SmashWiki:Pool Room

Welcome to the Pool Room! This page is designed to help users get in touch with one another about issues on Smashwiki that they wish to discuss. It functions just like a talk page - as with any talk page, post comments below and sign with your signature (type ~~~~ or press the button). You should post here if you have any comments, questions, or suggestions, or if you'd like to make a general announcement for others to see.

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Discussion

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Hey

I've got a few questions:

Why don't you guys upgrade Smashwiki? I noticed the MediaWiki version it is on is version 1.6.8, why not upgrade to 1.9?
Why not have release SmashWiki's content under a free license? It makes uploading and adding image soo much easier. Just use a creative commons license that requires attribution.
There are a lot of terms on the wiki that I have never heard of. Could we, instead of using shortforms, use the full terms? I mean things like SD, ADA, etc.

That's pretty much it.--Richard 23:40, October 25, 2007 (EDT)

The first two questions are out of my scope to answer. On the third one, I agree. Any instance of terms like "ADA" should be replaced by down aerial, or whatever long name is appropriate in the community. I'll be on the lookout. – MaskedMarth ^{(t c)} 21:33, November 2, 2007 (EDT)

Skill

How do you determine your skill? I see lots of Pros, but are there any other ranks? If so, how are they decided? - hydrokyogre

We don't have a formal ranking system (the closest thing you have is Power Rankings, which are usually amongst only the best players in a region). So it's kind of murky, deciding who's a pro and who's not. It's mostly based on a general idea, because we don't have as far-reaching a tournament circuit that would allow us to base a player's skill on tournament results alone.

I recently protected the Professionals page so that people can't wrongly put themselves as pros, and I'll let the talk page decide what changes to make. Based on videos and on hearsay from already-established players, we can make an educated guess as to whether player X is truly pro-level. – MaskedMarth ^{(t c)} 21:54, November 2, 2007 (EDT)

Current events

I removed the outdated tournaments on the Current events page and made a suggestion on its Talk page about linking it on the main page . I realized that it was allready linked but underused, but i think we should probably link it between tournaments and tiers (wait i forgot my signature lolz) --Shyne - (Talk • Contributions ) 17:48, November 12, 2007 (EST)

Mass Vandalism

We've just been hit by a member from another Smash Bros based Wiki, User:Zoomer555. He has edited about 200 articles and replaced them with "THIS SITE SUCKS" and a link to the competing Wiki. I'd say this guy needs to be banned IMMEDIATELY, and then we all need to work together to restore the assload of articles he's damaged. This part is of course a piece of cake, but given the amount of articles it is very time consuming, and on top of that I don't have very much time to do the restoring myself at present, so I'll definitely need some help. Back to banning Zoomer, is there someone who can quickly contact an admin? -Thores 23:14, November 13, 2007 (EST)

i think i got them all. my hands hurt. :C we need to change coding so bots can't edit like that. can someone please notice me and make me a sysop already?? FyreNWater - (Talk • Contributions ) 00:02, November 14, 2007 (EST)

I know from observing Requests for Adminship at Wikipedia that users trying to be admins tend to receive more support votes if they say they just think they'll be trustworthy admins who have been around the site long enough that they believe they'll use the tools well, as opposed to users that state out loud "I really want to be an admin". While I don't doubt you would use the admin tools well, that's just a little something to keep in mind. ^_^ But thanks for reverting all those edits. =D

Anyway, I'm assuming no one here knows how to create and run a bot, and neither do I. Which is kinda a shame, because bots would be excellent in reverting obvious vandalism for us, like replacing pages with short allcaps messages, and replacing all instances of "Pokemon" with "Pokémon" and correcting misspellings, as the best examples I can think of. Erik, Lord of Universes 02:23, November 14, 2007 (EST)

Looking into this matter: I don't see any user at the competing Wiki named "zoomer" or "Zoomer555" or anything like that. In fact, if I were the one reverting all those edits, I would've assumed this vandal was yelling it's the competing Wiki that sucks and was trying to rub that fact in our faces. Anyway, in either case it's an issue on our end that we should blast away. Erik, Lord of Universes 02:40, November 14, 2007 (EST)

