Team Fortress Wiki:Discussion

create a new section

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)

 I approve of this.  –  Epic Eric (T | C) 13:12, 15 February 2012 (PST)

 I approve of this in a superior fashion compared to Epic Eric -- Firestorm 13:13, 15 February 2012 (PST)

Here's my two cents:

• Title bar is too big, should only cover one line (might also read better as "Possible weapon qualities")
• Background colour makes it hard to see the breaks between weapons - try switching it to #FFDDAD as in this one
• Don't really need the key twice - all other templates on the wiki just have it at the bottom

Nice job overall. I saw that post on the forums too and was thinking about throwing a template together. Glad I didn't bother because this one's much better than anything I could have come up with!

» Cooper Kid (blether) • (contreebs) 14:35, 15 February 2012 (PST)

Thanks for the feedback, been a bit (a lot) busy since last week, but I applied those suggestions now and fixed the bug with the title size. rebmcr 13:14, 20 February 2012 (PST)

• Looks like the feedback was spread out over each page in the project, so I've grouped it here (if that's Naughty, please let me know). I would really appreciate more opinions, guys! rebmcr 13:14, 20 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)

I think ~www~ is actually right, i think zh-hant has a better translation of the English "麥斯兔子頭" - zh-hant, Max's Severed Head, "Max的半个脑袋" - zh-hans, Max's half brain Lockon 01:41, 16 February 2012 (PST)Lokcon

 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)

Image Consistency

I've been flagging a lot of image files to be moved to try and make them a bit more consistent, and I've come across an anomaly on some articles for all-class hats or misc items. Some of them have an image specifically for the item infobox, while others just use one of the images from the all-class wearing gallery on the page. So, my question is this: Should all-class hats and misc items have a seperate image specifically for the infobox or not? I for one think that we might as well use the all-class gallery - it would be quite nice if the {{Random class}} template could be used to make them cycle or something. » Cooper Kid (blether) • (contreebs) 04:57, 18 February 2012 (PST)

I'm going to start going through the Miscellaneous Items pretty soon to mark some of them to be moved as well (apoologies in advance to FreeXMan, who's been doing all of the actual moving), and as most of them are all-class we should make a decision about the naming format. Here's what I suggest:

• The main infobox image should be in the format <hat name>.png at all times, e.g. Killer's Kabuto.png. This includes images with more than one class in them, such as the Private Eye or Team Captain.
• The all-class gallery images should use the format <class> <hat name>.png, e.g. Engineer Brown Bomber.png. It's also important that the full class names are used - no "Engies" or "Demos". This will allow the use of {{Random class}} to randomly select an image for some purposes.

The point of this exercise is to make filenames more consistant - it will be a lot easier to find and display a picture of a hat if you can be sure that the image will simply be titled <hat name>.png.

» Cooper Kid (blether) • (contreebs) 08:46, 20 February 2012 (PST)

Does the {{icon item}} template not hide all of the actual filenames from most editors, anyway? rebmcr 08:50, 20 February 2012 (PST)

Icon item images are one case where they have already been made consistant - every one is labelled Item icon <item>.png, and that really makes them easier to use.

» Cooper Kid (blether) • (contreebs) 09:08, 20 February 2012 (PST)

 Support, in that case. Professionals have standards. rebmcr 09:12, 20 February 2012 (PST)

 Oppose moving images for the purpose of another silly random hat template. It appears someone went ahead and moved them anyway now though. Pointless moves should be avoided because of the extra work they create. Please, if it ain't broke don't bother. Filenames at the wrong hat titles is not a valid reason to move. Now the file pages that were moved, you can't see what pages are using each file. And now each of these files is marked as 'unused' because they are unused, all pages are 'using' the redirect at the old title. I oppose pointless moves that create more mess out of a pedantic need to correct all filenames "because consistency". seb26 11:44, 20 February 2012 (PST)

The vast majority of those images are only used in the item infobox on their respective pages - would it be difficult to alter the coding for items listed as "hats" so that the image simply becomes <hat>.png? I really didn't intend to make unnecessary work, but some of the files use nonsensical names and it makes them rather hard to find; making them more consistent would help in the long run, I think. » Cooper Kid (blether) • (contreebs) 18:31, 20 February 2012 (PST)

Contributor of the Week

Here is a tip how to improve the quality of edits.

In Russian section of Team Fortress Wiki we have already practice to choose “Contributor of the Week” twice in one month.

