if he could set up a separate Wiki for the modern title(s) and keep this one for the classic titles. It would keep things tidy, and there's actually little crossover or common material between the new and old apart for historical and ancestry referential purposes. NKF 21:46, 19 October 2012 (EDT)

Personally I think all games of the series, old or new, should be all united in a single wiki. It helps this one grow, instead of just running out of material. It also shows how the series began and progressed to become what it is today. It helps people who are new to the series find older games in the series far easier and learn all their quirks and strategies. Of course there is what I mentioned above to consider, if this series really has been revived, then more games in the series may emerge and the new wiki could end up being "untidy".--SuicidalSectoid 10:54, 20 October 2012 (EDT)

Pretty Colours

You know what'd be cool? Different page themes depending on the game. Say for example, yellow for TFTD, red for Apocalypse, black / dark grey for XCOM, and so on. Or maybe even custom wallpaper for each title - nothing overly eye-catching, just an easy way to differentiate what you're looking at with a glance.

We'd need an extension to do it (I've already got my eye on a simple looking one), but before I bug Pete about it, what say ye all? The way I see it, we'd need to make one template page per "theme" - but then we'd need to edit just about every page on the wiki to implement them...

-  Bomb Bloke (Talk/Contribs) 02:59, 18 January 2013 (EST)

I wanted to do something similar many years ago when I started making the navbars so that when people went to a page, they'd go "oh, this is EU or TFTD" just by the colours. Didn't get received very well if I remember correctly. But, with todays better versions of wiki software and scripts, why not? Go for it I say. -NKF 17:47, 18 January 2013 (EST)

I think that's a wonderful idea, the issue is to pick a good color design that retains readability. Hobbes 18:30, 18 January 2013 (EST)

Great Idea! I second what Hobbes is saying about readability. If you can't read what's on the page there's no point to new colours.--SuicidalSectoid 17:45, 25 March 2013 (EDT)

{{StyleTest01}}So, yeah, I did bug Pete, and not long after he delivered: We've had the plugin online a while now...

Anyway, this afternoon I sat down and plugged some stuff into it. It works much like I hoped (though unfortunately it doesn't have much control over images - can't set them as background for eg). Adding the tag {{StyleTest01}} to a page and saving it (or, perhaps for now, previewing it - though I've applied it to THIS page for now) applies the effects within that template.

That one's just an experiment, might be a little garish maybe (I basically grabbed colour codes out of screenshots from EU2012; I won't call myself an artist), and doesn't yet override every wiki element that needs to be handled - but I reckon it's a decent start. :)

-  Bomb Bloke (Talk/Contribs) 03:47, 21 April 2013 (EDT)

I like it. Leman Russ 04:05, 21 April 2013 (EDT) Thanks! -  Bomb Bloke (Talk/Contribs) 06:41, 21 April 2013 (EDT)

Nice, I like trying to replicate but the colors sure need some testing. One thing I'm wondering: is it possible to use the font used in EU2012 (it seems to be Century Gothic)? Another suggestion I'd make is to replace the XCOM logo on the top left with the new one.

I've applied the styling to the page I'm currently working on: Class_Builds_(EU2012). The main issue is the color of the links (dark blue isn't the best for contrast). Another thing needed would be to change the default colors used in the table templates to match the new style. Hobbes 04:36, 21 April 2013 (EDT)

Apparently Century Gothic is not installed on most machines by default. It may be possible to load it on to the wiki somewhere and get viewers to download it as needed, but I really dunno. I'm guessing 'MS PGothic' is the best match that's widespread - I've tweaked the template to use that if Century Gothic isn't available, or to fall back to the wiki default if neither are on the viewer's machine.

I did try switching the logo, but apparently the plugin doesn't allow it. Or the icon isn't accessible to CSS. Or I didn't know which element to tweak. What I've read specifically states I shouldn't be able to use the required "background-image" tag, but that's exactly what I needed to do to change the toolbar at the top of the page...

I HAVE overridden the main 'wikitable' template, and there should be no blue links visible (except for ones leading off-site, I forgot about those)... In fact I'd go as far as to say the table looks great on that Class Builds page in particular (where the text matches the icons) - are you seeing what I'm seeing? A screenshot may be in order? I'm a little worried about browser compatibility in regards to my CSS overriding that which is already in the wiki site files.

Depending on how I go for time I may deal with image thumbnails, the category bar, table of contents etc tonight.

Please feel free to experiment if you feel so inclined! Either make a new StyleTestXX page and copy/paste my starter version in, or go right ahead and modify mine! If you lack any tools on your system for colour code generation, here's an online one.

-  Bomb Bloke (Talk/Contribs) 06:41, 21 April 2013 (EDT)

On my laptop I see it like this, I think it's the same and it seems to be using Century Gothic: style1.png - Hobbes

Ah yes, that was a match of colours, though you're definitely using a different font (it's installed by Office, see).

Still not sure what you're meaning about the tables, but I've switched monitors and see what you're saying about the links. I think maybe yellowy? Dunno.

-  Bomb Bloke (Talk/Contribs) 09:50, 21 April 2013 (EDT)

Yellow links look better than the previous ones. What I meant about the tables is that on the Class Builds the background color of each table is table while the page background is dark grey. I got Century Gothic installed (it's a free font IIRC), is it the one being used? Hobbes 11:20, 21 April 2013 (EDT)

Er...

The cells should have a black background, the header cells should be grey. This is what I intended, though if you're expecting something different (or have a different suggestion) I'm more then happy to try other styles.

I'd say you're indeed using Century Gothic. If you check the "font-family" line in the template, the web browser reads it from left to right, and uses the first font specified that exists on the computer (so if it can't find one, it falls back to the next, and so on). Hence if you start removing fonts from the front of the list and previewing the page you can compare each one. -  Bomb Bloke (Talk/Contribs) 19:11, 21 April 2013 (EDT)

There were a couple of white backgrounds on table but those seen to have disappeared. Century Gothic still looks the better (and it seems to be free) since it is the one (or really close) used in Enemy Unknown 2012. Hobbes 20:43, 21 April 2013 (EDT)

Best I can make out it should be possible to use an uploaded font no worries, though I'd need to bug Pete to actually get it on to the server.

