Editing RimWorld Wiki talk:Community portal

== Page Creation Permissions ==
What does it take to get page creation permissions?
[[User:Lilwhitemouse|Lilwhitemouse]] ([[User talk:Lilwhitemouse|talk]]) 14:42, 29 November 2018 (UTC)
:Also interested in finding out this info, especially ''TALK'' pages. The "[[Community portal]]" says under '''Want to discuss stuff?''' "If you want to discuss anything specific to an article, you can use the Discussion page for that article.", but if an article's talk page is still empty that's not really possible: unregistered users are shown <span style="background-color: #ffb50d; border: 1px solid #7f7f7f; font-family: monospace,monospace; font-size: 0.87em; padding: 0.2em">🔒 You currently are not able to participate. You can try logging in.</span> and newly-registered users are shown <span style="background-color: #ffb50d; border: 1px solid #7f7f7f; font-family: monospace,monospace; font-size: 0.87em; padding: 0.2em">🔒 You currently are not able to participate, because you do not have the required rights.</span> -- so it's easier to just vandalize right away (editing articles) than to talk about what we want to improve. :-( -- [[User:Noob hoarder|Noob hoarder]] ([[User talk:Noob hoarder|talk]]) 22:09, 11 May 2019 (UTC)

::The answer is everywhere (it's the most FAQ):
::Under '''"How to help out"''' within this same page:
::*You can also create "New pages" for missing pages but your account must have at least 10 edits a priori, this is configuration to prevent vandal bots. If you don't meet the count yet, just perform any of the above mentioned tasks to rise your count.
::In [[:Help:Basics]]: 
::*Under '''"Creating New Articles"''': With a brand new account, you will need at least 10 edits to be able to make a new article. This is an anti-spam bot measure.
::Check out the Special Pages area to see articles that could use links, pictures, categories, etc. Fixing up grammar and spelling on pages is always appreciated as well, and is also an easy way to get your 10 edits.
::...and also...
::*...in '''my talk page''': [[User talk:Yoshida Keiji]]. 15:55, 12 May 2019 (UTC)

== Wooden foot ==
I'd like to create the page [[Wooden foot]] but I don't have the permissions to do so. Could someone create the page (and then ping me) or give me the permission? Thanks. --[[User:Nijin|Nijin]] ([[User talk:Nijin|talk]]) 19:17, 17 September 2018 (UTC)

: Just posting for future readers to say that this no longer needs doing. - [[User:AnnanFay|AnnanFay]] ([[User talk:AnnanFay|talk]]) 22:17, 28 November 2019 (UTC)

== Formatting guideline for "Weapon" pages ==

Version 1.0 is out and I'm not sure if more will be added as to evaluate the usefulness of this at the time, but since we are editing such pages, this is my draft and I would like everybody else's opinions to polish this layout and make it standard to all related articles.[[File:LongRangeMineralScanner.png|25px]][[User:Yoshida Keiji|'''Yoshida Keiji''']]([[User_talk:Yoshida_Keiji|Let's talk]][[File:beer b.png|25px]])[[File:LongRangeMineralScanner.png|25px]] 02:28, 3 November 2018 (UTC)

[[:User:Yoshida Keiji/Sandbox3]]

== Formatting guideline for Biome guides ==

Discuss what would you expect from Biome specific guides, the content, the parameters in which it shall be focused on, what it must have and what nots. How would you give points based on a score system to determine whether an article shall be part of the Community with members consentient by including it in mainspace or if it shall remain a user exclusive article that solely exposes the views of a single person rather everybody. [[File:LongRangeMineralScanner.png|25px]][[User:Yoshida Keiji|'''Yoshida Keiji''']]([[User_talk:Yoshida_Keiji|Let's talk]][[File:beer b.png|25px]])[[File:LongRangeMineralScanner.png|25px]] 12:43, 21 January 2019 (UTC)

== Thoughts for the future (frontpage, templates, SMW) ==

Since this wiki doesn't have an Admin noticeboard, this talk page appears to be the best spot to raise issues or thoughts.

=== Images ===
Recently I've uploaded ''a couple'' of pictures, extracted uncompressed from the game files. I tried to name them sensibly before uploading. Partly as a result of that, there are now de facto duplicates here and there, in various quality. We can try to deal with that, or just let it be. I've also started categorising images. It makes it easier to find them later, and use them in articles, if users can look through categories.

Because most "things" have 3-4 images now (east, north, south), the initial idea was to add them to a small gallery on pages. It helps to fill out some pages, and later we can add "live" shots of the animals and such as well. There is much I didn't upload, however, such as hair styles, body differences, and loads of interface images.

=== Frontpage ===
Yesterday [[User:PigeonGuru|PigeonGuru]] prompted me about the intent of the image uploads, and I touched on some more topics, including an idea for changing the frontpage. This is (probably) the page new users see first. Hope I don't step on any toes here, but I do think it could be improved. It's usually a good idea to have a brief intro or summary of the game, and those links to policy and consent and suchlike looks a little ''off'' for the frontpage, at least in such a prominent position. I see there have been quite some storms in here with edit wars, so that is probably why, but maybe it could be placed elsewhere?

