Talk:Main Page

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Welcome To All Rookies

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XCOM: UFO Defense

Update: Well, game's about to be released and the Enemy Unknown (EU2012) page and table have been worked on, and now there will surely be more people stopping by and wanting to know more. So the question I'm asking everyone is to have a look at the current status of the new game page and think about when the new table should be moved to the UFOPaedia's Main page? Hobbes 20:23, 7 October 2012 (EDT)

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)
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)

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:
XCOM badge used ingame on the soldiers armor - I can't get a better pic than this one XCOM icon used on packing and ingame for menus, etc. And there's also the game logo

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)

Why not to move 2012 OR vanilla ufopaedia stuff to another hosting?

<IMHO> With this X-COM Enemy Unknown (2012) classy ufopaedia became almost unreliable (unsearchable) source of information. "Modification history" is spammed with 2012 project, which has nothing to vanilla xcom. There are no "filters" which could make it slightly better. Moreover, whole internet become spoiled and spammed in sense of searching something about ufo defense. And it's a pity. Because Ufopaedia is not The Ufopaedia anymore. Wouldn't it better to have totally another hosting? After all XCOM:Enemy Unknown (2012) doesn't even have UFOPAEDIA.

With this 2012 heavy spam I stopped to make my Xcom1/Xcom2 contribution here. That's one of results. --Volutar 13:28, 11 November 2013 (EST) </IMHO>

Totally agree with NKF and disagree with SuicidalSectoid. Mixing new with old contents makes mess in both sides. It would be better to setup different wikis with different modification histories for classic xcoms(1-3) and for new titles. And not to get into conflict to each other. There's nothing in common between them in terms of game mechanics. Personally I was very annoyed and disappointed seeing modification history spammed with 2012 info, and having no chances to monitor what's happening with ufodefense/tftd info. And seeing how fast my ufodefense info update drowned I stopped to make any updates. --Volutar 14:43, 11 November 2013 (EST)
Have you tried using the [watchlist] function on the top right? You can use that to track changes to the specific pages you're editing if you don't want to see all the changes.
My complain is about spam in change history. I just don't want to see any history of EU2012 pages. Unfortunately there's no such filter. To use that "watch" I'll have to tick evey non EU2012 page and new non-EU2012 pages also should be ticked by default (that's clearly impossible.--Volutar 14:08, 12 November 2013 (EST)
What you call 'spam' I call a lot of it my personal work. The same way I call work all of the edits I've done on UFO/TFTD/Apocalypse. Hobbes 16:43, 12 November 2013 (EST)
Is there an option in the prefrences that allows us to set all edits to minor edits unless otherwise specified?--Ditto51 17:35, 12 November 2013 (EST)
This wiki has always been about the game series: Apocalypse/Interceptor/Enforcer have about as much in common with UFO/TFTD as Enemy Unknown (2012) and The Bureau, regarding game mechanics. And now that there's a ton of new information on the internet because of the new games and new wikis, that's the main strength that separates The UFOPaedia from all the rest: it is the only site that focuses on the whole series, not a specific game. And if we split the wiki into smaller ones, you're basically contributing to turn UFO/TFTD into footnotes, because only the few players of the old games will know about UFOPaedia.org, since it's not anymore on the new game. By having all of the titles together (and the specific pages with the common aspects of the series, like Sectoid/Sectoid (EU2012) crosslinked we're contributing to keep the old games alive. Hobbes 15:32, 11 November 2013 (EST)
And how big the UFOPaedia is in helping to pass the torch? Read it from Jake Solomon itself, lead designer of EU2012: "I've spent more time there than I'd like to tally" [3] Hobbes 16:08, 11 November 2013 (EST)
Sorry, I'm just not interested in EU2012. And one notice - this wiki was never about Interceptor/Enforcer. --Volutar 14:08, 12 November 2013 (EST)
Nor did I say it was only about those two games. Read the top of the Main Page of the UFOPaedia: "This site is dedicated to X-COM, a computer strategy game series introduced in 1994 by MicroProse." Hobbes 16:21, 12 November 2013 (EST)
And would you be willing to move all the pages over to another wiki.
Also it is a bit late to be separating them now, we have an almost complete EU2012 section and half completed Bureau section, it would take us ages to separate them.
Yeah, so I quit updating this resource. It'd be easier to setup new information reosurce, without spam of casual modern pseudo-ufo-like games, than to split this on vanilla (xcom1-3) / non-vanilla.--Volutar 14:08, 12 November 2013 (EST)
You don't like the new games, I respect that. You want to go through the work of setting a new wiki, I'll respect it also. Hobbes 16:43, 12 November 2013 (EST)
My third is that most of the people who edit the wiki commonly edit both, so separating the wiki would be like trying to force them onto one wiki where they are unable to monitor the other wiki.
My final point is that hardly anyone actually edits the original three games' pages anymore because they are almost – if not fully – complete. So on the Original X-COM wiki you would get edits every now and again, which would make it less worthwhile to host. But hosting them on the same wiki allows for fans of the new to see where it all began and begin to play those games.
Just some ideas--Ditto51 15:21, 11 November 2013 (EST)
Something else to add about what Ditto51 said about the first 3 games pages being complete: before Enemy Unknown 2012 was announced you could spend weeks on the UFOPaedia without any meaningful edits taking place. That pretty much showed the general lack of interest and activity regarding the first 3 games. Do we want to get back to that? Hobbes 15:41, 11 November 2013 (EST)