In the meantime, bold tildes are pretty much rendered blobs under PGothic (~). They looking ok to you? -  Bomb Bloke (Talk/Contribs) 09:04, 22 April 2013 (EDT)

This is what I see using it as a font File:PSGothic.png Hobbes 17:37, 22 April 2013 (EDT)

I'm trying the new Style in a few pages and it is looking great. What I'm starting to wonder is what will happen to the other pages (non-EU2012). With UFO, TFTD and Apoc it should be possible to replicate it (although I have quite a few doubts about TFTD's colors...). But what about the other pages not directly related to a game? Hobbes 17:55, 22 April 2013 (EDT)

We can currently only skin pages we manually add the template link to. That means that certain pages (like recent changes or page history) can't be skinned, not unless the skin files are changed on the server side... Which'd be a lot harder then skinning through these templates is (lots of files to modify with no simple way of previewing the changes, unless someone sets up their own wiki to play with on a home computer).

In short, for now we may just have to leave 'em. While it might currently seem a bit jarring with just a black skin and a white skin, I think it won't seem so bad once there's a few others floating around the place.

In particular I was thinking of leaving talk pages unskinned regardless of what game they belong to (if only because most articles don't HAVE a talk page). -  Bomb Bloke (Talk/Contribs) 19:05, 22 April 2013 (EDT)

Please tell me you're not sticking to the green background when showing a page's changes... ;) Hobbes 14:01, 23 April 2013 (EDT)

Can't think of anything better for it myself. :|

You do mean the green background that goes against added lines, yes? The bit of code to tweak goes along the lines of:

td.diff-addedline {

background: #559E06;

}

-  Bomb Bloke (Talk/Contribs) 09:11, 25 April 2013 (EDT)

Indent resetinator activated! I certainly hope this is a work in progress. It's very hard to read on my smartphone browser, and even on my laptop it's a real squint-fest. I'd probably recommend a slightly lighter dark background rather than having extreme darks or lights.

But that aside, we could ask Pete to implement a few snazzy skins that you can access from the appearance tab under your preferences screen. The skin will then apply to all the wiki pages with no specific skins assigned to them. Mind you, this change will only affect the individual accounts. NKF 02:36, 24 April 2013 (EDT)

Yep, if I considered it done it'd have a rather more official looking name and I'd be slapping it onto pages left right and center. ;)

I will say I can't see much room for improvement myself - I'm no graphic design artist. I'm more then happy to implement any mock-ups people show me if they're not interested in tweaking the colours themselves, though.

-  Bomb Bloke (Talk/Contribs) 09:11, 25 April 2013 (EDT)

Well, no one else suggested improvements, so I'm wondering if we should start using the new style on the EU2012 pages. Hobbes 10:52, 26 August 2013 (EDT)

I disagree with the use of individual styles over-riding the default one at special pages, it makes the wiki inconsistent and messy.
If you are to add a new style to site, do it RIGHT and add it as a skin in the user preferences. --Kokkan 07:34, 6 September 2013 (EDT)

I agree since I made a test the other day of the proposed EU2012 style and I wasn't satisfied with the results regarding readability - the colors make it too tiring to read. I have no idea of how to add skins though Hobbes 17:10, 6 September 2013 (EDT)

The Bureau

We better start thinking of adding a section for the game since it will be released next month. Hobbes 08:30, 17 July 2013 (EDT)

And we have the starting page and table for the The Bureau online, although it is completely bare for the moment. Hobbes 22:30, 22 July 2013 (EDT)

UFO: Alien Invasion

I am one of the developers of UFO: Alien Invasion, an open-source game inspired by X-Com. Ufopaedia.org taught me how to not suck at the original X-Com years ago and I've always been grateful. I wondered if the maintainers of ufopaedia.org would be interested in adding support for our game. While we have our own development wiki where we could host strategy advice, I think there are several benefits to having a third-party strategy guide. Of course, the fact that our game undergoes rolling development will lead to extra maintenance work. But I think this could be limited by only providing data on the latest stable version (released once every year or two). I am willing to undertake the work to prepare the initial content for our upcoming stable release 2.5. --H-Hour 09:55, 26 August 2013 (EDT)

Hi there. I'm one of the administrators and although I can't speak for the other admins or the site owner (Pete), I think that it would make sense to add UFO:AI to the Featured Projects section. I'll ask them if there's any objection on the UFOPaedia's forum at Strategycore and if they're good about it, I'll add the link to the wiki sidebar. Should the initial page be named UFO:AI or do you prefer something else? Also, the game needs a wiki suffix, to be used in the guide's individual pages name and for their category tags, as an example all XCOM: Enemy Unknown pages use (EU2012). Hobbes 10:25, 26 August 2013 (EDT)

That's great, Hobbes. UFO:AI is fine for both the main page name and as a page suffix. If you think it is better given our rolling development, we can include the version for clarity (UFOAI2.5). --H-Hour 10:44, 26 August 2013 (EDT)

Better to keep version out otherwise it might be confusing. I'm just going to wait a day or two to give the other admins time to read it. Hobbes 11:47, 26 August 2013 (EDT)

I've just added UFO:AI to the Wiki Sidebar. Happy editing :) Hobbes 05:33, 28 August 2013 (EDT)

Thanks Hobbes! I'll get to it soon. --H-Hour 11:08, 28 August 2013 (EDT)

I've put up the initial table. Please let me know if there is anything that should be changed regarding the format or structure to ensure it complies with ufopaedia standards. --H-Hour 10:41, 29 August 2013 (EDT)

We don't really have any standard for those tables, just use what you feel is more comfortable/logic :) Hobbes 11:25, 29 August 2013 (EDT)

Extensions

Over on wikia ot is possible to put sub-pages into tabs so that when u click on one it has different info than the other. If we had them on here then we could split the main page into 2 different tabs with old X-COM on one and new XCOM on the other while leaving the news where it is and the spin off/based off titles below it.