Here how it works. We have juries. They are people who have already received a Wiki Cap and famous persons. The leader chooses active users on Wiki and then juries are going to discuss them on local IRC channel.

When they have a “Winner” leader publish information on Translation Progress page and write reason.

Contributor of the Week receives a Wikichievment.

All other contributors can see his User page and take useful tips.

Here you can see all the “Winners”: Contributor of the Week (Russian).

I also think that it is going to be good if it will become preselection for a Wiki Cap.

What do you think about this? -- Gero* talk 03:16, 21 February 2012 (PST)

 Oppose for the Wiki cap preselection. Anyone can nominate editor for wiki cap and the staff will decide if they deserve a cap. Staff will look into the quality and the amount work the person has done. There is absolutely no need to put any value on "contributor of the week", we already check the same contributions. -- Keisari 17:09, 21 February 2012 (PST)

 Can't agree or disagree The consept is pretty funny and it includes a little sport in the edit front. But the thing is the spam edits and the qualified edits would clash to one big mess. The system might work at the translation perspective, but far away from positive if it was added to the Wiki for all the users. Wikichievemets are earned by just giving freely and doesn't need to be given by "force" (excuse me for that) and it marks a milestone which the person has been doing for a time or so. Tips and such might work but only for the users to practice the edits they do and so on. Nominations cannot and can't ever be determed by how many edits or how good you work for the Wiki to get a Wiki Cap, but the users around could find it interesting by adding their opinion on that user to the Nominations. I cannot agree or disagree in this idea but it seemed nice. TheNobleScout 07:10, 23 February 2012 (PST)

Remove Civilian from class lists and etc.

The Civilian hasn't been a proper class since the end of 2007. I'm of the opinion that it shouldn't be listed in such things as the Classes page or the Template:Class Nav template. For new users it seems to me to be information overload, or in other words, way to prominent for something that is an unused feature. --Org 03:25, 21 February 2012 (PST)

 Support because we (generally) don't need to know about a class that doesn't exist (or at least, doesn't exist as much as the others do). I eat derpcakes 10:15, 22 February 2012 (PST)

 Support Makes sence. It should be in the template for unused content, and we should do the same about the Commander. GianAwesome 10:26, 22 February 2012 (PST)

The foul deed is done. However Unused content now needs a new section. --Org 21:57, 22 February 2012 (PST)

 Neutral The article and class might be a so called "deadpool", but this is a class after all. I suggest moving this article instead of a deletion. TheNobleScout 07:14, 23 February 2012 (PST)

Er, I wasn't proposing to kill the article, just moving him from the main pages. --Org 10:11, 23 February 2012 (PST)

 Support I think it's sort of misleading to have them there. We don't stick unused weapons into the weapon lists as if they were real weapons, why do the same for unused classes? Balladofwindfishes 10:13, 23 February 2012 (PST)

Paint preview grid redux

Just wanted to bring up the idea from June 2011 again about the Paint Preview for hats / misc. Team_Fortress_Wiki:Discussion/Archive_11#Paint_preview_grid. IE using the extra space in the bottom corner to show the unpainted version of the hat at the same resolution / orientation / lighting as all the painted versions, so someone using the Wiki for a guide of paint can see it all in one spot, instead of having to scroll between those tables and the info box. There was some agreement to this before but it never went anywhere. --Org 03:31, 21 February 2012 (PST)

 Support Is good. » Cooper Kid (blether) • (contreebs) 10:28, 21 February 2012 (PST)

 Oppose Too much effort just to compensate for some minor scrolling. Keep in mind that the user can just click on two images they would like to compare and switch between their tabs/windows. i-ghost 04:56, 22 February 2012 (PST)

Just because a user can get the same result by scrolling around or tab flipping, doesn't mean better useability shouldn't be added where applicable. De whole point of der wikiering is ter mekin strff 'nderstanable easly --Org 22:00, 22 February 2012 (PST)

I should add that this would be doubly useful as the Team-colored Styles table could be merged with the paint table. » Cooper Kid (blether) • (contreebs) 07:07, 22 February 2012 (PST)

Well they added new paint, so I'd think now would be a good time to do this since all the hats get to be redone, hint hint :D --Org 16:16, 23 February 2012 (PST)

This is now underway due to the addition of two new paints. i-ghost 03:05, 24 February 2012 (PST)

The template has been updated to display the item's team skins if they exist (which will all be updated to match the painted variants rotations, etc), if the skin images don't exist, it will display an unpainted image (which will need to be uploaded separately). Any comments? i-ghost 03:57, 24 February 2012 (PST)