Thanks for reverting all his edits, guys. I protected the Main Page, so hopefully any future vandalism won't be as dangerous. Do you think I should send a message to the competing Wiki about this? None of the users there resembles Zoomer555, and most of them seem to be contributing to their Wiki more or less innocently. – MaskedMarth ^{(t c)} 13:27, November 15, 2007 (EST)

Also, I blocked him permanently, in case you were wondering. – MaskedMarth ^{(t c)} 14:58, November 15, 2007 (EST)

Sysop Nominations

I've been considering the issue for some time (most actively in the past couple of days) and I'm going to post details about the new sysop nomination process. Since this is a wiki, and I'm aware that people are wanting to see this sooner rather than later, I'll post my current thoughts on it, and you can let me know what you all think of the process. This is not the place to actually nominate sysops, so don't do that now. Here's what I have in mind:

Someone who wants to become a sysop must nominate themselves. (If you think someone should become a sysop but they won't nominate themselves, you're free to convince them to do so. If they choose not to, however, you can't nominate them.)
Nominees post their name on a special sysop nomination page, and other users are welcome to post their thoughts on that person's nomination. Much like Wikipedia's pseudo-voting mechanism, people can elect to support or oppose someone's attempt to become a sysop.
The consensus of the user community will play a role (though will not necessarily determine in its entirety) whether or not a user's sysop nomination will be approved. Current sysops will have more influence in this process, but when it comes down to it the actual changes need to be made by a bureaucrat, and all decisions are subject to SW leadership approval. (That said, I don't expect community consensus and SW leadership decisions to come into conflict very often, if at all.)
I haven't decided whether I want nominations to be ongoing, or to only last a certain amount of time. I'm leaning toward the former, but reserve the right to close nominations if they get out of hand. I definitely don't want to end up adding more sysops than we need for the activity we have, and this is (for me) one of the main sticking points.

This is what I have in mind, but I'm aware some people could take issue with these points. But it's reasonable enough that I shouldn't try to evaluate community response without posting this here. So voice your concerns (or your support), and if there are no apparent problems I'll post the actual sysop nomination page in the next day or two. --Kirby King 11:48, November 19, 2007 (EST)

An existing active administrative force on the wiki would be the best judge of who to appoint to SysOp status or not; those who can perceive the difference between a quality contribution and a well-intentioned one that just happens to read like a colouring book. Allowing people to nominate themselves and then receive votes from the clearly wiki-inept community would do more harm than good I think, and ultimately, it would bring about the same problems that exist on the forums themselves--namely moderators who don't understand what a moderator is and what roles and responsibilities are tied to that title. Contributing to the wiki is not enough to make it a top-level media presentation; you have to have a bold, administrative force behind it who understands exactly what they are there to do and doesn't feel the need to get community consensus every time a contentious issue surfaces.

I've been kickin' around here for awhile now so you can probably trust me when I say that you do not want to leave the appointment of sysops and bureaucrats up to this community. Spend a month checking the Recent Changes and browsing random articles if you don't believe me, but this should NOT be a democratic process. Most of the contributions require cleanup to meet the standards of a presentable encyclopedia, most users have no idea how categories work, most don't understand talk pages or signing comments, and most have no concept of how templates work. Those are all core functions to understanding how a wiki is run and how a community-written encyclopedia can succeeed; based on that principle alone, this should NOT be a democratic appointment of new administrators. --RJM ^Talk 13:53, November 19, 2007 (EST)

Setting aside for the moment your criticisms of moderators (I disagree with your assessment of our moderator team, but that is best dealt with in Forum Disputes, not here) I agree that the process should not be wholly democratic. The consensus of the community should be a factor in the decision making process, but by no means is it sufficient alone to either make someone a sysop or derail their chances. I think I made this reasonably clear above, but I can't tell whether you're disagreeing with what you think I said or if you're lending support to that idea. Either way, I think it's important for sysops to play a role in helping to educate new users with the ideas you mention. And part of that involves a commitment to helping rather than criticizing newer users who are well-intentioned. (This is a goal that applies to the network, but in the context of SmashWiki it's an important consideration for potential sysops.) --Kirby King 14:58, November 19, 2007 (EST)