Just an idea--Ditto51 04:08, 25 November 2013 (EST)

Just checked to see how subpages work on Wikimedia but by default they're limited to the user and talk pages. Might be interesting to implement for specific game items that are changed between EU and EW (Chitin Plating, etc.). I'm still waiting for Pete to fix the login process though since we need to get rid of the spammers before anything else. Hobbes 06:56, 25 November 2013 (EST)

I've been spending some time browsing the Minecraft wiki recently, and a couple of convenient extensions like expanding/collapsing content would be nice to have here as well. It would handy for the EW content as per the discussion elsewhere. It would be worth forming a list of the extensions we could use (and a link to said extension on www.mediawiki.org if possible). Once the signup issue is sorted we could suggest them to Pete. -NKF 07:06, 25 November 2013 (EST)

The info about the subpage is here [3]. The other extension we were discussing before was spoilers [4]. We might as well ask this already for Pete so that he can set time for it. Hobbes 07:33, 25 November 2013 (EST)

Spoilers is now installed. Subpages are an interesting idea - essentially categorising the content better as you would on a normal website (if you were thinking of going /terror from the deep/aliens or something like that?). Since MediaWiki handles moved pages pretty sensibly (moves the page and its Talk page to the new location and points the old URL to the new page) there shouldn't be an issue with this. I would say that it's more of a library format then and it needs a few librarians to be in charge of the categorisation, but you guys seem to be doing a grand job of that anyway :) --Pete (talk) 08:33, 29 December 2013 (EST)

Found the tabs I was talking about tabber --Ditto51 08:37, 25 November 2013 (EST)

Tabber is now installed --Pete (talk) 08:33, 29 December 2013 (EST)

I can't get this to work, even when I use the example coding on the mediawiki page.--Ditto51 (talk) 18:01, 29 December 2013 (EST)

My bad - was updating the wrong version of the settings file. The other extensions should now be avalable.

Multiple Upload, to make it easier to upload images multiple images.--Ditto51 10:48, 1 December 2013 (EST)

The author doesn't seem to be maintaining this which is a worry, plus the discussion page for it mentions security issues so I'm not going to bother with this one --Pete (talk) 08:33, 29 December 2013 (EST)

Installed an extension called MsUpload instead - you can see a bar at the top of the editor where you can drop files, or click the up arrow on the toolbar. This adds files to the queue and you can click on the name to rename them before uploading them. It then provides links to insert them --Pete (talk) 09:41, 29 December 2013 (EST)

Seems like only MsUpload is installed based on Special:Version; doesn't seem to show any other mentioned extensions?--DracoGriffin (talk) 19:47, 29 December 2013 (EST)

My bad - was updating the wrong version of the settings file. The other extensions should now be avalable.

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Wiki Software Upgrade

The Wiki software has now been upgraded to version 1.22 (was 1.16) so a few things have changed cosmetically and functionally. Whilst I've tested things myself and they seem alright, you guys might spot some things I won't, so please let me know here if there are any issues. Now we're up to date, I can look at the extensions requested above :) --Pete (talk) 07:24, 29 December 2013 (EST)

Pete has asked in a thread on the Strategycore.co.uk forums for suggestions of new features to add during the wiki software upgrade. Please go there for the discussion or post here what features you think relevant for the UFOPaedia upgrade. Hobbes 08:42, 27 December 2013 (EST)

That wasn't exactly what I was asking there - it was more "if there were an ideal WIKI software what would its main features be?". Though I suppose if there are other features that are required (aside from the obvious "better spam filtering") then I could see what's available after I've upgraded. Just so you all know, I've pencilled in 10am GMT tomorrow (see link for current time: http://wwp.greenwichmeantime.co.uk/time-zone/europe/uk/time/ ) to move UFOPaedia to the same server that StrategyCore now sits on. The move gives us more power to run the software and expand it and sees the end of recent server instability. I'll put up a message at the top of the site in a few minutes, but just so you all know what's going on and that there will be downtime for a few hours. Once you see the message disappear from the top of the screen, you'll be looking at the new server and can post again. Apologies for the short notice, but whilst it's quiet and I have time, I really need to do the move and get things more stable before attempting the upgrade. --Pete 14:39, 27 December 2013 (EST)

Most embedded images no longer display properly with the update, barring for a brief period during page load, only to disappear after page fully loads. Tested in two browsers. Arrow Quivershaft (talk) 16:48, 29 December 2013 (EST)

Can you give me a few examples of pages where this happens? I know I caused a weird issue for a while earlier on if you had www. at the start of the web address, so make sure you don't have that in your address bar, but aside from that I can't think of anything that would cause that without seeing a page where it's happening. If you can link a page AND describe which images disappear on it I can investigate further. --Pete (talk) 17:54, 29 December 2013 (EST)

Seems to be working fine now, thanks for the response! Arrow Quivershaft (talk) 19:50, 30 December 2013 (EST)

Watchlist E-Mails

When I recieve E-Mails about edits on the EU2012 pages, it always take me to a new page because the bracket at the end is no included in the link for some reason Eg. An E-Mail about Second Wave (EU2012) takes be to Second Wave (EU2012

--Ditto51 03:45, 28 November 2013 (EST)

Simpler Main Page

I know this is going to generate all sorts of responses - there are some people here being quite negative about the new games (the old ones aren't coming back, nor have they gone away though!) and since UFO and TFTD seem to get the most love of all of the original series of games this idea might not go down too well, but what do you think?

It is just an idea after all, but my train of thought was that (not intending to offend) the homepage is too busy. The links next to the intro text are a bit small, and then the game "contents" links are just way too far down the page for people to bother with so I thought perhaps something a bit more visible might be good, then lose EVERYTHING below the news. To my mind, the homepage should have your introduction, obvious links to the content people are searching for and then news - that's it. The contents further down the page are merely replicating what you get when you click on the game links anyway.

