Talk:Main Page/Archive1

This page will serve as an archive of outdated conversations from the Talk:Main_Page.

How to Migrate Pages from Yohoho Wikicities

If you are working on migrating pages, here are the steps to do it in the legally okay manner:

1. Check the page to make sure it hasn't been moved yet (it should have the M template at the top of the article if it has)
2. Check the history page for a list of editors and compare it with the list that has signed the migration re-license agreement
   1. If there are editors that have not signed the agreement, check for what edits they specifically made. Edits correcting/adding links and minor spelling errors are considered negligible. Edits where whole sections/sentences have been added are considered major. If you have questions about whether or not an edit is considered substantial, pop a question about it on the Talk page and someone more familiar with the history examination process will look into it & reply or assist in moving the page.
3. If the article is cleared for re-licensing, hit edit page and copy the text over to the official wiki's page of the same name (you can easily open up a new page by putting the article name at the end of http://www.puzzlepirates.com/wiki/ARTICLE NAME in your browser).
   1. Put the names of the editors from the yohoho article's history page on the talk page at the official wiki.
   2. Add {{M}} at the top of the yohoho article and save the change with the comment "moved."

– Yaten ^talk 22 July 2005 07:41 (PDT)

To find pages that still need to be moved, check out Special:Wantedpages here on the YPPedia or check out [Uncategorized Pages] over at the wikicities site. Uncategorized pages won't catch everything we still need to move, but it will find the vast majority. --Fiddler 23 July 2005 05:48 (PDT)

General Moving Stuff

Are you ready for people to start editing here? Cleaver and Landon had talked about porting over the entire unofficial Wiki first, and then opening it up. Is that still the plan?

While I'm looking around, I notice that you're linking to words like "puzzles" and "flags." It's much, much better to link to singular nouns like "puzzle" and "flag." This allows more flexibility when writing pages.

We've learned a heck of a lot while working on the unofficial wiki, mostly through trial and error. It'd be unfortunate to have to fix the same mistakes again....

--Barrister 20 July 2005 04:34 (PDT)

You can go ahead and edit, inc. the front page. -- Cleaver 21 July 2004 02:09 (PDT)

If you are the author of content from the player wiki, you're welcome to bring it over; however, we're using a different license from the player wiki (CC-by instead of GFDL) so you can't copy content you don't own the copyright to.

--Lizthegrey 20 July 2005 10:34 (PDT)

Well, I'll give permission for anyone to transfer anything I've written, which includes most of the commodity pages; the Ice Ocean island pages; the clothing article and its subpages; pages on the crew ranks and their badges; infrastructure building articles; the Shoppe Management tutorial; navigational templates for furniture, clothing, swords, and ships; and a great deal of image-work. —Yaten 20 July 2005 12:39 (PDT)

I give permission for all my content to be transferred. --Barrister 20 July 2005 13:00 (PDT)

Please add your name to License migration if you want to relicense your edits. This will make it easy for people copying pages over to see who has agreed to the change. AngelaWiki 20 July 2005 13:11 (PDT)

Okey dokey, I think the majority of moveable stuff has been migrated. The talk pages for the migrated articles will have the information on the previous contributors, but please remember that there is no need to add to that list for successive edits as you'll just show up in the article's history page. There are many pages which couldn't be moved, so please take a look at the Short Articles aka Stubs and the Wanted Pages to add to the content. If you notice something that's wrong on an article, please correct it. --Guppymomma 24 July 2005 17:36 (PDT)

Image Trouble & Other Picture Related Talk

From Cleaver's e-mail: "Regarding images I think we can skip the copyright notice, but I will have to prod Landon about the bulk-migration prospects. This fall into the same 1.4-1.5 problem as the overall database, no idea."