Um, maybe move the single color, unpainted, up into the top table (colspan 2'ed) in the gap next to the new greens, and the unpainted team versions down in the bottom table, as they are now. The other suggestion would be instead of having those three new cells exist or not exist completely, display a N/A instead of the image. --Org 08:11, 24 February 2012 (PST)

Well maybe not colspan 2, just shoved over into the 4th column. --Org 08:15, 24 February 2012 (PST)

It would add unnecessary complication to the template to have it in two seperate places. Not to mention being inconsistent for visitors. rebmcr 12:27, 24 February 2012 (PST)

Using my own argument against me? Inconceivable! :) --Org 20:12, 24 February 2012 (PST)

Page for Halloween mode?

I thought that Halloween mode should have its own page just like Birthday mode does; on vanilla servers it only happens once in a blue full moon or during Halloween, much like how birthday mode is automatically enabled on August 24th. However, Halloween mode can also be activated using tf_forced_holiday 2 in the config, just like with birthday mode's tf_birthday 1. I was not sure if the community would approve, thus this discussion. Thoughts please. I eat derpcakes 10:24, 22 February 2012 (PST)

 Agree There wouldn't really be much on it - maybe a list of all the items which can only be worn on Haloween or during the Full Moon. Even so, I agree that it's worth its own article.

» Cooper Kid (blether) • (contreebs) 10:34, 22 February 2012 (PST)

While there already is a list of Full Moon only items I have gone ahead and made the article. Add on as you wish. --Fiskie 17:04, 24 February 2012 (PST)

Halloween Masks

At some point, someone thought that we would have a different page for the Scout Mask, Soldier Mask, etc. However, they are now only causing useless redirects. On the Halloween Masks page, there is a crafting recipe which has every mask linked. They all link back to this page, since an individual page would be excessive. However, the Medic (used to) and Spy masks redirect uselessly to a redirect page--when there is a clear link implied. Theoretically, this crafting template could be used on another page, where the links would be useful, but otherwise it's merely excess linking. There is a similar issue with the very small masks in the Hat Template. I advocate removing these links, and if someone feels that this is problematic, due to a lack of links, add a "See also Halloween Masks". [[User:Darkid]] 04:39, 24 February 2012 (PST)

 Oppose Currently, every item is able to be linked to by it's name. It would be nice for it to stay that way. All the Festive weapons redirect to their regular counterparts, but they can still be linked as Festive Rocket Launcher, for example. Masks and Festives are small enough groups that it's not an issue to keep track of "what links here", nor is it even measurable as a performance hit. rebmcr 17:13, 24 February 2012 (PST)

"Community Strategy" Cleanup Project

In the IRC a few of us were discussing about the sheer redundancy and length of some of the Community Strategy articles, notably the Community Demoman strategy which was cleaned up a bit by Atonement as a result of this. It'd be nice if there were more people patrolling these pages to remove common sense-esque "strategies" which sometimes don't make any sense and are done on a whim because someone killed a bunch of new players with some amateurish tactic. They may be community pages, sure, but it doesn't mean they can't be kept clean. --Fiskie 08:26, 25 February 2012 (PST)

 Support I'll be working on clean-up some more after I get home today. Atonement 08:30, 25 February 2012 (PST)

Of Festive Weapons and Other Reskins

Yes, I am aware of this discussion. However, I believe there is, I believe, a point to be made. The festive weapons are indeed reskins of default weapons. However, there are a lot of weapons that function the exact same way as others; for example, the HHHH and the Eyelander.

My question is this: If we already have different pages for reskins like the Scottish Handshake which is the same as the Bottle, why not have different pages for festive weapons?

I do believe there is a legitimate answer to this question, if only we can find it through discussion.

I think there are three different solutions to this:

• We can crush all the reskins into one page (the original weapon). For example, the HHHH and the Nessie's Nine Iron would be sub-articles in the Eyelander page. This will make for many less pages on the wiki, but it makes everything follow the same process as the festive weapons do.
• We can have all reskins in their own page. This means we would create new pages for the festives, and keep old ones for other reskins. In my personal opinion, this one makes a bit more sense, for consistency.
• We can keep it the way it is. The other reskins will have their own pages, the festives won't. This is obviously the most simple to implement.

I'd like to see the points of view from the community with regards to these three ideas. Please discuss. I eat derpcakes 13:07, 25 February 2012 (PST)