I have introduced an issue using the 1994 UK box cover at the beginning there, so might be best having it alternate between the two or be half and half somehow, but I suspect that's the least of the comments I'm going to get.

So why would I want to promote the other minor games? Well... they're incomplete. Obviously this is because people aren't contributing content, but I'm not sure it helps that the Games list on the left doesn't list them (I know why it doesn't, just pointing out that that will cause people to miss them).

Another thought I had was a simple graphic - half and half - for old and new and go to a page listing the old and new games, but can't think of a sensible graphic for that.

Something interesting to note is that since I fixed the tracking code for Google Analytics, it shows just how popular the new games are on this website.

Once upon a time I had been toying with the idea of changing the main page into a very simple page with almost no content, but instead set it up as a launchpad to the various 'main pages' for the different games by way of the box covers as you have done. That never eventuated - partly forgotten as with many ambitious ideas on the wiki in favour of other more exciting things in the recent updates, and a major change like that would've been too much of a culture shock. But with all he new fangled extensions and other things the new software can do, perhaps a move back in that direction isn't a bad idea. It would be nice change to the traditional game intro screen at the top of the page. -NKF (talk) 08:07, 30 December 2013 (EST)

Pete, I completely agree with your idea of dropping everything below the News since it's easier to simply use the left links and I doubt a lot of people bother to scroll down so much.

Regarding the old vs. new games, one of the most telling graphs from Google Analytics is this one:

The first increase in daily visits on January 2012 is when XCOM: Enemy Unknown was announced, the massive spike in November 2012 is when it was released. But what's even more interesting is that for the same period, the Apocalypse page was the 2nd most visited, UFO Defense the 3th and TFTD the 7th. There's no info for Enemy Unknown 2012 though (there must have been a problem with Analytics since it only started recording visits to the EU2012 pages last month - this might also explain why the visits decreased from November 2012 onwards since visits to the EU2012 were not recorded by Analytics). To me this means that the old games are still live and kicking but also that the new game brought again a big interest on the series. Hobbes (talk) 08:23, 30 December 2013 (EST)

I've been toying with some alternative graphics that are better than my original idea. There's a colour version, but it's a bit "full-on" on a predominantly black and white page, and a greyscale version that might work better. My thinking is that if they are both set to something like 49% width with the latter having 2% left padding, they will scale with the different screen sizes people will view it at. That sort of thing works a lot better in browsers nowadays. Any good? If they're both still a bit bold I could wash out the backgrounds a bit more (that or change the colour of UFOPaedia :D )

Grey Scale looks better, but it looks like you forgot The Bureau Case on the Reboot series image--Ditto51 (talk) 08:44, 1 January 2014 (EST)

I agree with Ditto51, Grey Scale looks better. Hobbes (talk) 11:52, 4 January 2014 (EST)

Long War at Featured Projects

I've been having a discussion at the Nexusmods forums regarding the possibility of having a subwiki hosted at the UFOPaedia for the Enemy Unknown (2012)'s Long War mod. This is a mod that has been in development for the past two years and has been highly praised by gaming magazines and EU's developers and the beta for Long War 3 (compatible with Enemy Within) has just been released. Any comments? Hobbes (talk) 20:15, 26 May 2014 (EDT)

Hm, I'd certianly say it's a noteworthy mod (though it may be more due to the fact that, in this day and age, information simply travels faster and with greater acessability/ease, than say, the mods for the '94 game, but that's a different lecture), so I'd say yes, a sub-wiki under XCOM:EU/EW, not as sure as to has a separate sidebar/front page space (besides in the news section, and "yes we have no bannanas" perma-link)(if you understand a thing of what the hell I just said/usually say) like the offical releases (ie; like how EW isn't in the sidebar, just vanilla EU). Also, I don't even see a mod/hack page on the xcom.wikia, so that'd be another thing we'd have over them, heh heh~ --Xuncu (talk) 07:35, 27 May 2014 (EDT)

Well I've just tried it the first time and downloading the latest beta. I had participated in a few discussions at Nexusmods regarding new features but I had never bothered playing (just another mod and it required a lot of user steps to install) since I had my hands more than full with EU/EW. All I can say is that this is as big as the Enemy Within DLC regarding new features and reworking of the existing ones, turning it into a different game and installation is much easier than before.

So I'd definitely add this to the Featured Projects since it's as big as UFO2000 and OpenXcom and it is more comparable to them rather than EW. The reason why EW is not on the sidebar is because it would require its own separate table and either a lot of duplication of already existing pages or it would be a rather small table. Long War on the other hand reworks the Strategic Layer (air interceptions, panic system, AI), soldier classes/abilities, equipment, Research tree, and several aspects of combat so it will require specific pages to detail all those changes.

To finish, I'd use the same rules for Long War as OpenXcom/UFO200: keep its pages completely separate from the EU2012 ones by using a (Long War) category and suffix; no links on EU/EW pages to Long War pages (to separate official games from fandom), and finally create a specific table for Long War, based on the current EU2012 table format. Hobbes (talk) 09:19, 27 May 2014 (EDT)

Wiki Etiquette and Word Choice

You should probably change "COULD OF" to "COULD HAVE". Particularly since it's in bold. Unless you want everyone to notice your awful grasp of the language, of course. Magic9mushroom (talk) 02:34, 19 September 2014 (EDT)

Keep in mind that for several users English might not be their first language (myself included). Or that 'awful' can be understood to be as insulting as 'autistic' ;) Hobbes (talk) 08:35, 19 September 2014 (EDT)

Spanish is my first language. Feel free to edit my Bureau entries, 'Shroom.... Which is pretty much "all entries for The Bureau." Have fun! --Xuncu (talk) 17:27, 19 September 2014 (EDT)