Although we can skip the copyright notice, maybe it's still good to put in {{ooo_image}} in the image description so that we could possibly pop a category in the template to allow for easy listing what in-game images are already here? --Guppymomma 21 July 2005 12:55 (PDT)

Okay, call me lazy, but I'd save a heck of a lot of time if I could just slap every image with {{ooo_image}} rather than adding a short description. If the image title is the same as the description, anyone have a problem with no description on the image pages? It seems redundant to have Image:Books.png have a description "Image of Books".--Yaten 21 July 2005 18:44 (PDT)

I think that sounds fine if the image name is descriptive :) --Guppymomma 21 July 2005 18:45 (PDT)

I've uploaded every image I have saved that didn't give me an error. By the Image list's count, we've moved 169 of the 405 images thus far. —Yaten 22 July 2005 00:24 (PDT)

Image uploading is supposedly fixed. Please see Calrissan's additional notes on known bugs. --Guppymomma 31 July 2005 14:44 (PDT)

Flag/crew namespace?

I didn't know where else to put this suggestion. Given the large number of flag/crew pages that are being created, would it be possible to put them all in another namespace besides Main? I have no idea how difficult this would be, but it seems like it would clean things up a bit. When I look at the most recent changes, I usually have to sift through pages and pages of flag/crew page edits before I find changes to articles about the actual game. - B_licker

I believed this was the case for a good part of the Wikicities wiki—pages were titled things like Flag:Midnight:Silver Dawn. One issue with this format is that only the main namespace is included in the default search, which would make searching for a flag or crew intensely harder. Also, it's less than commonplace, even with our best efforts, for crew or flag articles to be well-written on the first edit. A group of players—most of whom are unfamiliar with wiki editing—would likely have considerable trouble understanding that their article should go in another namespace, which just makes more tedious work for the more active editors anyway. – Yaten ^talk 16:47, 24 October 2005 (PDT)

I don't think the old Wikicities were in a separate namespace. They just had awful names like Flag:Midnight:Silver Dawn. A separate namespace makes writing entries harder for new contributors, too. That's because adding a link is more complex. --Barrister 16:55, 24 October 2005 (PDT)

A redirect would solve those issues. While every crew/flag would be searchable using the name, the actual page would be in another mainspace. Betialai On the morning of Christmas day 2005

I'm pretty comfortable with the way things are right now. --Barrister 00:55, 25 December 2005 (PST)

Archiving Pages

I like archiving talk pages, a lot, but I'm confused on when and how we're archiving. The Wikipedia guideline is to archive things sequentially once the page exceeds 32 kilobytes, but are we choosing to put all outdated or resolved issues into the archive? – Yaten ^talk 13:22, 3 August 2005 (PDT)

Not sure. I think that things that are no longer relevant can just be deleted though...if someone is really dying to know, there is the history of the page. Hopefully the more important convos will be on the forum section whenver that arrives and archiving will no longer be too big of a concern for general wiki talk. --Guppymomma 13:31, 3 August 2005 (PDT)

Good point about dates. I just wanted to get rid of those sections because they're no longer relevant. Removing in a FIFO wouldn't make sense, since some things may never become irrelevant. WRT page size, which is valid, I think if a conversation remains relevant, but grows too large, split it into a subpage. I think a subsection listing Talk:Main_Page subpages would make sense when we get to that point. — Callistan ^{(talk/contrib)} 13:47, 3 August 2005 (PDT)

Main Page Design Discussion

I think we should devise an Current news box/section (or call it Highlights?) for the Main Page instead of using the ! message boxes. Could use a cute graphic like the in game news for housing, etc. It will make the wiki look a little more polished to have the Main Page design a little more smooth. --Guppymomma 11:00, 16 August 2005 (PDT)

My thoughts are to adjust the "For contributors" section and move it to YPPedia:Community Portal (I've got a bit of an idea at User:Yaten/sandbox). We could also move the "Content" section to special categories linked from the Main Page (as at Wikipedia's main page "Culture | Geography | History | Life | Mathematics | Science | Society | Technology" thing), and the main page could serve as a "Today in the forums" or "In the news," like a more comprehensive in-game news. – Yaten ^talk 15:04, 16 August 2005 (PDT)

I like the community portal rendition. I agree about moving the for contributors part over there, but I think the Content links need to stay because this is a YPP audience learning wiki, not a strictly wiki audience like Wikipedia, and they're gonna need a little help. A different format though would be good so the In the news/Today in the forumy kinds of things would have their own column or something. --Guppymomma 15:33, 16 August 2005 (PDT)

