Team Fortress Wiki:Discussion

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Trading Value section in hat pages?

I've seen people that get scammed into getting their hats traded away, I think we should have a section of hat pages saying their value in metal so these scams don't happen as much.-Kholdstare 23:41, 17 October 2010 (UTC)

 Oppose The value of hats is completely up to the parties involved in a trade, and how much they want the hat in question. We collect facts, not opinions. ~ lhavelund ^{(t ▪ c)} 23:44, 17 October 2010 (UTC)

Page for pl_minepit?

We have pages for other custom maps and this one was featured on the TF2 blog. I think we should have a page for the map. -KazooieBanjo 01:35, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

As soon as that map is released, you can go ahead and start it. -- En Ex _(talk) 02:55, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

It has been released and is in beta 4 at the moment. -KazooieBanjo 22:52, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

Should we really want a page for a map so... questionable? -- Nineaxis 01:02, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

Well at least it's not Mariokart. -- Vi3trice _(talk) 01:10, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

It got a mention on the official blog, so a page about it wouldn't be so out of the question. Let's just hope Mario Kart won't be mentioned EVER.--Kid Of The Century 09:53, 20 September 2010 (UTC)

We used to have a page on Mario Kart. It even listed all of the memes in the map. We deleted it outright.  – Smashman _(talk) 10:06, 20 September 2010 (UTC)

Be Bold anyway and go for it! :D The worst thing that will happen is a request for a deletion which follows a discussion on why it should be deleted followed, in some unique cases, by some clarifications/changes in Wiki Policies -- In this case it will probably be something about what makes a map notable enough to be on the Wiki. tl;dr Add the article anyway, even if it gets deleted the Wiki will improve in the long run! :D --Leftism 16:33, 20 September 2010 (UTC)

Languages

I think we need to make the language page links start to appear on every page, and more prominently. I know the VDC shows available language pages in the top right corner as flags. We don't have to use flags, but I think the positioning of the flags is something that we should look into.

Another example is what Wikipedia does. Their language links are in the sidebar. (I don't really know how this idea is going to work technically, but the principle still stands). What does everyone think? seb26 (talk) 05:51, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

Well, we currently have it in the same fashion as MediaWiki's wiki. It works well enough. -- Smashman... _{(t • s)} 11:12, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

Well is there a MediaWiki:Footer or something page that we can use to at least make it show up on every page, maybe hide it altogether if there are no other languages available? seb26 (talk) 11:16, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

I don't think that it's actually a god idea. If there is any languages availible they should be seen by people who check TF2 Wiki. Maniac 21:06, 5 Oktober 2010 (UTC)

Birthday Mode

It seems to be the birthday time on TF2. Should we make anything of it? -- Smashman... _{(t • s)} 01:00, 21 August 2010 (UTC)

Do we even have anything to work with for this? I mean, what can we do about that? Other than hats and stuff like that... -- Vi3trice _(talk) 01:05, 21 August 2010 (UTC)

I meant like, something on the Main Page saying, "Happy Birthday Team Fortress 2!" in pretty colours, or something. -- Smashman... _{(t • s)} 01:12, 21 August 2010 (UTC)

Lolbug. -- Pilk _(talk) 05:19, 21 August 2010 (UTC)

We could use the picture of the 119th Update. --Picard lm(de) 10:24, 21 August 2010 (UTC)

It was a bug. There may be a birthday update next week so we'll consider that then. -- Pilk _(talk) 10:32, 21 August 2010 (UTC)

We are so 1337

1337 -- Smashman... _{(t • s)} 21:32, 27 August 2010 (UTC)

Seriously? I was JUST going to mention that. We're also at nearly one million main page views. --Firestorm 21:34, 27 August 2010 (UTC)

So I guess this means that we can't create new pages now. Daff 21:37, 27 August 2010 (UTC)

No matter how awesome it is. --Firestorm 21:38, 27 August 2010 (UTC)

No new pages ever. We're only allowed to remove old ones if new ones must be added. -- Smashman... _{(t • s)} 21:43, 27 August 2010 (UTC)

Quick! Protect ALL the pages. --Firestorm 21:43, 27 August 2010 (UTC)

I got the Steam Announcement. -- Smashman... _{(t • s)} 21:46, 27 August 2010 (UTC)

1338	This user ruins everyone's fun

hmm, I think I should make this into a template... --Firestorm 21:48, 27 August 2010 (UTC)

I...HATE you! -- OluapPlayer _(t) 22:53, 27 August 2010 (UTC)

