Team Fortress Wiki:Discussion

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A gift after April's Fools

I thought it would be nice to leave a gift for April's fools so lets let the community download the skin of the weapons we made up. so here something I made to give them the link thorough it. Link for download the lamey site I made : http://www.mediafire.com/?6oi096fvs95sbqj Link for the skin http://dl.dropbox.com/u/43356210/disc.rar I have brought the idea to the IRC and people liked it. Atlas 17:35, 1 April 2012 (PDT)

Pictogram plus.png Support The idea of letting people download it, but I think it would be better to put the download link on the existing store page which, will be modified at midnight to explain what happened — Wind 17:50, 1 April 2012 (PDT)

Just letting you know , I have talked with Quin about this and he is 100% okay with us publishing his skin. Atlas 17:56, 1 April 2012 (PDT)

Pictogram plus.png Thanks! I actually thought the update, the page and the steam page was completely real, and although I knew it was April Fools, I really haven't thought it was a joke. Good job with that, hope to participte in April Fools 2013! Nemesis RED.pngRocket Sticky Jumper Talk 00:37, 2 April 2012 (PDT)

How about: User of the Month!

We could reward users for good work by featuring them in a section on the main page. Judges could look for edits, spirit, quality, like a featured article for users! --Enthers. (I find this work intriguing. How about yourself, sir?) 07:51, 3 April 2012 (PDT)

This is already been taken up by the Russians of the /ru section of the TF Wiki. They have told about their form of User of the Month in their Discussion page at the /ru translation discussions and recieved a reply from mods and admins about that the idea seemed alittle bit off the edge. It's a dead idea on the other hand. Maybe another time :/ User Ravecrib9t4 Signature Logo.JPG TNS 23:41, 11 April 2012 (PDT)

3D Model Project: Hats

Whatever happened to the 3D model project for hats and miscs? A quick glance at the images depository reveals that some have been made pending changes.

The last I've heard of it was that Moussekateer had a "hat painting studio of sorts" in the works and under wraps as of October 2011. -Upgrade 00:45, 5 April 2012 (PDT)

Category icons

Hello everybody,

I just wanted to see what the community thought of these category icons:

User R4wrz0rz0r Categoryiconexample.png

I'm certainly not done with them yet - I will implement many, many more over time, as well as additional styling to make them as compatible across browsers as I can. If we decide that most of us like them, we can enable them for everybody (right now I'm the only one who sees them). Painted Swagman's Swatter E6E6E6.png r4wrzSwagmaster 13:45, 6 April 2012 (PDT)

Probably needs "margin-right:2px;" on each icon. rebmcr 13:48, 6 April 2012 (PDT)
Pictogram nope.png Nope I only see one in that giant screenshot but almost any representative icon will be unreadable at that size. – fashnek (talk·c) 14:04, 6 April 2012 (PDT)

Just remember guys, (almost) everything is subject to change, including size. Painted Swagman's Swatter E6E6E6.png r4wrzSwagmaster 14:06, 6 April 2012 (PDT)

What are you asking then if everything will change? The icon already isn't readable, and I don't think any proper icon will be readable at that size. I also don't see how the size would change without either making the whole category list look like ass or making category text larger (which no one wants). Are you asking about category icons in general? I say they are a big waste. – fashnek (talk·c) 14:09, 6 April 2012 (PDT)
Pictogram plus.png Support I like the idea, the implementation needs work though. margin-right is pretty much necessary, and some of the icons (the token ones) aren't recognisable at such small sizes. Need other icons, or icons made to look good at that size to begin with — Wind 14:12, 6 April 2012 (PDT)

I will be replacing the token icons with images of the weapons that are on them. Painted Swagman's Swatter E6E6E6.png r4wrzSwagmaster 14:14, 6 April 2012 (PDT)

Pictogram comment.png Whatever you like. I think this is cool, but the icons are too small and I don't know how to place images to some of these catagories (Untradeable items for example), thus making it un-consistant. I don't really love it, nor I hate it. Whatever you guys pick is fine with me. Nemesis RED.pngRocket Sticky Jumper Talk 12:34, 7 April 2012 (PDT)
Pictogram cross.png No, sorry. Icons are too small, they don't add to readability. IMHO. — Login Soldier.pngStormbird TC 02:40, 8 April 2012 (PDT)
It would maybe help if people could see them as they'd appear on an article, at their usual size. Here's the original:
Categories: Untradeable items | Medieval weapons | Weapons | Melee weapons | Valve-made items | Promotional items | Spy | Reskins