Current Policy Type Discussions

Currently discussing bazaar pages at Category talk:Buildings. Come chime in with your con/pro opinions! --Guppymomma 21:11, 14 August 2005 (PDT)

Ditto with the discussion on requirements of adminship requests and selection process at YPPedia talk:Administrators. --Guppymomma 21:59, 14 August 2005 (PDT)

Individual pirate pages standards discussion is now open for comments! --Guppymomma 19:06, 17 August 2005 (PDT)

YPPedia:Deletion_policy, YPPedia:Undeletion policy, YPPedia:Blocking policy, YPPedia:Image use policy, and YPPedia:Banning policy are in the process of being created. Please go to these pages and read the wikipedia link then comment on how we should/shouldn't implement a similar policy here on the appropriate discussion page. --Guppymomma 15:23, 27 September 2005 (PDT)

I've expunged the link to the banning policy above; it is now a redirect to the blocking policy. --Emufarmers 22:00, 25 July 2006 (PDT)

Game mechanics/terminology & other categories

I think we need a couple of new categories for Game mechanics and for Terminology. For mechanics I'm hinking articles like Ahoy! panel, Bilge meter, and Doubloon exchange. For Terminology, I think articles like Booty, Chain, Crew, & Parlor games. We could link to these categories from various tutorials. It would make it easier for new players to find our "documentation-like" articles all grouped together in some manner. Discussion?--Fiddler 13:35, 6 September 2005 (PDT)

Went ahead and created [[Category:Terminology]]. Further thinking on the subject leads me to realize that there will be some overlap between these categories, but there's probably enough difference that they shouldn't be lumped into the same group.--Fiddler 17:25, 10 September 2005 (PDT)

Overlap seems okay if there's separate use for each category. --Guppymomma 08:42, 11 September 2005 (PDT)

I propose some sort of category like history/historical game notes. This would work for the blockade history pages and the changelog/release pages as well. --Guppymomma 07:16, 26 September 2005 (PDT)

I believe Category:History would work better. It sounds better to my ears. --Bia 08:37, 26 September 2005 (PDT)

Building Info - Right/Left

So, especially with housing, this is useful information. I'm proposing we put left/right facing info for buildings on the island pages. The only thingee that currently uses a template is housing, but a quickie template could indicate left/right and also type (shoppe, upgraded, bazaar, uhm infrastructure) or something like that. And to support that, we should pop stall information on storage, etc. into the shoppe's article in a bazaar stall section or something (possibly dividing up the paint/props section into stalls, shoppe, upgraded shoppe). --Guppymomma 08:39, 11 September 2005 (PDT)

Looks like there's 3 scenarios: bazaars, houses, and everything else. (The fort is a special case since it can't be upgraded and still remain a fort but for consistency should be lumped in with "everything else.") --Barrister 12:55, 11 September 2005 (PDT)

Bazaars can go with everything else. Houses need to be separate since we track categories with it. So "everything else" would have Type (Fort, Weavery, blah blah blah), Facing (Right or Left), Variety (Bazaar, Standard, Upgraded), Name. How's that sound? --Guppymomma 14:19, 11 September 2005 (PDT)

Ah! That's a much better way of handling bazaars. --Barrister 14:40, 11 September 2005 (PDT)

So I've changed the House template and they all look wacky now. If you're on an island, please give the wiki a hand and add Left or Right as another variable in the House template instances for islands. --Guppymomma 16:40, 12 September 2005 (PDT)

Midnight Ocean instances of Template:House are all fixed, need Cobalt, Ice & Viridian. Sage will be done shortly. --Guppymomma 19:16, 12 September 2005 (PDT)

Adding a new page?

For someone who is new to wiki, this is most unobvious:

How do you add a brand new page, that will be linked from an existing page?

Create a link on the page you intend to link from, [[like this]] or [[like|this]]. The first example will result in like this and the second one results in this. Notice how both are red (or at least they SHOULD be). Click the red link that results and you'll be taken to create a new page. Or you can do a search for the page title you intend to create, and it will provide a link to create the article if it doesn't already exist. --Thunderbird 20:50, 11 September 2005 (PDT)

Thanks. Now, is the Wiki page namespace really flat, or is there some sort of directory structure in there somewhere?