Also look at the main page counter: We also had our 1.000.000st visitor this night. --Picard lm(de) 23:02, 27 August 2010 (UTC)

Adding of Custom Content

Since there is a page for the Fancy vs. Nasty update, could we make more pages for fake or unofficial updates made by the community?--Hobbes348 02:46, 28 August 2010 (UTC)

They have to be noteworthy enough. Fancy vs. Nasty Update was featured on the official blog, so it has the necessary notoriety. -- Nineaxis 03:12, 28 August 2010 (UTC)

So, could that those really two fake engineer updates and maybe the guard dog be put in?--Hobbes348 10:11, 28 August 2010 (UTC)

The problem with Languages

At the moment, we officially support 52 languages. Fifty-two individual languages, and literally 95% of them are never updated or do not even exist anywhere as part of the wiki. This proposal would involve reducing the support for languages to a core set of 5 and English. Based on popularity/regularity of updating:

1. English
2. Russian
3. German
4. French
5. Polish
6. Portuguese, Italian or Dutch (Tied based on a number of factors)

Pros and cons

Pros	Cons
Vastly improve how current the Wiki is Reduce number of files only in use on only outdated versions of language pages Increase overall accuracy of information Decrease the need for complicated templates	Limits audience/accessibility May conflict with Valve's views Dishearten some people who speak other languages

So, thoughts? Pros? Cons? -- Pilk _(talk) 10:37, 1 September 2010 (UTC)

While I do see where you're coming from, I disagree. Say a whole community of chinese players realise we exist, and decide to translate, if we cut out the chinese language, then we have lost an entire community.  – Smashman... _(talk) 10:41, 1 September 2010 (UTC)

Five is both too few and extremely arbitrary. Maybe just get rid of the languages that have under a certain number of pages as there's some that only have half-a-dozen instances. (ar, ja, nl, pt-br, and uk come to mind). I think deleting just those would be sufficient. On a side note, I've pretty much fixed your second "pros" point. The images which are used in almost no places mainly reside on obscure English pages. -Shine () 11:32, 1 September 2010 (UTC)

Smashman, most internet-savvy Chinese (and people of any nationality, actually) will be relatively familiar with English. In addition, we will never be able to expand the Chinese/Swedish/Czech/etc. language sections enough to be worth it. I, for one, agree with Pilk on this one. -The Neotank ( | Talk) 11:49, 1 September 2010 (UTC)

We now only have 20, remove the ones I mentioned and we're down to 15. -Shine () 11:57, 1 September 2010 (UTC)

On reflection, if we start being absolutely brutal and take no prisoners with outdated language pages I would be just as happy. -- Pilk _(talk) 08:52, 2 September 2010 (UTC)

 No I absolutly disagree. This is a wiki, a free and open space, everyone can contribute. Some pro's are correct. Take Wikipedia example: The least active wikis are disabled ? -- Nightbox _{(t s)} 09:08, 2 September 2010 (UTC)

Well we all knew you'd be against it Night.  – Smashman _(talk) 09:06, 2 September 2010 (UTC)

You said you have 52 pages, why so much ? Pretty much Romanian pages are in top 10 or around there. We try to work but it's not really my problem that people don't feel helping. -- Nightbox _{(t s)} 09:08, 2 September 2010 (UTC)

How about we support the languages TF2 supports? (that would be English*, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, French*, German*, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian*, Simplified Chinese, Spanish*, Swedish, Traditional Chinese, according to the steam page). Anybody playing TF2 should be able to understand one of those languages. --CruelCow 10:59, 4 September 2010 (UTC)

I agree with CruelCow, if we're going to base a decision on anything, it should be the game itself, and if we're going to narrow the language set to certain languages, it should be the ones Valve supports through the game. -- Nineaxis 23:12, 5 September 2010 (UTC)

The game's files has language support for Danish, Dutch, English, Finnish, French, German, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Chinese (simplified and traditional), Spanish, and Swedish. I think that's a fair amount of languages for our wiki.--Piemanmoo 23:39, 5 September 2010 (UTC)