Hobbes: I have an awful grasp of French (significantly more awful, at that). Also, the reason I reacted to Connor wasn't that he'd insulted Xuncu, but that he did so using a slur that implicitly insulted others (including me). Compare, for instance, the reason people get angry if someone calls a miser a Jew; they're not angry because of the insult to the miser, but because of the insult to all Jews by equating them with misers. My autistic obsession with X-Com has produced useful pages on this wiki; Connor's slur denied that and implicitly told me to GTFO. Magic9mushroom (talk) 18:42, 19 September 2014 (EDT)

You have a right to feel insulted whenever someone says something that offends you, but the way you communicate it to the offender is your decision. I find it easier not to take these situations too personally because ignorance is far more common than malice :) Hobbes (talk) 18:57, 19 September 2014 (EDT)

The two blend together in the context of hate speech; while specific malice toward the group in question is not necessarily required, a generally xenophobic mindset and a willingness to stereotype with callous disregard for accuracy is present in basically all cases. Hate speech "by mistake" (ie, using slurs without intending to) is extremely rare and easily distinguishable from the intentional sort. Magic9mushroom (talk) 21:17, 19 September 2014 (EDT)

Wikis have one principle (amongst others) to work: assume good faith on the part of its users. I've been called here 'pedantic' due to my obsession with detail and personally the term has a negative connotation to me but I chose to assume good faith and accept the feedback. Otherwise, if we take slight on every badly chosen word, then this really hurts collaboration, which is what wikis are all about. Hobbes (talk) 08:50, 20 September 2014 (EDT)

XCOM2

Off to the madness we head out again. :) First issue is what suffix to add to page names to help classify and identify their content: (TFTD) for Terror From the Deep, (EU2012) for Enemy Unknown, etc. Any suggestions? Hobbes (talk) 22:34, 2 June 2015 (EDT)

Like we've been doing up to this point. EU, TFTD, Apoc, Int?, EU2012 and now I assume XCOM2. If the name changes in the future, we'll have to adjust the suffix accordingly. Which reminds me, I wonder why we use EU2012 suffix instead of just XCOM?--Zombie (talk) 23:49, 2 June 2015 (EDT)

EU2012 is a bit clumsy, but it helps disambiguate it from the original game. XCOM for the reboot would probably have been too generic (a bit like Gunship!). On the other hand XCOM2 should work as a temporary suffix for the new game. Or ADVENT perhaps? NKF (talk) 02:00, 3 June 2015 (EDT)

IIRC the discussion, the EU2012 suffix came from with distinguishing the original EU from the remake, while avoiding using of XCOM as a suffix (too generic). I've avoided using XCOM2 for this reason although there aren't other options at the moment. Hobbes (talk) 07:43, 3 June 2015 (EDT)

Hmmm, well I have no trouble telling the original apart from the reboot because the original had the dash (e.g. X-COM). Granted, the dash wasn't there right from the start, but it did become the de facto standard by TFTD and remained that way in one form or another (the middot: X·COM was used for the logo a lot too). Likewise, I'll have no trouble differentiating between TFTD and XCOM2. Have no idea why others would get hung up on this, but whatever. --Zombie (talk) 00:04, 4 June 2015 (EDT)

Solomon has confirmed that the name is simply 'XCOM 2', without any subtitles so this solves the issue since there are no other alternatives. Hobbes (talk) 06:59, 4 June 2015 (EDT)

License

What software license does this wiki use? Is it a Creative Commons license like Wikia, StrategyWiki or GamePedia? Mikali (talk) 04:07, 16 January 2017 (UTC)

As I understand it, we're running on Mediawiki which is open source. So it falls under the GNU General Public License. NKF (talk) 06:43, 16 January 2017 (UTC)

You both are referring to two different things. Creative commons isn't a software license. It's for text and other creative works. GNU GPL is indeed the software license, but it doesn't apply to the text contributed into this wiki.

It's a really good question though. According to UFOpaedia:Copyrights and UFOpaedia:About, text contributed here is copyright the respective author, and here authors implicitly agree when they save their changes to allow other contributors to edit/remove their work. So in practice it's similar to a creative commons license, but legally it isn't the same.

A big question is can we copy/edit content legally from the other wikis? In the case of xcom.wikia which is CC-BY-SA (it's noted in the footer), we should be able to as long as it's explicitly attributed to the author and explicitly tagged CC-BY-SA. Robertp (talk)

A bit late to reply as I missed the response in the deluge of recent activity. I wasn't entirely clear what you were asking in the original question and was unsure if you were referring to the Wiki software itself or the content. NKF (talk) 07:27, 8 February 2017 (UTC)

Note that you need to give credit to *all* authors. If you're copying something that you know has only been written by one person then fine, but if it's a paragraph of a wiki article it could have been edited by many. The easiest way to give attribution is to link to the source wiki page, in which the page history gives attribution and you're covered. Rewriting the information in your own words is better though. Binkyuk (talk) 13:15, 7 February 2017 (UTC)

Rewriting is usually the best option, although not the easy one Hobbes (talk) 00:18, 8 February 2017 (UTC)

My concern is people are going to assume this wiki works like most every other wiki (including wikipedia), but legally it doesn't. I think it'd be good to move to CC-BY-SA, but that's a high level decision and I wouldn't know who to talk to.

Robertp (talk)

Changing the license would be incredibly difficult, since you'd need agreement from all the copyright holders, which is basically everyone who's ever contributed. Might be changeable on a per-page basis maybe. The only major problem I see with the current situation is that content can't be copied from this wiki to elsewhere because that's not a right that's granted by anything. Binkyuk (talk) 13:15, 7 February 2017 (UTC)

There was a discussion of moving the UFOPaedia to CC-BY-SA, but coincidentally at the same time we had an incident where content from one of our pages was copy/pasted on another site without any attribution. This at the time dropped the issue but it's something worth discussing again. Hobbes (talk) 00:18, 8 February 2017 (UTC)

The wiki's license really ought to be CC-SA or CC-BY-SA. The latter protects against copy-paste without attribution (technically; unless you have a legal fund, this is all theorycrafting, more-or-less). I should also point-out that the current statement of copyright is wrong too. There is material that belongs to Firaxis and Pavonis on the wiki, specifically images, as a lot of the writing is about the game, not directly from the game, and that puts it in the same waters as any Wikipedia article, for example. The images all belong to Firaxis/Pavonis/whoever-else, but they fall under fair-use (as long as their existence on the wiki is for the purpose of documentation, not redistribution). Again, theorycrafting because in reality, it's extremely unlikely that Firaxis or Pavonis would go after any of the wikis about their games; it's a lose-lose for them for obvious reasons. (Improving license clarity on all images would be very useful, and is something I could work on gladly, but I don't want to start building new templates and working through them without access to the site CSS for the same reason I don't want to deal with other templates; I don't have the time, and it has become a contingent factor for me because most of my edits have been dealing with styles.)

