User talk:Victory

-- WelcomeBOT (talk) 05:12, 20 December 2015 (PST)

pid template

Just so you know, the Subst:pid template is only used for painted variants. 11:27, 20 December 2015 (PST)

Right, thank you. What would be more appropriate for gallery images etc? Victory (talk) 11:41, 20 December 2015 (PST)

Well I'm not sure if there is a template for gallery images but I just write it out like this, copy-pasting it whilst changing the class

There's probably an easier way to do it though, heh 11:47, 20 December 2015 (PST)

Also, just some advice, try using the flex menu in HLMV. Giving the classes expressions can make images a little more interesting. Don't go overboard though

For example

Good

Bad

Anyway, if you need any more help, just let me know or you can ask in the IRC room 12:10, 20 December 2015 (PST)

That second face, my sides. Appreciate your help. Victory (talk) 22:40, 20 December 2015 (PST)

I think you deserve this

Wikichievement	Awarded by	Reason
Photo Bomb Continuously upload and add screenshots to articles.	Bojjob	Wikichievement unlocked! Uploading painted variants at blistering speeds, wow

13:59, 22 December 2015 (PST)

Victory!

Victory! — The preceding assigned comment was added by Tark {Finish Him! ▪ Contribs} 15:15, 22 December 2015 (PST)

Painted variants

Hey, I'm impressed by the amount of painted variants you managed to do, but I just thought I'd let you know that if it's a hat, we don't generally put the class' head in with it. It looks a little odd and makes the image a bit too tall. We really only add the class in if it's something like hair, glasses or masks. 10:50, 24 December 2015 (PST)

Cool, I'll update them at some point soon. Still would like to make them consistent.

Victory (talk) 12:28, 24 December 2015 (PST)

Saying that though, I'm going to complete overhauling the Sniper hat paint previews because I think it describes each hat more accurately. How it looks in game with certain paints is generally why people come to look and positioned on the head does describe the reality more accurately.

An example of this inaccuracy would be the difference between the new Crocleather Slouch previews and the old ones:

The old ones appeared flat and like the belt is ambiguously on the left or right, the new ones show that it's actually curved, the belt is on the left and that it's slanting up.

Victory (talk) 13:00, 24 December 2015 (PST)

Well, the only thing is, you can already see how it looks on the infobox. Since the paint table is for paints only, it doesn't really matter too much. You also get a closer look if the image is shorter 14:10, 24 December 2015 (PST)

The infobox isn't consistent and doesn't show how painted items look on the class (which is why most people look at the painted previews). Stuff like this is why people are moving to TFMV and loadout.tf, in my opinion. Victory (talk) 15:08, 24 December 2015 (PST)

Please keep in mind, the purpose of these articles is to document game content, not necessarily to compete with third-party sites and tools. If other people can provide a way to explore game content that we can't (for starters, they support full 3D views of the classes and their hats, something that would require a bunch of plugins here that might or might not work anyways), then all the better for them. The scope of this Wiki isn't so broad as to attempt to be the sole source of information about the game, and it would be better to focus on improving the areas that really do matter (such as concrete numbers for weapon damage, ensuring articles are up to date and factual, etc etc).

While we do appreciate your work at improving the painted images and making them consistent, replacing already-existing images that fulfilled the purpose doesn't measurably increase the quality of the overall Wiki. Plus, there are hats where rotating all of them to a specific viewing angle can be detrimental, as some hats have more of their details on the sides or back; for instance, if the Dead'er Alive was conformed to this standard, people wouldn't be able to see much of it at all since all of it is behind the Engineer's head.

I don't want to discourage someone who's contributed so many images to the Wiki, but please keep such things in mind in the future, so that you can ensure that your contributions do positively impact the Wiki. -- LordKelvin 10:51, 28 December 2015 (PST)

I get that you don't mean to be discouraging but it came off as passive-aggressive and discouraging, especially when you make it out like the only contributions worth making are things like grammar edits and weapon changes.

Pictures are information, they "really do matter" as much as concrete damage numbers, and the information some of them provided were low quality. Yes, some of my changes were minor, but it's not like you're paying me or I'm getting anything out of this.

An obvious, cherrypicked exception like the Dead'er Alive doesn't make the idea of having a standard invalid, and it doesn't mean my contributions haven't positively impacted the Wiki.

The whole idea of a Wiki is to be a comprehensive information site.

Realistically, I don't think you know who uses the Wiki. Nobody Googles "how to play Scout" or "TF2 rocket damage". Everyone knows an Enforcer does 144 crit and 60-90 depending on range. It appears above player heads and on your HUD.