Aah - Where to start?

The new games are new, so they are in the spotlight, and it's not unexpected for there to be an explosion of new data to chronicle on the wiki. Once things have settled the update pace is likely to slow back down back to what it was.

I must comment however that recently there are a lot of micro updates on the same pages within a short span of time. That does have a tendency to fill up the recent pages very quickly. Preview folks!

Mainly my fault there, specially since I forget to check the "minor edit" box quite a bit during mass edits. But I also feel that we're lacking something to individually keep track of specific pages, like Volutar has mentioned. Hobbes 16:36, 12 November 2013 (EST)

Next, looking at the time stamp on my comment in the conversation above, about a year out, I must admit that I completely forgot about that conversation. Likely because I was too busy playing EU2012 at the time and never did get round to come back and elaborate on my vision.

My thought at the time wasn't to move it to a new host or make a whole new UfopaediaV2.org just for the new games. Heck no, just keep it as the one wiki to rule all the X-Com wikis. I was thinking one wiki with interlinked subwikis that share the same resources, so there will be no loss in the legacy of the originals at all. In fact, it would be no different to the end user than it is now.

Administration wise it would be a hassle to start off with, but you then would have less to worry about disambiguations or conflicting names and any updates on the recent updates or searches will be context sensitive and relevant to the game or series you're looking at. Section-wide changes like skins could also be implemented without having to update each and every single page. It may also offer the possibility of fostering smaller community of contributors that want to focus on particular games who would otherwise be shy or intimidated to contribute to the wiki as it is now.

The idea was a bit of an offshoot of how multilingual wikis are implemented. Not quite, but just an idea to manage it in smaller chunks. But all that doesn't really matter to me anymore. I'll just get back to casually tending to any pages that take my fancy. -NKF 00:34, 12 November 2013 (EST)

If you look at my update history you'll notice that I was updating vanilla pages pretty often, but stopped as EU2012 came out (sep'2012). Just because changes was heavily spammed, and I felt how this site became ufopaedia2012 (though there is no ufopaedia in EU2012), so I lost interest in fixing unreliable info and adding new for vanilla. Just what for? It will anyways be drowned in this EU2012 massive promotion. Which spoiled whole internet. When you'll search for UFO:Enemy Unknown you'll still find EU2012 info. And it will be a luck to get anything about vanilla. I feel like vanilla ufopeadia became kind of unnecessary here, so i think I better move on. Thanks for your points. --Volutar 14:08, 12 November 2013 (EST)
Seriously, lets just leave it now, this was a conversation from a year ago that would have been relevant then, but now there is just too much information to move onto a separate site now, so lets leave it as it is.--Ditto51 17:35, 12 November 2013 (EST)

Other Wiki

I have recently found another wiki bearing the XCOM title. It focuses purely on the remake and frankly it is pointless considering the Ufopaedia is already established.