First, I would like to apologize if I hurt someone's feelings, but I need to say this. I am currently working together with a group translating the spanish wiki. You might have heard about it already but we are having problems with some contributions. Spanish people are very demanding in terms of a well written spanish text. I have read Piemanmoo's contributions and there are many (and I mean MANY faults). For instance, here we've got a sentence written by Piemanmoo: "El Gorra de hélice de Pyro es un tema sombreros desbloqueables para el Pyro". Any native spanish reader will feel uncomfortable with this sentence, because we can't understand it. I am pretty sure that I will not be pleased and have Piemanmoo not editing the spanish wiki, but I wanted you to know that we are working on its translation and we would appreciate it if you actually stopped. Finally, I would like to apologize if I hurted someone's feelings, but I had to say this.--leblinski 22:26, 27 September 2010 (GMT+1)

I don't really know if this is the right place for this, but I find it really annoying and it has to do with languages, so I thought I'd stick it here. Basically, the problem is that the Random Page link goes to any page in the mainspace, no matter what language it's in. In other words, when I'm trying to go to random pages to find things to edit, I'm ending up with about just under half the pages being non-English, which is frustrating. Is there any way to tell the random page function to only go to pages in the same language as the page you're currently on? Toomai Glittershine 03:07, 28 September 2010 (UTC)

Toomai, just click the small link under the title to go back to the English version of the page. --Firestorm 04:13, 28 September 2010 (UTC)

I can be one of the Russian support, if you need. I'm good in English (11 years studying) and I live in Ukraine, so I know Russian as well! I have already started translating into Russian and editing. - Mendel777 17:48, 4 October 2010 (UTC)

Thought I'd mention it, I'm going through the top wanted list in the language section translating the /es/ (spanish) items. I have to say a lot of the spanish articles looks like they've been babelfished or translated literally rather than by hand/native. I think rather than edit other people's entries (which usually involves a top to bottom rewrite), I will start with the empty pages, and work my way round to the existing ones at the end. '''''UltimateTerabyte''''' 20:27, 8 October 2010 (UTC)

At least in the beginning, I think it should start with the languages also supported by TF2 itself, as those cover 99.9% of the players (just a guess). --Kurathedog 21:54, 17 October 2010 (UTC)-Kurathedog

Outlaw the Trivia sections?

I know I haven't been with the Wiki for very long, but in the time I have been here there is only one thing that truly irks me: the condition of the trivia sections. Almost every trivia section in the Wiki contains nothing but small tidbits which, with a bit of rewriting, could easily fit into the main article. A lot of the time they are poorly written lists of information that is either irrelevant, obvious, or just plain incoherent. Some of the worst pages are the Class pages, where the Trivia sections are nearly as long as the rest of the article. The style guide says:"[The Trivia] section is for all additional or interesting information regarding the weapon that does not belong in any other section." I argue that if the information is pertinent and interesting, then there must be a valid section for it. Some of it may require the addition of new sections, but to me it would be preferable to have one new, paragraphed, legible section than the current disassociated list of random elements that currently resides in nearly every page of the Wiki. I'm willing to do as much work as it takes to clean up the trivia sections once and for all, but such a change would be Wiki-wide and I would never presume to do so without consulting with those who know the Wiki and its needs better than I do. {{subst:void|This template should always be substituted. Please change {{Unsigned}} to {{subst:Unsigned}}}}— The preceding unsigned comment was added by Alex2539 (talk) • (contribs) 2024-11-27, 08:53 UTC

Well, I do think that there needs to be a massive cleanup of trivia sections-- combining or removing much of it. However, outlawing them entirely seems unwise. There are some things that do belong in the section. -Shine[] 02:18, 9 October 2010 (UTC)

"Outlaw" may be the wrong word. Perhaps I should have said "discourage"? Either way, my hope is that we try to use them as scarcely as possible. -- Alex2539 02:27, 9 October 2010 (UTC)

I never understood why wikipedia outlawed the trivia section, until I've seen this wiki :D. While I agree some trivia sections are quite a mess now

With the addition of the Mann-Conomy update, five classes are now capable of healing themselves. The Scout (with Mad Milk), the Soldier (through successful hits with the Black Box), the Pyro (by killing an enemy with the Powerjack), the Heavy (with his edible devices), and the Medic (passive healing, successful hits with the Blutsauger, or the Oktoberfest taunt). --Blutsauger#Trivia

The Flare Gun is the only incendiary-based weapon in the Pyro's arsenal which does not have flames depicted in its kill icons. --Flare_Gun#Trivia

just to name two, some trivia would be missed. I have to admit, I wanted to include a very good example here as well, but I couldn't find one although I've looked at 10+ trivia pages. Food for thought. --CruelCow 22:36, 9 October 2010 (UTC)

There are a couple of good pieces, but they are few and far between. One of the ones I liked was:

