Talk: Community Portal

Welcome to the Talk Page for the Site. Please write down any changes that you would deem appropriate so we can try and change them

Templates[]

All current templates should be renamed in order to make them easily searchable, they should take the form "type/specific". I would make the changes but apparently i do not have deletion abilities and do not wish to double the number of pages on the site. Possible categories include

intro - for introductions to pages that may change but appear constant.
dyn - for dynamic templates which will change alot including the news template
info - for info boxes which all pages will need
coll - for collection info including the character series templates
spolier - for different spoiler changes
stub - for different stubs

You will find these changes not only make it easier when you have alot of templates but will attract the more "advanced" wiki users who are attracted by organisation, the weirdos :-P oh yeah like me.

I woudl offer the same ideas for main articles, but for other than news which should not be confused with other articles i dont think this is neccesary. On that note, the old news pages need to be deleted. --OSDever 16:19, 28 Oct 2005 (UTC)

Some gd ideas. Ill start working on that tomorrow as i am goin out in a few. Keep making suggestions as the wiki is still quite new and we want to get it as gd as it can be. - Selo 17:38, 28 Oct 2005 (UTC)

Game Releases[]

I have made a page that covers all game releases but am afraid my Wiki Table Making skills are poor, if someone could change the HTML into wikiscript(?), add colouring and also possibly link the game names that would help create a basis for a game map that new comers could use. --OSDever 13:12, 30 Oct 2005 (UTC)

Metal Gear[]

I have now placed a detailed structure on this page, but it desperately needs filling with information and it will soon become a complete article which will be perfect as a basis to build up each of the other games pages. --OSDever 13:29, 30 Oct 2005 (UTC)

Perspective[]

I believe we should fix a Wiki-wide rule in terms of perspective used in articles. Currently, they seem to be a mix of 'in-universe' (i.e. from the point-of-view of someone within the Metal Gear timeline) and real-world (i.e. our own POV, looking at Metal Gear as games and works of fiction). The latter is used on the main Wikipedia, but I believe a number of Wikicities use 'in-universe' perspective, most notably the Star Wars Wiki, which is currently the most popular Wikicity on the site.

Personally, I feel we should fix an in-universe perspective, in past tense (so we're looking back at the events, not as if they're currently happening, other than news pages and so forth), though what does everyone else suggest? - Kwenn 17:16, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

I think thats a good idea. As this is a guide to the Metal Gear Universe it would be better to do an In-universe perspective seeing as it is a game. Selo 17:37, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

Are we all agreed? If you want I'll start working on it right now, but does anyone have a specific character for it to be told from? - Fantomas

- I didn't mean from the POV of an actual character, rather that we don't mention the fact that we're talking about a fictional world; we know it's fictional, and so we can treat it as 'reality', whereas the main Wikipedia has to make the distinction. So, rather than saying, 'Solid Snake is a character in the Metal Gear Solid games', we say 'Solid Snake was a member of FOXHOUND who participated in the Shadow Moses Incident' etc etc. Of course, we can add Behind the Scenes sections and lists of appearances, but the article itself should be treated as 'reality' - Kwenn 13:25, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, I figured out what you meant after I posted that, I was just having a bit of a dumb moment, that's all, haha! As I said before, I'll get to work on it - Fantomas

Allright, I'm working on re-doing the Perspectives as we speak. I'm doing the games themselves first, before moving onto characters and such. I assume that I should refer to events and such in the past tense? I think it would be better that way. - Fantomas

- I agree. Past tense for all specific in-universe events. Perhaps present tense would be better for everything constant, by which I mean things that don't "happen", just things that are there, like the radar or the SOCOM pistol. Same thing for characters maybe (unless they are dead), although certain events in their biography would obviously all be past tense. Chaos91 13:21, 23 December 2008 (UTC)

Removal of Metal Gear Picture[]

I was thinking that the Metal Gear Picture should be replaced as it doesnt get changed to frequently. I thought to make navigation easier we could change it to "Metal Gear Universe". Then within this we could have "Games" and "Characters" etc... as headings, and then the items that associate with the headings. This would make it easier to go around the wiki.

I agree. There's no easy way to browse the Wiki at the minute, so a listing of the major categories (with possibly a few major examples under some?) would be a big help - Kwenn 20:51, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

Right, ive put the "Metal Gear Universe" in place of the picture. However there was a huge space on the left side at the bottom, so i put the pic there to fill up the space.

With the pic in mind, i think it should be changed once a week, preferably a monday, so that it sticks. I'll be happy to change the picture.