I'm just getting the word out.--SuicidalSectoid 14:08, 24 December 2012 (EST)

Got a link to it? Redundant or not, it's nice to see other eager about the game. NKF 16:00, 24 December 2012 (EST)
This one, I'd say. Most likely exists because someone thinks every new game needs to be on wikia. -  Bomb Bloke (Talk/Contribs) 05:03, 25 December 2012 (EST)
I've noticed it even before the new game was out. They have nice design and content for the new game and a lot of traffic from being on wikia but all those commercial advertisements and structure and being restricted to the new games are the negative factors. Hobbes 12:13, 25 December 2012 (EST)
Ugh. I wouldn't describe wikia's design as "nice". It's superficially impressive, but crammed with advertising and if you try to actually get anything done on it it's horrible. There's a reason most of wowwiki deserted wikia when they imposed that format. Binkyuk 12:45, 25 December 2012 (EST)
By design I mean the navigation elements that make it easier to access game sections. Visually I also think it has too many elements. Hobbes 13:54, 25 December 2012 (EST)

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)

Recent Spambot attacks

I've sent Pete a message about the recent spammer issue. I've suggested a temporary halt on new accounts.

Also, just a note to other members, please don't alter new pages created by the spammers and wait for one of the admins to sort it out. It adds a bit of confusion in the clean up process. Mainly because the block option is near the member name in the recent changes, I've caught myself nearly blocking a valid member a few times now! If I have, you have my apologies. Please go to the official Ufopaedia forum and give me a buzz.

NKF 01:59, 20 September 2013 (EDT)

Would it be possible to determine the IP of the spammer(s) and block it instead, as Ditto51 has suggested in my Talk Page? I think that putting a halt on new accounts may be a drastic measure since the amount of fake accounts isn't overwhelming for admins to deal with. Another thing I've been considering is to add new admins to help with the running of the wiki. Hobbes 06:59, 20 September 2013 (EDT)


Since to create an account we need to do that weird word/letter enter thing to create an account, wouldn't it be an actual person who is extremely bored? So wouldn't they eventually get bored of making accounts and then getting blocked?--Ditto51 17:48, 20 September 2013 (EDT)
My guess is someone has developed some software that can see through our Captcha. Given the naming conventions and whatnot I doubt this is manual work. Binkyuk 05:37, 24 September 2013 (EDT)

User:SonyaUliana has got the same name format at the other Spam Accounts, and I'm pretty sure SHIVs can't save civilians during terror missions or deactivate powernodes or bombs on the bomb defusal councilmissions (see [4]). --Ditto51 05:05, 28 September 2013 (EDT)

Well, it looks the same name format but there's a regular user at the 2K forums named SayuriUliana and although I don't use SHIVs myself I seem to recall a few discussions at the 2K forums mentioning their use to save civilians. Hobbes 07:31, 28 September 2013 (EDT)
Ah, okay. I was just wandering.--Ditto51 07:37, 28 September 2013 (EDT)

I know that we really do not want to stop all User Creations, but the number of spam accounts have increased recently and so when you look through the Recent Changes all you can see are the new Users. Although we could possibly find and install something that allows people to remove User Creations and Blocks from the Recent Changes menu.--Ditto51 09:44, 8 October 2013 (EDT)

We're still waiting for Pete to answer NKF's message and to temporary suspend all account creation so that the bot will go away. Otherwise it will still be a lot of unnecessary work to have to delete pages/block users, even if there's an easy way to do it. Hobbes 12:09, 8 October 2013 (EDT)
I meant make it easier for those of us who aren't admins and so don't have the ability to see the user creations and blocks so that we can just see what we want to see plus maybe the extra pages the spam accounts make--Ditto51 16:05, 8 October 2013 (EDT)

Ditto51, I really really wish we had that sort of filter too. We do have a recents cleanup plugin that admins use to manually hide the signups and blocks, but it's a manual process and not suited to a large number of attacks like we've got at present.

By the way, Hobbes, it probably can't hurt to send Pete a PM as well. There's not too much we can do until he gets back, but the more the merrier. NKF 00:47, 9 October 2013 (EDT)

Just sent Pete a PM Hobbes 05:36, 9 October 2013 (EDT)

Tabs

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)

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