"Hot Rod" is also the title of a 1979 movie, in which Grant Goodeve, voice of the Engineer, starred. --Hotrod#Trivia

Did you know that? I didn't know that. It technically doesn't have anything to do with TF2, but it's still a very interesting coincidence. Also, there's this from the Tribalman's Shiv page:

Originally, the creator of the Shiv intended to make the viewmodel as it is now, but on a Critical hit the knife would be turned around so that the notched side struck the enemy. However, this did not get implemented as it required custom animations, which neither the creator nor Valve were willing to make. --Tribalman's Shiv#Trivia

That is information that is pertinent to the weapon itself, but is largely unknown because it was never implemented. But for every trivia item like those two, there are a dozen poor ones, like this one that I removed earlier this week:

Texas Slim's Dome Shine: This headwear may be a reference to Riddick, a fictional character, who is also bald and wears similar goggles. --[Texas Slim's Dome Shine (October 5th, 2010)]

While I fully support the inclusion of interesting factoids, the sections themselves are, by their very nature, far too vague to exist in their current state without being abused. -- Alex2539 04:16, 10 October 2010 (UTC)

I think they should stay, its an easy section for people new to the wiki (and we have lots of those) to add stuff, when each article gets cleaned up by a more experienced editor the carp can easily be removed leaving hopefully real pearls of wisdom, all we really need is to agree on is which articles really need cleaning up as a priority--Markd 10:05, 11 October 2010 (UTC)

Have a look at Chieftain's Challenge ive split the trivia in two, not sure on the title of the other section so i have left a descriptive after it for now. Let me know what you think , it appears to be a good start in moving trivia we want away from trivial stuff ! lol--Markd 10:50, 12 October 2010 (UTC)

Perhaps limitations on the Trivia section as a whole is needed. As has been stated, for every good factoid of Trivia on this wiki, there's a dozen bad ones. Limiting Trivia tid-bits that are nothing more than pure speculation would help reduce these sectins significantly. Additionally, outright obvious facts should also be kicked to the curb. With the stock weapons and pre-community hats and weapons, this won't be too hard. However, with community contributed content, perhaps we should look in to contacting their creators in order to find out some of their inspirations for their items? (This has probably already been done, but it doesn't hurt to throw a suggestion in.) Such has been done with The Saharan Spy Pack's creator. Maybe this is what we need to do for the remaining items? --Krizzle_0 10:51, 14 October 2010 (UTC)

I have to say, the awesome and ongoing (User:Alex2539/Trivia_Cleanup_Checklist) recent cleanup work has improved the trivia sections alot. That combined with a bit of careful recent changes watching and the new policy might be enough. --CruelCow 23:00, 14 October 2010 (UTC)

Trivia warning

On the same note as Alex2539's request above, I feel we need to do something radical to deter people from simply editing useless, unnecessary, uninteresting information. Firestorm suggested running AWB to add a <!-- comment, asking people not to edit the section without first reading the trivia guidelines. --> to each individual == Trivia == section, something I consider myself a supporter of. What say you, guys? ~ lhavelund ^{(t ▪ c)} 21:12, 17 October 2010 (UTC)

I like this idea. By adding it as a comment directly under == Trivia ==, it's guaranteed to show up no matter how they choose to edit the page. I was thinking something along this line:

== Trivia ==

<!-- Before modifying this trivia section, please refer to the trivia guidelines, found at: http://wiki.teamfortress.com/wiki/Help:Style_guide/Trivia to ensure that your trivia item is appropriate for inclusion. Failure to comply with these guidelines may cause your trivia item to be removed. If the guidelines are ignored repeatedly, a temporary block may be put on your account to prevent further edits. -->

To me, this seems like an unavoidable pointer to the style page, with a reminder of the consequences if they ignore the guidelines. I made the consequences fairly mild since, in reality, that's all that would happen. It would take a lot of really poor edits to warrant an outright ban. Right now, I'm more that certain that a lot of the crappy trivia items stem from a complete ignorance of the style page's existence. This way, we tell them directly where it is within the section they want to edit itself. After that there's no real excuse for not reading it besides apathy or laziness. I'm sure it won't stop every instance of bad trivia, but I do think that it should at least help limit it. -- -- 21:42, 17 October 2010 (UTC)

 Mild support: It won't hurt trying, but I don't expect too much success. The tips section of the characters have similar warnings and still people add random strategy to it. --CruelCow 22:45, 17 October 2010 (UTC)