I should also point-out there's a serious amount of liability for the wiki with saying that whatever gets put on here is copyright of the editors. I'll use my own recent work as an example. Under the current rules, I haven't forfeited copyright on any of the templates I've done, the info I've added, and most importantly the images I've put-up. Most of the images are from the game, but any additions like categorization are my work. The base templates are definitely my work, and the skill icons are sketchy since I had to edit them but they aren't derivative work. Under the current licensing rules, I could technically revert all of my edits, remove all the templates I've made, and leave the LW2 wiki in a broken state.

As I said, huge liability. Any user could come back and do this if they wanted to as long as they only did it with their edits. And since MediaWiki logs everything, it's not hard to write a script to revert every edit one has made. And it would all be perfectly within the wiki's own rules. This is why wikis that are open for editing by the general public don't let users maintain their copyright to their edits.

To switch, I don't know what options you have. A "clean break" to an entirely new wiki might be the easiest. You'd have to reconstruct everything (so that you technically don't copy but instead create new work that happens to be similar to this wiki; as a side-note, if I built a new skin and restyled the wiki, that'd quite clearly count toward it being a derivative work), but as was pointed-out to me by someone recently, most of what is on this wiki falls under factual information. You can't copyright facts, like how game mechanics work, settings in the game, descriptions of characters (though that's a little fuzzy for characters with actual stories like Tygan or Shen), etc. The most important thing is that as a new wiki, users would have to re-register and you could change the user agreement to have users' rights to work be transferred to the wiki and then released as CC-BY-SA. (In fact I have someone bugging me to do just this, because of the difficulties in reaching the site admin, whom I still haven't been able to contact. I can't even email him since my account email isn't verified and the email verification is, ironically, broken too.)

Or you could just change it. Send a mass email if you feel nice. As I said, this is mostly all theorycrafting. If we're going to talk about reality instead, then the reality is that the copyright of any work on the wiki quickly becomes insanely difficult to discern, because people will make edits to it. It's unusual for one person to hold the copyright to a page (which is why I brought my own templates up as they are a worst-case example since I've clearly done the vast majority of work on them) or any part of its contents because of the constant editing. If someone wanted to come back and claim copyright, they'd have to file a lawsuit, which would be insane since there would be almost nothing to be gained and it's not cheap to do so.

Keeping the license agreement as it is is untenable though, for all the reasons above. --Tvol (talk) 02:42, 8 February 2017 (UTC)

Just thought I'd throw in my 2c. I've only skimmed the discussion, but I assume it's the copyright blurb on the UFOpaedia:About page that's at the core of the issue.

In all honesty I strongly and truly believe that the copyright guff (highly technical term) that Gazchap put up on this page during this Wiki's infant years was more a case of simply wanting to get something up and running quickly with a very generic copyright statement. Then have it updated as and when necessary. Of course, with the monolithic nature of a wiki, we never really got round to it until it was very briefly visited in the case that Hobbes mentioned.

While I don't mean to speak for all of our past and present users, I suspect the issue of the license is for most of us something that's the farthest thing from our mind when we come to peruse the wiki. We're not policy makers - we're just fans that enjoy the games and are happy enough to put our own time and effort into writing about and chronicling information about the games.

I'm only one voice, but I'm more than happy if we bring the wiki in line with the others and go with a form of creative commons license as with the better known Wikis. Doesn't matter to me as long as I can keep accessing the wiki and make use of its plethora of accumulated information. The main thing I assumed we've always operated on was a sense of common courtesy to cite the source of borrowed material, and to expect the same of others who wish to use any of our content verbatim.

Oh and Tvol, this is apropos of nothing much, but Firaxis did give this wiki a subtle wink with a small detail on the EU2012 Skyranger. Until the cease and desist letters come in, I think we're in the clear! For now. I think. Fingers crossed. NKF (talk) 07:27, 8 February 2017 (UTC)

Well to be clear, I don't actually think Firaxis would ever go after a wiki. As I said, it's a lose-lose situation; no game developer has ever gained anything other than bad press and a sour taste in the mouths of their fans by going after the very fans who support them on a legal technicality. :P

"Doesn't matter to me as long as I can keep accessing the wiki and make use of its plethora of accumulated information."

Indeed this is the crux of the issue, I think. It's not likely but with things as they are, a malicious former contributor could wreak some havoc. The XCOM 2 modding community got a dose of this a while back with the extra ability icons mod being unceremoniously yoinked from the Workshop, leaving people with broken saves. Similar could happen here, which would be pretty awful for all involved. :( (Has Joshua seen this or weighed-in? I haven't been able to reach him on Skype; still waiting for a contact confirmation.) --Tvol (talk) 07:38, 8 February 2017 (UTC)

Heh - for the moment we've thankfully got admins with very big sticks to keep any malicious former contributors from causing any vandalism. Of course that won't last forever as life takes it course and folks move onto other things. I'll message the bigwigs and see if we get something in motion. NKF (talk) 09:38, 8 February 2017 (UTC)

Heh - for the moment we've thankfully got admins with very big sticks to keep any malicious former contributors from causing any vandalism.