I'm probably going to continue doing what I've been doing, because it does improve the quality of the Wiki, no matter how minor you may consider it to be.

Victory (talk) 13:27, 28 December 2015 (PST)

Heyo, I'd like to point out something. Although we do appreciate what you're doing via improvements of images and what not, As that is accepted. Though what you're currently doing with current paint images... Doesn't really make any sense. You're "improving/overhauling" images that have been fine for several months-years. No one complained, didn't determent the page in anyway. And to point out what Bojjob mentioned, we generally do not include the class head unless its "Hair/glasses" sort of thing. This has been in place since the start of these painted variant images. We even had multiple users who do the painted images even check and agree if its suitable or not. So in my point of view here... improving on images that don't need improving really doesn't seem to be.... adding to the wiki pages they are on...

Ashes (talk) 23:30, 2 January 2016 (PST)

Why are you all so resistant to minor change that doesn't even affect you? Painted variants aren't for us, they're for the average person who Googles "scout cosmetics" or whatever. Nobody complains because this site is a confusing mess to anyone who doesn't have the time or patience to learn how things work, and that's ignoring that the average person doesn't care to contribute to wiki, and of course none of you would notice things like the lack of updated colours on the Cold Killer, the second style added to the Bone Dome that's been mysteriously ignored for 2 months (that I've done but need to upload still), or the wrong materials on the BLU Rubber Glove pics, you've got no interest in improving things or using the wiki for the purposes that most people do.

The active discouragement is getting to be silly.

Victory (talk) 01:54, 3 January 2016 (PST)

Keep in mind, a large part of how things get done one a Wiki is cooperation and collaboration between editors, something that you seem to have been resisting. As mentioned above, we don't include the class's head when doing painted images of hats that don't need it, and you were told this, but your recent Pyro image uploads have all ignored that. This causes problems with how the rest of the cosmetics are shown, as you are creating inconsistencies by doing this; they may be reverted in the future depending on what other editors decide.

The main problem is that you're not really cooperating with other image editors; the images that you're overwriting have not been marked for improvement, and frankly I'm not convinced that they need to be. Instead of overwriting images that have been fine for years, why not first add missing images in those areas that you pointed out? You're also questioning whether we, the people who maintain the Wiki, actually know what's best for this Wiki, which I find rather curious since you haven't really shown any evidence of what outside users want from it.

As much as you believe that you're improving the Wiki, your lack of cooperation with other editors is in fact causing problems. If you truly do want to improve the Wiki, it helps to discuss it with others first before making sweeping changes on your own. You can do this through talk pages, project pages, or even joining our IRC. -- LordKelvin 09:19, 3 January 2016 (PST)

It's becoming pretty clear that you're grasping at straws to justify being upset that I didn't consult everyone. I'm causing inconsistencies by updating, in part, for consistency? Come on. This is a non-issue.

Images have been 'considered fine' for years because how are you supposed to complain to a wiki where you actively discourage people from changing things in a way that, at the least, doesn't reduce quality?

Here's some proof that it's not just me considering things improved: https://www.reddit.com/r/tf2/comments/3ybhlb/i_spent_some_time_this_week_overhauling_the/

You can go ahead and revert things if you insist they cause 'consistency problems', but I don't how that's a problem, since they'll eventually all be consistent and have the info to keep them that way on the rotations page.

Victory (talk) 12:06, 3 January 2016 (PST)

I'll make my point once again that the painted variants are only to show what the hats look like. Adding the class' head to the picture makes it too tall and shrinks the cosmetic down, making it harder to see what's going on. I don't really understand what you mean by the infobox being inconsistent... they look how they're supposed to look. If it doesn't show off the cosmetic properly, we just make a new one to better represent it. 16:54, 3 January 2016 (PST)

Also, to add to my point... you can't have them all facing the same direction because you'd be losing focus of the paint on certain cosmetics. 17:07, 3 January 2016 (PST)

I'll make the point again that most people wanna see how they will look wearing something, not just that the item gets x area painted y colour.

Of course there will be exceptions, items like the Pyro's Beanie will be skipped because the side shown would be the dull side that darkens the paint if it were to be follow the standard. This isn't a dumb, blanket "everything needs to be the same", I'm definitely considering each item on a case by case basis.

The "it makes the picture box too tall" concern seems pretty silly, the pages only show thumbnails in the first place and you can click them to enlarge.