Also, am I signing this correctly? --The Man Behind The Curtain

Ack! How do I keep the indenting level as I put in blank lines?

Simply add a : for each indent you want to put in. Also, to sign, either hit the signature button above the editing space, or type in --~~~~.--Gloraelin 21:21, October 26, 2005 (PDT)

Ideas for Puzzle Pirates

I believe this is in the right area, if not, please excuse the misplacement of this post. Anywho, here's me thoughts

A long time ago, I played a Java game that involved the detanglement of strings. As ridiculous as it sounds, it was quite a difficult game. In steady increments, the tangled knots would get closer to the end of a loom. If the knots got to the end of the loom, ye would lose, to detangle the knots, you had to either right or left click the knot depending on whether it was a clockwise tangle or a counter clockwise tangle. It wasn't to hard to differentiate the two, but sometimes, ye made mistakes. If ye clicked inappropriately, it would tangle more, wasting more time and sending ye closer to a game over. if ye clicked on two untangled strings, it would obviously tangle them. I thought such a game would be great as the puzzle for clothes making, as it is a moderately difficult and entrapping game.

I also wondered if the game creators were going to allow the shrunken heads outside the Alchemist's Lab. Every person I talked to said they wanted one for their room/house. It is indeed a nice touch to the Alchemist's Lab we appreciate, but we all want to appreciate them in our own homes. Please consider my ideas as that is all they are. It is up to y'all,the game designers, whether or not to do this. -- Weiss the Wise

I am afraid this is not the place to make suggestions for the game. For that, you should use the Puzzle Pirates forums, particularly the Game Design forum. --Bia 09:45, 16 September 2005 (PDT)

Are pages for third-party tools appropriate?

I was wondering if it would be appropriate to add pages for third-party tools such as Chatlog Parser, Market OCR, The Shop Tool, and Commodity Trader. I believe adding YPPedia pages for these would enhance the ability of new users to find these tools, as well as providing a better method editing of tips and documentation than multiple-page forum postings.

A disclaimer about how these are not supported/approved/etc by the Ringers would also be necessary.

Being the author of two of these, I do not have a completely objective opinion on this. --Bemis 16:12, 5 October 2005 (PDT)

Sounds fine to me. There's actually one for The Shop Tool that Belgarion made. Feel free to improve upon that one as well. --Guppymomma 16:17, 5 October 2005 (PDT)

Individual Puzzle Pages

In light of the [[Official:<Puzzle>]] pages, it seems we should move YPPedia's puzzle pages (e.g., Bilging, Spades, etc.) to Bilging Strategy Guide, Spades Strategy Guide, etc. Also, create [[Category:Strategy Guides]] to index them more easily. They could probably use a little rework to avoid repeating the Official namespace information, too. --AtteSmythe 13:33, 27 January 2006 (PST)

One problem I can foresee: There are times when players will want to add information about a puzzle that the developers did not wish to reveal when the puzzle was released. Take a look at Alchemistry's list of "puzzle ranks" to see what I mean. I'm open to suggestions on how to address this. --Barrister 14:02, 27 January 2006 (PST)

Do you think that that information is unsuitable for a strategy guide? Seems the sort of stuff that Prima loves to include. --AtteSmythe 14:10, 27 January 2006 (PST)

Hmm, I guess I don't think of that information as "strategy" but that's fine with me. I'd also like to have the official docs contain a link to "Unofficial strategy guide" or something. --Barrister 14:38, 27 January 2006 (PST)

There have always been official docs though. Folks on the wiki would just search for Bilging, I don't think they'd care that the page name is Bilging Strategy Guide or just Bilging. Also the Official namespace isn't in the default search. The Tutorial tag serves well enough, I'd think as we don't have that man of them that we need to distinguish between tutorial and strategy. Dividing it up further would just make it more confusing for folks looking for info. I'm also not convinced that we need to remove things in the wiki that are covered in the official docs. It seems preferable to me for folks to be able to get everything they can in one spot. I like the idea of the official docs having a link to the normal wiki pages. Just my two flakes. --Guppymomma 14:43, 27 January 2006 (PST)