And here's a version with icons:
Categories: Item icon World Traveler's Hat.pngUntradeable items | Item icon Boston Basher.pngMedieval weapons | Item icon Shotgun.pngWeapons | Item icon Fire Axe.pngMelee weapons | Item icon Party Hat.pngValve-made items | Item icon Alien Swarm Parasite.pngPromotional items | Leaderboard class spy.pngSpy | Item icon Lugermorph.pngReskins



I think there's potential, but we'd need to use icons which are a bit easier to distinguish. The Spy icon works well, but I couldn't think of anything else to use for the weapons. I suppose kill icons might be OK, but they'd need to be cropped a little. Of course, the other side of the argument is that they're just categories, and we don't really need to clutter up this space with images. What does everyone else think? » Cooper Kid (blether) • (contreebs) 06:09, 8 April 2012 (PDT)
I agree that the class icons have potential to serve as a bit of illustration. However it would be difficult to find a representative icon for the weapon categories. Whatever the case, Wikipedia itself does not use images in its categories. Upgrade 14:24, 8 April 2012 (PDT)
Pictogram cross.png No This seems unnecessary. It would probably be a pain to implement as well. User M-NINJA Signature.png 15:17, 8 April 2012 (PDT)
It really wouldn't be a pain to implement... Painted Swagman's Swatter E6E6E6.png r4wrzSwagmaster 15:20, 8 April 2012 (PDT)
Well there are about 5000 categories... » Cooper Kid (blether) • (contreebs) 16:33, 8 April 2012 (PDT)
I thought it would be rather obvious that I'm not making category icons for every one of them. I'll be focusing on the ones most used on item pages (which make up a lot of the wiki). Painted Swagman's Swatter E6E6E6.png r4wrzSwagmaster 16:35, 8 April 2012 (PDT)
Pictogram cross.png No I think it's entirely unnecessary. Before making a change like this you must consider what value this adds, besides potentially looking nice -- which is an arguably point in itself. -- Pilk (talk) 09:30, 10 April 2012 (PDT)
Pictogram minus.png Oppose They don't add anything useful to articles and only serve to break up the text in an uneven manner, not to mention the extra page load time this would add for very little gain. This isn't intuitive, this isn't helpful, this certainly isn't readable compared to the existing text, and it's too ambiguous (e.g Luger and Shotgun meaning different things when one would expect them both to represent the weapons category). i-ghost 09:36, 10 April 2012 (PDT)
Pictogram minus.png Oppose Not useful (can be quite cluttering actually in some cases with too many categories), icons can be misleading, unnecessary and not widely used (as you said, you'd only be "focusing on the ones most used on item pages", when the ideal would be that they all followed whichever pattern we were to pick). However, if you improve this, I'll rethink my position (maybe).  –  Epic Eric (T | C) 10:26, 10 April 2012 (PDT)

Round Two

Just to clarify, the point of these isn't to make them look pretty. It's to make it easier to see the categories at a glance, (hopefully) improving user friendliness in doing so. It would be very simple to implement as it stands, and is very much so a work-in-progress. Now, I've made some changes, and they should explain themselves:

User R4wrz0rz0r Categoryiconsroundtwo.png

Please tell me whether or not the changes have changed your opinion. (By the way, for some reason the icons and text are larger than they should be; please keep this in mind.) Painted Swagman's Swatter E6E6E6.png r4wrzSwagmaster 10:55, 10 April 2012 (PDT)

And how would they look like for Untradeable items, Valve-made items, Promotional items and Reskins? The main issue is the ambiguity of the currently used icons.  –  Epic Eric (T | C) 11:01, 10 April 2012 (PDT)
Those, I think, we can leave without making icons for. AFAIK, they are not interesting to the average user. Painted Swagman's Swatter E6E6E6.png r4wrzSwagmaster 11:05, 10 April 2012 (PDT)
Then I'll have to Pictogram minus.png Disagree again because, as I said, these would be "not widely used (as you said, you'd only be 'focusing on the ones most used on item pages', when the ideal would be that they all followed whichever pattern we were to pick)". Nonetheless, the icons can be still misleading.  –  Epic Eric (T | C) 18:10, 12 April 2012 (PDT)