Victory (talk) 19:04, 3 January 2016 (PST)

Hello Victory, thank you for making these all these paint variants, they are very good, and you uploaded them in a pretty short time, that's amazing. I don't mind them having an "inconsistent" angle, if they're going to be re-updated for a better view. To be honest, I never liked much the side camera angle (I know you took some of them like that, but you also made it better for some that had that angle, Big Country and Your Worst Nightmare, respectively). I noticed what you tried (and you did it) achieve it, you made the paint variants to be easier to notice what's changing, the YWN was in sideways, but it wasn't very easy to spot the paint unless enlarging it. Back in the days, when hats were a new thing and there weren't many of them, there was a lot of contributors on this Wiki, and for paint variants, some stuff were kinda too "new" to handle, there were almost no paint variants with only specific parts of an item (only a Class head, or only his chest, etc.). For example, before I updated the All-Father, everything was just a floating beard, with no face attached to it, and not everyone knew about HLMV's limitations (Fire Overlay, cubemaps, etc.). When I first started doing pictures, I tried making paint variants first, but sadly, I did these on my laptop's screen, which is pretty small. The images looked pretty good, and it fixed the big problems that DethKapp and Nose Candy had (DethKapp was pretty bad before, having absolutely no anti-alias, a small image, poor angle and no Pyro's head). About the BLU Material, same thing happened with the Ellis Cap, before, all BLU Paint Variants had the "red skin" material, this could be looked by Ellis' logo on it, the angle was also terrible (it was sideways, barely possible to see the paint changes). After I tried some paint variants, I went making images on a monitor (which I could borrow, but it wasn't mine), so I started doing infobox images (did for a lot of updates), and paint variants were done by someone else on the Wiki (which now he's left). Last year, the update "Gun Mettle" was a bit challenging, there was only me doing images on that time. I had to do all related images, that applies to Infobox-Images, class images and paint images, it took a lot of my time to do all of these (I didn't even uploaded the rot and trans on the "Rotations Page", of how much tired I was). I've been editing this week for 2 years now (started on April 2014), and I'm still here, not making too many images as before, as it gets to my point. Some people gets tired of it, and some are here exclusively for the cap (they earn it and they already go away). I support what are you doing, there are things that requires to be changed here (I already thought of how it would look with most of the items with their class heads/chests/etc., and not just the item), we can't follow the same stuff always. Honestly, I didn't read the whole thing, but I think they were a bit too harsh on it (I'll be honest here, I care for consistencies with infobox images, but since you're re-doing a lot of these, you're making new consistencies for them, so I'm fine with that). Another thing that people does not update much the paint variants is that they take too much time, unless there's a program that makes those shots automatic, this would be resolved. Sadly, there WAS a program being made for paint variants, using a Phython script (similar to the 3D Image program), but it was never finished. If you need help with HLMV or something else, please do tell me, I would be pretty happy to help. I hope the best for you. And let's face it, there are unsolved problems on this Wiki, I could tell them somewhere else, not here because it doesn't belong anything to this page (Sorry if there's anything nonsensical or misleading on this wall of text, I typed this at 2:45AM). ▪ - 20:53, 3 January 2016 (PST)

Oh, and just something else. I don't really get Bojjob's undo on your Corono Australis images, I thought they were pretty good, and they were consistent with other items similar to that. Bojjob, please wait before undo-ing some stuff, only use if an image is completely bad, when there are improvements on these, you should ask somewhere else first, I once did an undo to a "so-so" image of mine, I actually remade the image, the guy didn't said a thing when he reverted, but I noticed my first attempt of the image wasn't too good (the revert he did was worse, though), so I improved. (File:Honcho's Headgear.png). ...(again, I didn't read the whole thing, so I apologize if there was any conversation on the middle about these pictures). ▪ - 21:00, 3 January 2016 (PST)

The image reversions were discussed on IRC, and I was in the process of doing a mass revert on it. It was determined between myself and several other users that the changes to the images were not beneficial to the Wiki as a whole, and in some cases the changed images had a detrimental effect (in one of the instances, the new image had clipping issues where there was blank space between the Sniper's face and beard).

I would have liked there to be more discussion on the issue and input of opinion on the talk page though, because not everybody uses IRC and it's not always easy to comb the logs to find the exact discussion. -- LordKelvin 21:46, 3 January 2016 (PST)

Thanks for the support Gabriel, I appreciate your understanding.

LordKelvin, spacing between the beard and the Sniper's face is actually part of the model.

It straight up just doesn't connect, this isn't a fault of mine and there's nothing I can do about it.