My background is from Gamepedia, a wiki farm for gaming wikis, where I happened to take the lead in changing lots of stuff on the Pillars of Eternity wiki, including transitioning it from Semantic Mediawiki (SMW) to Cargo. Their sort-of default design for wikis is a dynamic setup that alters where segments are placed on the frontpage based on the width of the user's browser, using fairly simple Javascript in the .js file. I would like to try out something similar here as well -- if that is something that would be agreeable to the leadership. First in my own userspace of course. I'm not a design or CSS wizard, so it takes me time, but I'd like to try it out nevertheless. But I'd like to hear some feedback or ideas for how it can be done.

RimWorld is a dark-themed game with, suffice to say, some pretty darn dark behaviours at times (like the hats meme). I'm not sure how much extra work it would be, how badly if would affect tables and so on, but it might be fitting with a dark-coloured theme for the wiki as well, to better reflect the look in-game. Unfortunately the game doesn't really have much art assets to go on in terms of UI (it is very basic with boxes and suchlike), but otherwise we could have used some of that here, for infoboxes, stylised headings and the like. Any thoughts about this? Would it be a total no-go? I did look through the history of the frontpage a few weeks back, and it looked to have had basically the same design from the start. Have people sort of built brick by brick since then, or was it decided to have it like that, and we shouldn't change it?

:I don't think there was much of a "decision" regarding the frontpage, nobody just ever bothered changing it. I'm in favour of having a short description of the game on the frontpage. As far as the theme for RimWorld, it's as light or dark as the player wants to make it. Some colonies are all rainbows and kittens, others consist of nothing but organ-harvesting psychopaths. It reflects more on the player than on the game. --[[User:Mehni|Mehni]] ([[User talk:Mehni|talk]]) 18:06, 12 July 2019 (UTC) P.S. Welcome, and thank you for your additions.

=== Templates ===
Dear Cthulu... I've been sat here for ''hours'' trying to wrap my puny head around it, and it still doesn't make all that much sense. Like the main author [[User:Spdskatr|Spdskatr]] says in the Define/doc: <code>This template defines the stats for an item that, after a long and confusing chain of transclusions, will end up in Template:Infobox/Thing.</code>

There are loads of templates that do various things, including tiny stuff like closing a table, or making a heading. The chain-transclusions make it ''very'' hard to read and understand for regular users, or even quite experienced ones like myself. There are some errors here and there on pages, and many others still use the infobox main template instead, but given the above, it's hard to try to fix things. For all I know, it will break something else.

It is honestly tempting to start anew (and copying the relevant bits of code) instead of keep banging my head against the wall and not really getting anywhere. If we were to start over, I'd suggest to use one template for each thing instead of super-templates with loads of sub-templates and chaining. It's much easier to deal with both for users and staff -- because it's more easily understood. This is kind of a nightmare example, but imagine trying to wrap your head [https://tyranny.gamepedia.com/index.php?title=Template:Infobox&action=edit around this] as a new user :D

Another dark horse here, however, is the SMW. That too is hard to get a good grip on, because it appears to be dealt with in other templates as well. More chaining.

=== Cargo ===
That brings me to another possibility: Using [https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:Cargo Cargo] instead of SMW. Especially on the management/overview side, it is much better to use than SMW. Essentially it's a MySQL database, so it's easy to get an overview of everything, instead of the complex setup of triplets from SMW, and no proper database or table where users or admins can look at the data, check it, and fix it. Managing both the templates and the data would be easier. 

Usually SMW is also a drain on performance, though I don't know if that is the case here. As usual there are lots more property+query pages than content pages (and outdated entities), but we're not talking about millions here, so it may be manageable.

I'm hesitant to suggest it ofc, because it's not a small task. I did it for Pillars of Eternity, alone, and it almost broke me, sapped me of energy. But having done it, I can use much of that code base (it largely remains intact I see, although I've not been active there for a year or two, and resigned as a wiki guardian). 

All in all this wouldn't be small matters of course, and a lot of work, but I do think it would benefit the wiki, and probably make it easier to update pages now that 1.0 is out, and there are likely to be fewer mass-changes going forward.

Would be grand to hear some feedback about these ideas from the staff, ideally including [[User:Zesty|Zesty]]. If it's not agreeable by others, either as a whole or the individual ideas, then say so and we can end the discussion here. 

Thanks, [[User:Pangaea|Pangaea]] ([[User talk:Pangaea|talk]]) 11:40, 11 July 2019 (UTC)

:(Brief draft here that can be deleted later)

:Obviously needs a ton of changes as the colours are all messed up, but perhaps it gives a rough idea of what I had in mind? [https://i.imgur.com/JSPCqHT.jpg Imgur image of draft]. Wanted to test out using the background from the game as the background here (I seriously love that image, it really sets the mood for the game). The central content div is slightly transparent so the background image is visible, but without distorting the reading experience too much (Well, that's the end goal). Happy accident that the logo fits fairly well in the top left corner. Not sure what that gradient is about, but that should be altered as well so the whole logo shows. --[[User:Pangaea|Pangaea]] ([[User talk:Pangaea|talk]]) 19:06, 11 July 2019 (UTC)

:Interesting. Tried to check how quickly pages are generated by using ''Edit -> Show preview'' and looking at the parser stuff on the bottom. Pages that use the Define template is routinely about 1.0 to 1.2 seconds slower than pages that use the infobox main template. Yet both contain similar amounts of SMW data. So it seems like it's the template that slows thing down, and not necessarily SMW. See if you get similar results. It's a pretty big difference when one type of page generates in 0.3-ish seconds, and another type in 1.5 seconds. [[User:Pangaea|Pangaea]] ([[User talk:Pangaea|talk]]) 12:03, 12 July 2019 (UTC)