Say how the Main Page looks and if it needs improving or changing completely. At the moment it makes it easier to navigate the wiki...which is a start :D - Selo 22:00, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

Sons of Liberty category[]

I noted with the last edit to List of Missiles that there is no Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty category. Would it be a good idea to create this category and change the articles that are currently in the Metal Gear Solid 2 category. All the other category names have the full game title in them.

merging articles[]

can we have a merge article ugh thingy (if we already have one somewhere oops) I think it would be quite useful to have as a nice way of telling people that the article they just created exists somewhere else.

Yeh, i think thats a gd plan. i dnt think we have one......i cant remember creating it lol. If u want ill get started soon, but u can start it if u want... - Selo 00:43, 26 July 2006 (UTC)

you can start it. I donno how to create one :-) --Drawde83 01:19, 26 July 2006 (UTC)

ok I've got something working though it needs to be prettier. for an example of how to use it check the code at the top of my user page.--Drawde83 22:47, 26 July 2006 (UTC)

ive made a few changes to it, mainly formatting as u can probably tell from the comment on the page change. Say if u think it should change and stuff, or do it urself lol - Selo 00:40, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

No I'm quite happy with the way it looks I'll start using it, thanks :-)--Drawde83 01:51, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

Glossary[]

what do people think about having a glossary?? This would be good for explaining things that are really minor and arn't really worth devoting a whole article to, such as CIA, AWACS, DCI, Bandanna etc

Design changes[]

I had an idea that we should change the design of the site a little bit by changing the code in the css files available for the wiki. 2 problems though.....

1. I suck at designing things. Everytime i try it looks like ****. 2. I also suck at CSS, well im nt bad but i havent done it in years.

I think that the site should have some different colours and a new logo and also some other changes to help the site. These sorts of changes can be found on the family guy wiki.

Also on the wiki they have changed some of the links on the left hand side (community portal, etc..) to other names and i thought maybe we could do something similar.

Anyways thats my ideas, feel free to talk about them...please do!! lol

- Selo 23:08, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

I'm all for changing the CSS. Making The Wiki look different would definitely make it more inviting for new contributors. You'd have to convince me on changing the links though, If you mess with the navigation then it just puts people off when they can't find things, you'd have to make it really obvious.

when I get the chance I might have a play with a stylesheet in my browser and let ya know what I come up with--Drawde83 03:12, 7 August 2006 (UTC)

Cool. Yeh ur probs right about the links tho. it was just a thought anyways. Play around with the stylesheet whenever tho. - Selo 21:31, 7 August 2006 (UTC)

linking to wikipedia[]

how would everybody feel about linking to wikipedia articles when the topic isn't really that central to the metal gear universe? I'm talking about articles on topics like countries or armed forces.

list misc[]

hey guys I've started redirecting empty articles to list pages. I figure if we can group these topics together then it's much more likely that something will get written about them.

If you wanna help out you can

go to an empty list page and add content, check out the what links here
create new list pages use the listmisc template, check out wanted pages for ideas

--Drawde83 23:13, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

Deletion Policy[]

Due to some instances of articles being deleted by admins and users not wanting them to be deleted I have now created some templates for a more democratic way of deleting pages. See the Deletion Policy for more information.

Gaming wiki chat this Sunday![]

Hi all,

On Sunday October 14th there is going to be an IRC chat for gaming wikis at the #wikia-gaming channel. Contributors, admins, and foudners of all/all gaming-related wiki on Wikia are invited to discuss common issues that we might have, sharing our experiences, and helping each other out. The time of the chat will be:

California	New York	London
1pm	4pm	9pm

Please help to spread the word, and hope to see you there!

-User:PanSola 16:30, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

Spoiler Tags[]

I was thinking that we should get rid of the spoiler tags. The reason being is that if you come to the wiki you should expect there to be spoilers about the games. There is a spoiler warning on the front page anyway. It's just a thought, as it just seems to be a redundant template. - Selo 17:12, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

I fully agree with you. I was planning on nominating it for deletion as well, as all pages can be considered a spoiler.--Richard 19:35, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

Try out the new CreatePage tool![]

Hullo! I am Kirkburn, a Wikia gaming Helper, and I'm here to tell you about something new we've enabled on your wiki - a new version of the Special:CreatePage tool!

"The latest incarnation of the create page tool introduces a brand new feature – createplates. These are predefined layouts for certain types of pages that will enable users to quickly and painlessly create pages adhering to the wiki's style and formatting guidelines."

We've been working on it for a while, and I find it pretty useful and easy to use. Some wikis already use "preloads" and similar techniques to do this - this is essentially an interactive and fully integrated version of that.