Change naming process(>100.000edits needed)+ Trading Cards - Consistent image, filetypes + descriptions

As already mentioned on the Talk page - Talk:Trading_cards

The image names for the front and back of trading cards are inconsistant and misleading, for example we have: Image:scout1.png, Image:scout2.png | Image:Demo_front.jpg, Image:Demo_back.jpg | Image:engineer_back.jpg , Image:engie2.jpg |Image:Spy_Card1.jpg, Image:spy2.jpg

On top of this the names and descriptions dont match so Image:Demo_back.jpg has description "Demoman trading card (Front)" and Image:Demo_front.jpg has "Demoman trading card (Back)"

I assume there would also be a preference for all images to be png? Govcon 11:02, 11 April 2012 (PDT)

Sooo this came up yesterday and I know we are all pretty busy. So I will now change the topic a bit and reduce your time to waste on it.
The question is: Do we need clear file names? The answer is obvious, we need to have a clear destincton for every file, so we dont need to scroll down to see where this picture is used and what for, and we have a base on how to proceed for now and the future uploads. We want to look and see in the file name a clear reason to it.

So gentlemen is this policy used by everyone? I dont see it the way it used to be. So that brings us into the unique position to add a little spirit and faith into the wiki and work as a team to reduce the file names which makes no sense to us, and add a little more logic into the wiki. You could ask: Why should we do that, because it works the way it is know? I can only beg of you to think about it, because in the future we will always get more and more insight and more information about the process.

So as an example, we dont want any File which are named Pyro1(picture of pyro) and Pyro2(trading card), or Demoman_back and Pyro_(Back), which are not telling you the right story, and are not consistent if you look for them first or try to add them yourself. Also i wanted to make this discussion more active because our workforce is needed in full strength.

Because from 1 till >100.000 edits all is possible if this naming procedure will be agreed on. So must chose now like we did in the past with normal weapons and hats with the naming to also have a general rule for the naming of files, and i think my client(Govcon) made a good example about how we can do it in this case, and also we should make some more rules for different kind of pictures, so that's it. TheDoctor 05:33, 12 April 2012 (PDT)
((((I always always always always wanted to be a lawyer for once, even if pretending, sorry.))))
I started the process of making all the images of hats and misc items have consistent filenames, but I don't think it's necessary to do this for every image on the wiki. The trading card images are used once on the class pages and Trading cards page, but nowhere else, and I don't see them being used for anything else in the future. Consistency is good, but there is little point in changing the filenames of images which are only used on one or two pages and unlikely to be touched again. » Cooper Kid (blether) • (contreebs) 10:04, 12 April 2012 (PDT)

Propose time!

I really like the Workshop, despite all the futuristic things and all. But I wanna suggest a build-in window for the homepage to the Wiki with a title called something related to the workshop. The item thumbnail picture should be loaded up with a direct link to the Steam Workshop item. A simple idea, but I need to hear out some of the Community if they (and you too, reader) would agree or mean the opposite of my suggestion here. This is what most people would call advertising, but I find it good to show other peoples work. The items showed must not last longer than a maximum of 24 hours and a minimum time of 12 (Change time if needed). Well, hope it would be a great and valuable contribution. Ready? GO! User Ravecrib9t4 Signature Logo.JPG TNS 02:39, 12 April 2012 (PDT)

Pictogram minus.png Oppose A link to the Steam Workshop is enough (and we already have one).  –  Epic Eric (T | C) 18:08, 12 April 2012 (PDT)
Pictogram minus.png Nah. One word. Bias. rZ 18:57, 12 April 2012 (PDT)

Fortress Forever Trivia

I noticed a handful of articles (like Your Eternal Reward) have trivia about how the item is similar to the stats in the source mod Fortress Forever. I don't really see how this is important or relevant or trivia, unless we know for a fact the stats for YER were picked because of FF. This probably also applies to items that are coincidentally identical to Gang Garrison items. Balladofwindfishes 18:05, 12 April 2012 (PDT)

Disambiguation pages: global suggestion

Hi all!

(English is not my native language, so have mercy please :). On the other hand, it means that I see the aspects of this problem that are language-dependent.)

So here are some points on the problem and a possible way to solve it.