Victory (talk) 21:58, 3 January 2016 (PST)

If I may interject. I do not know much about the HLMV process as map and strategy pages are more my forte, but for the items that I have helped make HLMVs for, some of them did have spacing problems. What I did for those images was I posed the camera in a way that made the spacing unnoticable, or hard to spot. The beard is probably an easy fix if you moved the camera to the left a little. -- Dr. Scaphandre 22:41, 3 January 2016 (PST)

Well, alright. I don't really enter anymore on the IRC, so I don't really know what went there. One problem of the IRC is that the content on it isn't documented anywhere, so if there's a discussion on it, it will be only there for some weeks on the log, it's still a good place to discuss, nonetheless. ▪ - 05:24, 4 January 2016 (PST)

Reversion

Hey, sorry I reverted the corona australis paints because yours had an odd shadow underneath them, the angle hid part of the lens (which is what the paint images were focusing on), the lens had no reflection and also yours had an odd white outline around it. Sorry for any misunderstanding 13:29, 4 January 2016 (PST)

I noticed the small white outline, what image editing software do you use? If you use GIMP, I can give a tip to remove them quickly. ▪ - 13:51, 4 January 2016 (PST)

I use Photoshop. A slight outline is sorta unavoidable (using a mask from the difference between a black and white background) I figure that, the site being white (white-ish?), the white one would be less noticable.

Here's an example of what I mean.

Could try contracting the mask by a pixel or so but, well, that tends to ruin the AA.

Victory (talk) 14:49, 4 January 2016 (PST)

By the way, with regards to what I said about the discussion that took place on IRC, I took the time to make a Pastebin of the log, which you can read here. If you want the full channel log for that day, it's also available here. The overall opinion is that, these images generally do not have to be updated or replaced. The main problem, as I've stated before, is that you didn't consult any other editors before doing all of this, neither through talk pages or on IRC, and simply went and did your own thing. This has caused a bunch of problems for other users and staff as well, because, as I told you previously, cooperation and collaboration are very important on a Wiki. In the meantime, please refrain from overwriting any more images, as we're in the process of discussing whether or not they're going to stay; if they aren't then they're going to end up being reverted. I'd like to ask that you try to discuss this with other editors first, either via talk pages or IRC, before making such changes to images again. -- LordKelvin 13:56, 4 January 2016 (PST)

I'm trying to avoid being rude, but you're not getting this: your opinion on what doesn't need to be updated isn't important. You're not the target audience.

If, out of hundreds of hats in an hour long discussion between 4 people, you can only find 10 examples of what *might* lower quality, how about you just ask me not to do those items, do them in a different way, or something actually constructive, instead of cherry picking to prove an irrelevant point that I already knew?

I don't need help or your approval to improve things, but sure, I'm willing to help and discuss things with other image editors.

Like I've already said, this is obviously not about the images, it's about you feeling like you're not part of it, and there's nothing wrong with that. Just because it's a community site doesn't mean the community as a whole needs to be consulted on every little thing.

There's hardly anyone to discuss things with in the first place, there's a handful of contributors left active and you seem to be trying your hardest to lower that number.

Spending time from the 28th up til now for the sake of a power trip that you're trying to pass off as communal concern is quite petty.

Victory (talk) 14:49, 4 January 2016 (PST)

I've been holding back on saying this but... your new painted variants look weird. I'm sorry :C 14:57, 4 January 2016 (PST)

If I may: If you want to discuss image changes to everyone else, do it on the main Discussion page, and/or the IRC. -- Dr. Scaphandre 14:59, 4 January 2016 (PST)

I was hoping that it wouldn't come to this, but it seems pretty clear to me now that you're not willing to cooperate despite repeated warnings; you are now on an enforced 2-week vacation. You can come on to IRC to appeal the block if you wish. -- LordKelvin 15:01, 4 January 2016 (PST)

I don't know if that was the best move, she could no longer edit here due this quick-ban, in my opinion. I've reacted similar with few stuff (articles with undos, or images with undos), and I'm pretty sure a lot of people will react somehow with undo'd stuff. Or... following your ban reason, she will noticed what she said and come back fresh (not saying you're doing the wrong thing [didn't read the whole thing, again], I'm just following LordKelvin's explanation). ▪ - 15:13, 4 January 2016 (PST)

You need to remember Gab, it wasn't just she was ignoring everyone's advice, it was also because she was being quite harsh and causing a ruckus in the IRC. Even if her pics were good for you, the fact that she was being completely unreasonable to the other editors despite us calming explaining why we hated the pics, she still attacked everyone. -- Dr. Scaphandre 10:01, 5 January 2016 (PST)

Well, she was nice with me. I wasn't on IRC to know what happened, so I can't judge. ▪ - 13:49, 5 January 2016 (PST)

Of course she was nice to you since you were the only one who liked her images and was taking her side. -- Dr. Scaphandre 20:27, 5 January 2016 (PST)