I don't think you're seeing my point. As editors still hold copyright on their work, removing it wouldn't be vandalism. They would just be removing their work from the wiki, which since they still hold copyright to it, they are totally within their rights to do. No one here would have any basis for complaint, let alone justification for blocking them. That's why I specifically brought-up templates. If someone writes a template and it gets used on the wiki, and then they remove it, that's allowed (even expected) by licensing rules, but it would leave the wiki broken with someone else having to rewrite what was removed. --Tvol (talk) 09:55, 8 February 2017 (UTC)

Fear not, with a couple of rudimentary templates under my belt, I do understand what you're getting at. I just have a cavalier light hearted approach to things - please ignore my poor attempt at humour. NKF (talk) 11:22, 8 February 2017 (UTC)

Oh. That was humour. Seems I'm not the only pedant around here... --Tvol (talk) 20:52, 8 February 2017 (UTC)

SVG images

I have an SVG image of a keyboard with key bindings on it. However, the wiki software won't let me upload it. Can you enable SVG images please? Mikali (talk) 04:09, 16 January 2017 (UTC)

Long War 2 AWC Perks

I noticed some missing perks in the LW2 AWC perk lists and was planning to update them, but I'm unsure as to the significance of the yellow question mark symbol that's enabled for some of the Perks and not for others.

Could someone clue me in so I don't make a mess of things? -- Dodger

Those symbols are there to indicate that there is additional/supplementary info for the ability/perk. It emulates the interface in-game that is also indicated by the same icon and opens a window with said supplementary info inside. That info is kept on a subpage of each template. For example, {{Aggression (LW2)}}'s info is held at {{Aggression (LW2)/Info}}. This is done mostly to keep the templates themselves clean as well as better deal with whitespace (since MediaWiki can be really finnicky sometimes about whitespace and will periodically bite one in the ass when making templates). Here is a fiddle demonstrating what I was hoping to have them look like (with input from Mavoc). Unfortunately, doing so requires access to the site's CSS, and I haven't been able to contact the admin yet. (Also you can sign your name with four tildes.) --Tvol (talk) 06:02, 7 February 2017 (UTC)

I added all those perks and there data. Though there are a couple still missing info, see section talk for list.

Site CSS

Since I haven't been able to reach the site's admin, I've written everything out in this PDF. Hopefully even non-technical people will understand what I'm getting at with it. --Tvol (talk) 07:20, 9 February 2017 (UTC)

I got in touch with Joshua today so hopefully these changes will be coming along in the near future. (And I can get back to spamming the wiki with new templates. :p ) --Tvol (talk) 04:36, 10 February 2017 (UTC)

Template Design (with pretty pictures too!)

After fumbling around a bit with the Ability template, I've decided upon a general structure for future templates that are in similar domains. Please take a look at this diagram (which is probably a serious abuse of UML for which it wasn't intended but whatever; this PDF will be updated as I settle on the design for other templates): Template Diagrams (If it doesn't load right away just wait for Dropbox's silly PDF viewer to load.)

And yes, before you say anything, I am playing really loosy-goosy with everything in the diagram. Templates don't have any type checking, nor do they enforce rules for access, nor do they have methods. This is just a rough sketch of how I think these paramters will be intended to be used. Templates are really wishy-washy about everything, and that's why the diagram is wishy-washy too. O.o

One small note: The template names in the diagram are CamelCased, but I intend to name them with hyphens, so "AbilityInline" would be "Ability-inline" instead, it's just that UML doesn't allow that in class names, so bleh. MediaWiki is flexible on this point and that could be a space, but I want it to be obvious if an errant space is working its way into that bit of the template, as it could really muck things up.

Supplementary Info:

Variable Templates (How the heck to dynamically choose which template to use.)

Summary of counts for template limits

General Structure

The point here is to separate the data from the implementation. So, we make a template that holds the data (like {{Suppression (LW2)}} and its kin), and then have that template choose an implementation/displayStyle template to use whenever it's called. Ideally, the calls would look like this:

{{Suppression (LW2)}}                      // inline display
{{Suppression (LW2)|displayStyle=inline}}  // explicit inline display
{{Suppression (LW2)|displayStyle=table}}   // table display
{{Suppression (LW2)|displayStyle=infobox}} // infobox display

Inline display will be default since that's where it's most advantageous to use as little space as possible (to make the source markup for content pages easier to read).

Each display style template will have it's own defaults, which is actually really good news so there is no conflict of concerns (for table display, I can assume the user wants everything displayed by default, whereas for inline, it makes more sense to hide everything but the name by default).

These templates should definitely be backwards portable to the XCOM 2 pages, and probably XCOM:EU and XCOM:EW as well.

Parameter Changes for Ability Templates

s_icon will be renamed and moved to s_image. A new s_icon field will then refer to an icon specifically. s_image will be used for the infobox, as a demonstrative image, like an in-game screenshot.

I'm considering changing b_info to b_infoIcon for clarity's sake. Actually not a good idea, since it enables both info display and the icon.

New Parameters for Ability Templates

s_displayStyle : The big one. This will be one of either "inline", "table", or "infobox". This will determine which one of the "base" templates gets called to handle display of the ability's content/info. This will allow all the relevant data for each ability (and later on, every other in-game item or mechanic that can be well defined like equipment or armour) in one place, while still allowing flexibility in display styles. This structure is also extensible, meaning more templates can be added later as different displayStyle options with relative ease (provided we do our level best to get every important piece of info in these templates from the start; see below).

i_ammo : Ammo requirement / uses per mission; 0 = unlimited use i_cooldown : Cooldown of the ability in turns; 0 = no cooldown.

Once I get to infoboxes I'm sure there will be many more things to be added. I've certainly forgotten things.

Stuff To Figure-Out

Sane defaults, and most especially, how to display extra info or description inline. A pop-up box could be done with JavaScript, but it should also be possible with only CSS to have a simple div appear like that fiddle I made as a demo.