  1. Main point: Disambiguation is always language-dependent.
    • Consequently, there can be no need in translating disambiguation description to other languages, they can just have no sense there.
      • Example: Point. In English this word could refer to a specific region on the ground, to the player score or to the aiming as a part of hat name. In Russian all three meanings are expressed by three different words, and the disambiguation article is not needed. Don't know about other languages, but guess it is a normal situation everywhere.
      • Example 2: All those abbreviations that brought this discussion to life.
    • Consequently 2 (less obvious), there can be disambiguations in other languages that have no sense in English.
      • Example: a Russian word Ключ (pronounced [klyuch]). This word can refer to the key as well as to the wrench in Russian, so we would like to have a disambiguation article on this word. But there is no corresponding article in English segment, as in English key and wrench have nothing in common.
    • Suggested decision: illustrated now by an example with Ключ.
      • First, I created an article Ru_Klyuch/ru. It has a name that is more or less readable for english-speakers and is located in /ru segment (so all localized templates are working correctly). The prefix Ru_ indicates that it is a special article and prevents possible conflicts in case some transliterations will be exactly like existing English words. I also suggest to introduce a new category for those pages, for example, [Category:Language-specific disambiguation] to help bots.
      • Second, I created an article Ключ, as we are doing now to define a cyrillic alias. This page is a standard language redirect to Ru_Klyuch/ru.
      • We are still within wiki standards, except that we don't have a page [[Ru_Klyuch]]. But this — and it is a key point in my suggestion — is a normal situation, because — see Main point. It is normal that a disambiguation is described in only one (or maybe several) languages and is missing in others. Of course, users in other languages will create their own pages, like Fr_Shershe_La_Fam/fr (one of the few phrases I know in French, lol :).
  2. Point #2: We need some bot tuning, NOW. I suggest that the bot creating 'Missing translation' pages should ignore pages from Category:Disambiguation and all language categories like Category:Disambiguation/ru. Look at the page Missing translations/ru — we really need to get rid of this spam, it makes the page completely useless now.
  3. Point #3: As I have said above, a new category Language-specific disambiguation should be introduced (or choose a better name if needed). Bot should be aware of this category too, and should not process missing pages from it.
  4. After all this is done, we in our language segments should review all already localized disambiguations and kill those that don't have sense (I have started to mark such ones in Russian with {{cleanup}} now). At the same time, we should also think about our own disambiguation articles — the main goal of all this mess :)

Thanks to all who didn't quit reading :). Please think of this suggestion and if you agree, support it. It will not require much work from the wiki admins (just points #2 and #3, and a formal "Let's do it" permission), but will bring new opportunities to the non-english wiki users. — Login Soldier.pngStormbird talk 07:18, 17 March 2012 (PDT)

I agree with this but not the proposed naming scheme (Xx_RedirectName/xx). It would create articles in the main namespace, and quite a bunch of them. I would rather have a dedicated article namespace for this, even if "unofficial" (as in, not in MW's config), which would make it look like Disambiguation:RedirectName/xx. On top of that, it would make it easy to make the bot ignore these pages, because it would be able to tell that it is a disambiguation from the name, something that is not possible currently or with the proposed naming scheme, and is crucial to being able to generate "missing translations" lists easily without having to fetch extra information — Wind 16:29, 18 March 2012 (PDT)
Pictogram plus.png Agree, I like the idea of the new naming. 1) Didn't quite get it, you mean that RedirectName should be an English transliteration (like Klyuch) or localized (like Ключ)? And 2) what should be done before we can start making localized disambigs? — Login Soldier.pngStormbird talk 13:49, 19 March 2012 (PDT)
The RedirectName would be an english translation of the name of the redirect, so Disambiguation:Key/ru in this example. As for #2, need to assemble a list of disambigs to migrate before doing it all in one shot so that there is no confusion or in-between mistakes. Having a proper namespace definition in the MediaWiki config would be nice, but sadly that seems unlikely to happen at the moment because Valve won't moov :( — Wind 14:17, 3 April 2012 (PDT)
And why not Disambiguation:Wrench/ru? The main problem is that, as I have said, [klyuch] can refer to the key as well as to the wrench in Russian. And the disambiguation word to explain is Klyuch — there is no english equivalent to it, that's why I suggest to use transliteration. As for 2), I think that all current Category:Disambiguation/ru can be processed. — Login Soldier.pngStormbird TC 12:30, 6 April 2012 (PDT)
Then how about naming it Disambiguation:RedirectName/xx where RedirectName is the name of the redirect page that goes to Disambiguation:RedirectName/xx (I think that was the original idea lol) — Wind 23:59, 7 April 2012 (PDT)
You got it :). Redirect page Ключ should go to Disambiguation:Klyuch/ru, making it clear both for russian and english users (the latter just need to know that the page concerns russian disambiguation). As for current english disambiguations, they will look like Disambiguation:Point, which is also easy to understand and support. — Login Soldier.pngStormbird TC 02:35, 8 April 2012 (PDT)
Alright from me, but:
  • Need more staff support for this (is big move and so far I'm the only one saying anything here)
  • Need to make a list of such disambigs and where they should be moved to, in all languages (this will take some time)

