Team Fortress Wiki:Discussion

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Will TF2 have the new valve intro?

Y'all know,that one from DotA 2 beta.Just asking. TheGuy299

We (wiki staff) don't receive any sort of information with regards to the content of upcoming patches, so we can't give an answer. I would presume not as it has no effect on gameplay and there is no benefit to updating it. -RJ 11:05, 6 February 2012 (PST)

Unboxable as Unusual in hat infobox

Under "Availability." It seems like information we would have, just simply state "Unbox(Unusual)" in the infobox for the hats that can be. Because it's not something we have very well documented, and the unusual table we have doesn't get updated nearly enough and is tricky for people to edit anyway. With it in the infobox its right there, easy for the user to see if the item they want can be unsuaul. And also it's a way to get the hat, so it's missing from Availability anyway because that's a method of getting the hat. Balladofwindfishes 16:24, 6 February 2012 (PST)

So few general players are bothered about Unusuals anyway that I'm not convinced it's important enough to be listed on each page - though you make a good point about it belonging in the "Availability" section. As for the Unusual Quality table, I've actually made a simpler version that should be easier to update - it's right here. I thought the current one was a bit too complicated as well. » Cooper Kid (blether) • (contreebs) 17:00, 6 February 2012 (PST)

I mean... it's a method to get the hat. I don't see it much different than listing a hat as promotional. If you can get the hat that way, it needs to be listed. Balladofwindfishes 17:32, 6 February 2012 (PST)

 Support You've convinced me. » Cooper Kid (blether) • (contreebs) 10:17, 7 February 2012 (PST)

Is Valve poking fun at us?

Given that we're the only ones who care about this stuff, I just think it's interesting to note that the recent slew of patches contain a line that mocks the language and wording of the patch itself. That is all. Upgrade 19:00, 9 February 2012 (PST)

Mocking? I don't think they're mocking us at all, it's just a tongue-in-cheek reference to how we have consistently documented localization changes in the undocumented changes section. I think they're sort of just waving a friendly "hello". Also, I am unsure if this discussion belongs on this page. -Mr. Magoolachub 19:05, 9 February 2012 (PST)

[citation needed]– fashnek _(talk·c) 19:26, 9 February 2012 (PST)

New template(s) proposal

Hi all, I've not made any edits for a month or so, mainly because it's been pretty quiet and I'm loathe to make work for work's sake. However, I saw this thread on SPUF, and decided to help the guy out and improve the wiki at the same time.

The almost-finished (item name links need improving) template is here, and it uses a base layout, which is seperate from the data to allow for easier editing.

The base template also uses a new User:Rebmcr/qualitycheck template (thanks to EpicEric), which could be used in place of Template:canbeunusual, if it's considered a good idea.

I need to write a Usage section for these 3 new templates tonight, but I just wanted to start getting opinions on this now. rebmcr 03:34, 14 February 2012 (PST)

OK, usage section written, appearance improved. I feel this is of a quality now that can go onto the main site. What does everyone think? rebmcr 13:57, 15 February 2012 (PST)

zh translation

The wiki has allowed for translation for zh-hant (Chinese Traditional) and zh-hans (Chinese Simplified) but in the most recent past this has been a subject of many problems, with pages being copied from either language and pasted on the other, etc. One possible solution I discovered a few months ago is LanguageConverter for MediaWiki, which provides a way to convert a page in Chinese to different regional 'dialects', i.e. zh-cn, zh-hk, zh-tw, zh-sg. This is done by a table of mappings from 'zh' to each of the dialects (e.g. zh to hant: '㛿' => '𡠹' – there are more examples at [1]).

The biggest working example, however, is the Chinese Wikipedia which is at http://zh.wikipedia.org and allows for conversion into the above four dialects. Pages are written as 'zh' and then converted according to the user's preference. They report that this system has been in place since 2004 and has been received well by the community.

I am posting this here along with some links for zh-hans and zh-hant translators to read and evaluate whether a similar system for the TF Wiki would be ideal. I think that using this would allow both groups to work to translate more pages together and have them still be accessible to different regions that read simplified or traditional. However, since I cannot read Chinese I think the final decision is best to made based on consensus from this discussion. There are also a number of technical questions to be answered to (how best this would be implemented for our wiki), but this will of course rest on the decision whether to pursue this.

• Automatic conversion between simplified and traditional Chinese – Meta-Wiki
• Writing systems (technical) – MediaWiki.org
• zh.wikipedia.org Main Page – switch between variants at top of page, next to 'page' and 'discussion'
• ZhConversion.php – current translation table used on Chinese Wikipedia

seb26 12:22, 14 February 2012 (PST)

Good To Hear :D -- Lockon 12:31, 14 February 2012 (PST)Lockon

Thank you -- Bestipod

To be clear, I believe he is asking whether Chinese translators want this feature. I think he wants a yes or no. – fashnek _(talk·c) 12:54, 14 February 2012 (PST)

 Disagree: I have many reasons to oppose this new function:

• First, the zh-hans and zh-hant have so many different names to call a same item or character. For example, zh-hant call Heavy as "重裝兵", but zh-hans call it "重機槍手", we named Max's Severed Head as "麥斯兔子頭", they called it "Max的半个脑袋". There are still many more items which have different names, and many people could be confused if zh-hant and zh-hans are merged together. They will not be familiar with the new names easily cause they are already used to the old names. Thus I don't think installing a word converter can solve this kind of problem. The first part is the biggest part of problem that I am concerned.
• Second, due to the "below average" quality of editing in zh-hans, I don't think it is a good idea to merge two similar but different languages into one language. If two languages become one language in the future, I am worried that the quality of content will be decreased. In that case, it might be hard to maintain and manage the Chinese TF2 Wiki, causing many sounds of dissatisfaction comes out.
• Third, I have already had a discussion with an old zh-hans translator called Nafoul, he had admitted that the coping from zh-hant to zh-hans is indeed a serious problem inside the Wiki. And he told me that he will try to stop zh-hans people from coping. However, I don't know why but he became inactive in recent months. What I want to say is that if zh-hans translators can restrain themselves from coping or claiming that zh-hans = zh-hant, there wouldn't be any unhappy situation between zh-hans and zh-hant, and I would not need to delete so many pages.
• Last, I have already talked with the Taiwan TF2 communities and some of the translators. Most of them are disagree of Language Converter project, some of them even has bad impression toward Chinese, cause they have done so many unfair things to Taiwanese (note that Chinese ≠ Taiwanese). As for me, due to many experience of being copied, bad impression of lies comes out from zh-hans translators, and threatening words toward me (remember Shawnchi? What a guy.), I am afraid that I cannot translate the article and cooperate with Chinese zh-hans translators. I am also afraid that many more unclear problems and contradictory will come out between us in the future.

These points are my reasons to oppose the conversion project. For my own opinion, I will say that closing the whole zh-hans department will be the best solution of this incident. 20:21, 14 February 2012 (PST)

 Disagree：

I'll just mention one thing. Most of the articles on Wikipedia.org have their own authoritative references in both S-Chinese and T-Chinese while tfwiki does not. In this case, the editors on Wikipedia.org can do effective conversion between T-Chinese and S-Chinese according to their corresponding references. However, the articles in T-Chinese and S-Chinese in tfwiki are mostly translated by community itself. Since the S-Chinese TF communities and T-Chinese TF communities have different translation customs toward the game and its related stuffs which could be very difficult (even nearly impossible) to merge without authoritative (or say, official) Chinese references, it is better to keep the separation of zh-hans and zh-hant pages.

Jcmbmhitacid 21:14, 14 February 2012 (PST)