I'm also strongly leaning toward storing all default parameters on their own subpages. This removes a costly switch function (which costs 8 preproccessor nodes on an instant match and 2 thereafter for each check). The expansion size will also be just the size of the text, not twice that size. It's the most efficient way to manage these, and if someone wants to make a whole page that lists all the abilities in the game, then that could become quite costly. (No idea how costly, but on the theory that limiting resource use is generally a good goal I'm probably going to do it this way, even if it's a little less convenient.)

Breaking the implementation into separate templates also has the benefit of needing fewer parser functions each time a template is used, since the most important check was done by selecting which template to use. It's just all-around better.

Where I Need Help

Figuring-out data types for each type of thingamajig in the game that can be well defined (the stuff in the "Data Paramters" section above). So, take armour as an example: For that there's supply cost, resistances (which will need to be handled separately), elerium core cost, uhhhhh, probably other stuff I forgot. The important thing is to have everything that can be added there from the start; it's a lot harder to refactor the templates to display new data than it is to build them once and be done (the most time-consuming part is actually adding the new variable to all the completed data-templates, not adding the ability to display it, go figure).

Off the top of my head I've got, so far, Abilities (Perks; unfortunate naming on my part but whatever), Armor, Grenades, Heavy Weapons, PCS', and Weapons, as general categories. Each will have an inline, infobox, and table displayStyle.

Parameters for these templates fall into three categories, which I've called "Parameters", "Data Parameters", and "Wiki-Related".

Parameters: These are the paramters that actually are intended to be used when someone calls these templates. They are used to tell the template how to display the content, like whether or not to display the name, description, info icon, etc. They are not meant to hold or override data associated with the ability/item/whatever.

Data Parameters: These are the parameters that hold data for the associated ability/item/whatever, and the ones I need the most help with. They are defined on a template page (like {{Suppression (LW2)}}) and nowhere else (so they are defined once and only once). These are not exposed to the caller and can be thought of as protected variables (for those with programming experience). Maybe we can build a table for these somewhere? It is not important to have these filled-in with data for everything, just that they are in the definition of the templates from the get-go (e.g. just because the s_image field will exist for each ability doesn't mean we need a screenshot for every ability right now).

Wiki-Related: These are anything that is for wiki-related housekeeping only. So far it's just s_id and s_templateName. The ID field is intended to be used for the construction of unique element id's, just in case that is useful for something later (namely targetting elements with CSS); future-proofing. The s_templateName parameter is also future-proofing of a sort; all it does is provide the full page name name of the template it belongs to (so for {{Suppression (LW2)}} this reads "Template:Suppression_(LW2)"). It's required for accessing subpages, which so far have only been used for extended info (although a lot of them seem to be just repeats of what the description says, which was not my intention). It's good to have so that long-winded, supplementary information can be held somewhere else so the template itself is kept clean and as easy-to-read and understand as possible.

Visual Style

I think the colour palette here is appropriate for these. I'll be going for a flat style; no frilly stuff like beveled borders (ewwwwwwwww).

As usual (unfortunately), this is all contingent on my getting access to the site-wide CSS so I don't have to duplicate significant portions of each template. Depending on time I can probably have this done in a week (or two) from that point (getting access to the CSS), barring any weirdness or delays. --Tvol (talk) 11:13, 11 February 2017 (UTC)

Documents

Parameter Definitions (HTML) (Cleaner, but can't be previewed in-browser.)
Parameter Definitions (PDF) (Looks worse, but can be previewed in-browser.)
Parameter Definitions (Markdown)
Template Diagrams

Skeletons (HTML)
Skeletons (PDF)
Skeletons (Markdown)

Template Design Discussion

Nice you got what you wanted :) I was wondering if all the info you've posted about templates shouldn't be moved to a specific page explaining how to use them. Hobbes (talk) 15:26, 11 February 2017 (UTC)

Well not yet, but I'm hoping Joshua will get to it soon. --Tvol (talk) 04:26, 12 February 2017 (UTC)

I have added documents above. I would appreciate it if others could go through the Parameter Definitions document and offer suggestions on anything I might've missed. --Tvol (talk) 16:41, 12 February 2017 (UTC)

Hobbes, to answer your question more definitively (because I've thought about it more), that'll be something I'll figure-out later. Once it's all done it'll have to be documented, but it should be easy enough to explain with the pretty UML diagrams. The data templates should be straightforward if you refer to the spec sheet (see documents above). The implementation will be the most complicated part. Both of those layers will be "hidden" to editors; that is, you won't need to know how everything works under the hood, just that it does. In all there are actually only a small handful of parameters that an editor would end-up using, all of which are related to how the data is displayed, not what it is. I'm hoping Joshua will set-up a user-group with the editinterface permission soon so I can get started (I've given him everything he needs to know how to do it). I can't (reasonably) start on the implementation until he does and I'm added to the group. --Tvol (talk) 04:27, 14 February 2017 (UTC)

I am tentatively calling the spec above done. Unless I missed something and someone points that out, I'll start working on template skeletons soon. If anyone has time to read through it to look for missing stuff, that'd be great. --Tvol (talk) 12:17, 16 February 2017 (UTC)

Skeletons are done, as is the spec, probably. These can be used to start uploading data to the wiki in the form of data templates (similar to {{Ability (LW2)}} ). {{Ability (LW2)}} will take more work to change-over, and doing so will also temporarily break the templates where they are being used on the wiki. Without implementation templates, and updating of the template calls, they would stay broken. Please leave these alone until I have a chance to write the implementation templates. (As usual, this is not feasible without site CSS access, which I am still waiting on.) --Tvol (talk) 20:40, 16 February 2017 (UTC)

Given that I've received almost no feedback here, and Joshua seems to be absent again (and not responding to my messages on Skype), I really gotta ask: Have you guys thrown-in the towel? I ask especially because of what I saw on the most recent posts on Strategy Core. The wiki needs serious maintenance work done. If you have, I'd like to know, so I can take this work to a new wiki where progress can continue being made on documentation. --Tvol (talk) 02:00, 18 February 2017 (UTC)