Wind 11:40, 9 April 2012 (PDT)

Pictogram plus.png Senõr Support -RJ 11:43, 9 April 2012 (PDT)
I can talk about russian segment only. As for russian disambiguations, this category now counts 276 pages, but the large part of them have no sense and can be removed permanently. The other part, however, should be preserved (maybe with small corrections) and be 'equipped' with transliteration and cyrillic redirect. This process will take some time and some efforts. I suggest to start with moving ALL those pages automatically to the new namespace, leaving their current names (Baseball cap/ruDisambiguation:Baseball cap/ru) and adding some marking infobox like {{retrans}} or {{cleanup|Check if disambiguation exists in Russian}}. Having all this, local editors can process those pages: rename + add cyrillic redirect + remove marking infobox — or, if needed, just empty the article and add {{delete}}. No additional help from administration will be required at this step. — Login Soldier.pngStormbird TC 12:20, 9 April 2012 (PDT)
Even better idea: the new infobox with instructions explaining the new disambig structure. It should briefly explain what to do with the article, so that any editor can understand the point. Maybe it should also add some special category mark, like [Disambiguations that require review/xx] — it will help monitoring progress. I can prepare the infobox draft tomorrow. — Login Soldier.pngStormbird TC 12:27, 9 April 2012 (PDT)
Another option is not to move current disambigs at all. As I have said, most of them were created as translations of english disambigs, paying little attention to their real need in russian. Maybe it will be easier to look at all russian item names, game concepts etc. and create pure russian disambigs from scratch. — Login Soldier.pngStormbird TC 12:20, 9 April 2012 (PDT)
Pictogram plus.png I agree, it never made sense to me the way it's set up now. Disambigs should only really be used to disambiguate search terms. -- Pilk (talk) 09:38, 10 April 2012 (PDT)
Pictogram plus.png I agree I like dis idea--FreeXMan Talk | Cont 12:26, 10 April 2012 (PDT)
Something like this: User:Stormbird/Template:Disambiguation that needs review. Maybe someone could help making the english description better. I also added detailed russian description, giving an example. — Login Soldier.pngStormbird TC 12:38, 11 April 2012 (PDT)
Fixed some english on there, but it still says "move". I don't think it should say that because regular users could interpret that as doing the moving by themselves (by cutting/pasting), which would lose edit history information. It's better to make it say "Mark with the {{moov}} template" or something — Wind 18:32, 12 April 2012 (PDT)
Didn't find any 'move' word there, or maybe I understood you wrong? Anyway, feel free to change the text if you consider it necessary. — Login Soldier.pngStormbird TC 23:51, 12 April 2012 (PDT)

Trading needs a new video!

I'm quoting what was said on the Trading Page Discussion:

" Since we don't use the old in-game trading system, someone needs to update the video showing how trading is done via the steam trade overlay.--The preceding unsigned comment was added by Eugene (talk) • (contribs)

Agreed. Also, please sign all talk pages with --~~~~ --Piemanmoo 15:22, 14 March 2012 (PDT)

Pictogram tick.png Done - I have made a demo for trading you can see it here - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pQ_4C33w7ss . It just needs music and the image at the start but from what I understood when they upload it to the channel they it by themselves. Atlas 06:21, 6 April 2012 (PDT)"

A video is made, all you have to do is to upload it! (Also...Add music, and the images in the start..) The video is on 1080 HD , this is more than the quality required. And really there is nothing to argue about - the old video is really not up to date. Atlas 16:06, 13 April 2012 (PDT)