A large part of the reason that well-intentioned users don't know how to operate the wiki rests with the very tedious administrative task of building a backend to the community with intuitive help files, guidelines and project pages. This is something I've held back from doing myself, but am not opposed to tackling--I just wasn't sure of the future of this wiki. Hopefully, this is a step in the right direction. --RJM ^Talk 16:11, November 19, 2007 (EST)

The Sysop Nominations page is now up. Comments on the talk page, if you have them. --Kirby King 19:30, November 20, 2007 (EST)

Fighter pages

Should a link to a character's general information page be provided in the disambiguation template? Seems like it might be appropriate. For example, on Yoshi (SSB), the disambiguation would read as follows if what I were suggesting were to be accepted:

This page is about Yoshi's SSB appearance. For information about his Melee appearance, see here. For his Brawl appearance, see here. For general information about Yoshi, see here.

As far as I know, links to the general information pages are rarely found, so this may direct a bit more traffic towards these pages. - EPX2 21:51, November 21, 2007 (EST)

Or is this a matter of such minor consequence that I should just go ahead and do this?... User:EPX2/sig

I think that's a little too much for a template to be honest. A better solution for finding more links to general information would be to link to the general info page right off the bat in the fighter page article. So Yoshi (SSB) would open like so: "Yoshi (ヨッシー, Yosshī, sometimes spelled Yossy in Japan) is a starter character in SSB."

Frankly, I think the Melee article has it right with This is about Yoshi's Melee appearance. For other uses, see Yoshi. --RJM ^Talk 23:10, November 22, 2007 (EST)

Even better. I'll go ahead and edit the fighter pages. User:EPX2/sig 10:40, November 24, 2007 (EST)

Massive Cleanup

The vast majority of the stuff up for deletion are gone. Discuss in this topic if you have any complaints or pages you'd like to see back. Thanks for reminding me, EP! --Pyoro T

No prob, Manta. Also, I fixed your link for you. User:EPX2/sig 13:56, November 24, 2007 (EST)

SWF bannings

Shouldn't users who've had their accounts banned over at Smashboards also have their editing privileges revoked here at the Wiki for the duration of their banning? I've already seen two instances (here and here) of banned users continuing their antics over here, and it seems like the most logical option would be to prevent them from accessing this site.

I understand that the Wiki and the boards are two separate entities, but we *do* use a singular account system to access both sites... if you do something to negatively affect your account at one site, I see no reason why you shouldn't be affected at the other. User:EPX2/sig 12:28, November 25, 2007 (EST)

Agreed. --RJM ^Talk 15:53, November 25, 2007 (EST)

I also Agreed, cause I cannot disagreed without a degree. jo joooooo jo que les parecio?But seroiusly, IDIDITFORTHELULZ just caused vadalism and I have to revert a lot of his edits.--Fandangox 17:55, November 25, 2007 (EST)

Interesting... seems that the admins have already considered this (see last sentence in parentheses)... User:EPX2/sig 19:33, November 25, 2007 (EST)

Well, that's pretty obvious If you are banned from a forum were you have more freedom, how come you wouldn't be banned in a enciclopedia???? (@'.'@) jo JOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO jo. yep, I'm annoying.--Fandangox 16:15, November 26, 2007 (EST)

Humongous templates

Sorry if this is the wrong place to discuss this, but I'm not sure where the ideal talk page would be so I'm putting this up for debate here. The new expansive universe templates that seem to have been distributed throughout the Wiki, such as Template:Mario Melee, are ridiculous. Why have these giant templates on every freaking page, when you can simply go to the relevant universe article instead? Especially when, in most cases, the template is bigger than the article it's posted in? They're obviously useful to some people, so I wouldn't mind these templates being linked to or something on the relevant pages, but putting the template itself on the articles just clutter them up too much, sometimes obnoxiously. I move to remove them, at least to an extent. -Thores 02:48, November 27, 2007 (EST)

If there are problems with its hugeness, we can use that template hiding thing. – Smiddle ( Talk • Conts ) 09:17, November 27, 2007 (EST)

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