Ah, I suppose I hadn't really considered that Official: wasn't included in the default search; perhaps I just assumed that it was in the plan to include it. The programmer in me just hates duplicating data. Also forgot about the Tutorial category - wish there was some better way of seeing what cats exist. --AtteSmythe 14:54, 27 January 2006 (PST)

You can always check the list of pages in the Category namespace. --Yaten ^talk 15:48, 27 January 2006 (PST)

The intent is to have the official pages link to the unofficial pages for more info, hints, etc. Definitely keep both sets, they complement each other well! -Lizthegrey 16:14, 27 January 2006 (PST)

Current Events

The new {{All Oceans events}} is missing from the current events div. --AtteSmythe 14:32, 2 March 2006 (PST)

Thanks, fixed it. --Guppymomma 14:50, 2 March 2006 (PST)

'UK YPP Party' can be removed from 'other links' on left - Dylan

Fixed. --Guppymomma 10:53, 3 March 2006 (PST)

Numbers?

I poked around, but couldnt find an answer to this one: Which is better, 'one' or '1'? The Crew article in particular has a pile of numbers in it, written both ways. My personal prefrence is the actual numeral, simply because it's easier to scan for when I'm searching for an answer. I'm sure there's a policy about this somewhere, though. :) --Zava 21:09, 11 March 2006 (PST)

Not that I know of, even on Wikipedia. My personal preference is to follow the standard conventions of the English language, which suggest that small numbers (zero – twelveish) should be written out; larger numbers can be numeral-ized. I'm open to discussion. --Yaten ^talk 21:14, 11 March 2006 (PST)

I tend to spell out numbers in sentences. (Ex: "We have two senior officers.") I tend to use the numeric symbols for lists. (Ex: "This recipe requires: 4 iron, 2 wood, 1 tellurium.") --Barrister 12:58, 18 March 2006 (PST)

Tutorial Contest Entries: After the happily ever after ending...

I figured I might as well start up this little convo about the nice tutorial contest entries and what will happen after the contest is over. There are a few choices:

• Leave 'em as is wherever they are
• Integrate them into the existing tutorial pages
• Zap 'em

Obviously there will be an element of needing to decide on a entry by entry basis, but does anyone else have thoughts on this matter? --Guppymomma 20:11, 13 March 2006 (PST)

I'm of the strong opinion that the good ones should be integrated into existing tutorials (if ones exist). The rest should be removed from the main namespace. --Barrister 20:27, 13 March 2006 (PST)

I'm with Barrister... these really are no different from the entries in any other literary contest, this one is just centered around teaching and technical information instead of "write a twenty-line haiku in free verse about pixie sticks and a hooker with a heart of gold" and they should be preserved and documented as such. Treat them like any other contest entry. --Ponytailguy 20:36, 13 March 2006 (PST)

Inventory

Is there a reason there is no "Inventory" category link on the Main Page? I was looking for recipes for products and had to find them in a roundabout manner. --Kaet 00:58, 20 May 2006 (PDT)

Policy Change Notice

Propose adding policy change infobox to top of main page. --AtteSmythe 15:57, 31 May 2006 (PDT)

Great idea. I'll work on making something later this evening. --Guppymomma 16:02, 31 May 2006 (PDT)

What about this:

Is there a more "alerting" sort of picture you could use? Maybe even the one that's in the newstandard template to help visually tie together the cause (discussion & resulting changes in policy) with the appearance of the newstandard template on pages. --Guppymomma 17:26, 31 May 2006 (PDT)

I thought maybe this icon? This icon could also be used on the newstandards template, but it was a bit late when I thought of it. Revised border too - stands out more. --Sagacious ^(talk) 17:35, 31 May 2006 (PDT)

Good 'nuff. I've added it with some additional wording. --Guppymomma 19:48, 31 May 2006 (PDT)

Yes, this is an archive page, buuuut...

...for some reason, this is appearing in category:Candidates for speedy deletion. Any idea why? --Ponytailguy 16:11, 9 January 2007 (PST)

It's not, you're crazy. Try http://yppedia.puzzlepirates.com/index.php?title=Category:Candidates_for_speedy_deletion&action=purge --Guppymomma 16:13, 9 January 2007 (PST)