The all-important links

Special:CreatePage - This is the main page of the interface. You can display this link anywhere you want users to create new pages (on the Main Page, on category pages, or in the Mediawiki:Sidebar).
MediaWiki:Createplate-list - the list of createplates (which you can edit). You can change these to match you existing templates, delete or create new ones.
MediaWiki:Createplate-Character - one of the createplates (such pages are linked by MediaWiki:Createplate-list).

Help and feedback

A more detailed walkthough of this new product and how to use and customize the createplates can be found on Inside Wikia at w:c:inside:CreatePage.
As this is a new product we are actively seeking your feedback - both bug reports and suggestions for improvements. Please share your thoughts on the Inside Wikia forum thread.

Enjoy! If you have any questions, please leave a message on my talk page and I will get back to you :) Kirkburn (talk) 21:55, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

As an extended note, if this is overwhelming, don't worry. Start small, try testing it out with some deletable sandboxes so you get a feel for how it works (you could even try recreating already existing articles with it). Next, try editing the createplates to see the effect - e.g. change section names to better fit the wiki. Feel free to remove createplates that your wiki will never use.

Createplates do not need to be complex - if certain pages don't need an infobox don't feel you need to keep one on the createplate. Their most important function is to make creating new articles much easier and allows articles to be kept much more standardised, meaning less work for others to clean up. Kirkburn (talk) 22:26, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

Createpage in use![]

Hullo! As an update on this so you can see it in action, I have tried it out here. I took an article, Mei Ling, and attempted to recreate it with Special:Createpage.

I did this by editing MediaWiki:Createplate-Character to use an existing character template, and by copying the text into the various boxes on Special:Createpage ... the result was User:Kirkburn/Mei Ling, which required a fair bit less typing and tweaking than normally.

However, speed and consistent formatting is not the only benefit! If you look at http://metalgear.wikia.com/index.php?title=User:Kirkburn/Mei_Ling&action=edit you can see it uses something called "multiedit" which uses some extra info from the page to help present it better.

It would be awesome if this could be set up in a way that more people use it - it shouldn't require much work from an admin to get a basic page layout sorted - any help is appreciated! Kirkburn (talk) 00:32, 14 March 2008 (UTC)

Request for new MGS4 Walkthrough section: HUD[]

It might be a good idea to add a section to the MGS4 Walkthrough detailing some of the finer points of the Heads up display. I believe that being able to fluidly recognize and react to the various ways gameplay is affected by the changing elements in the HUD is perhaps the most vital part of a skillful playthrough. Weapon and Item icons are fairly straightforward but psyche, stress, camo index, wind direction, alert level, and to an extent, the baseline map and threat ring require a fair amount of interpretation. In the game, there exists no explanation of what exactly to expect snake to do with 2/3 of his psyche left or a stress level of 35%, nor is there an explanation of how you can expect enemies to react when Snake's camo index is at somewhere between 30 and 85%. Naturally, these numbers mean vastly different things depending on alert level (which is a complex HUD element in itself), difficulty, and other factors and It's that incredible level of situational variability that both marks the game's highpoint in terms of realism and makes fully comprehending the mechanics quite a daunting task. I suggest a breakdown of the individual HUD elements by what what affects their value and, more importantly; what effects these values have on Snake and his environment. Granted, most players' intuition tells them to "keep stress low" and "keep psyche and camo index high," but for players gunning for speed, emblems, and showcasing their skills, knowing whether or not they're going to be seen by a dwarf gekko on "Big Boss Hard" during a caution phase with a camo index of 70% is vital information. Even for casual players, it would be nice to know what you can get away with, and to better understand how a concrete numerical value correlates to the convincingly organic behavior of Snake, his enemies and his environment. The sheer volume of variables may prove this task impossible but in the end, the game is still only a simulation running scripts based on the actions you take within it. I'm of course open to even the harshest criticisms of this idea and look forward to some feedback. THESHOOTIST 18:25, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

Vote For Snake![]

At the Super Mario Wiki, they are having a "Ultimate Character Contest". Basically, voting for the best video game character out there. Currently, Mario and Snake are competing to advance to the fourth round. here is the link where you can vote. Mario vs. Snake should be the first box on there, and one person can only vote once, so if we can get as many people to pitch in from MGS wiki, we have a legitimate chance of beating out Mario. Let's do this, guys. B) --MetalGearGarlic 05:36, March 1, 2010 (UTC)

O_o[]

Yes... I've noticed on the sidebars, the little mini-menu that has "Upload Image" and "What Links Here" and "Special Pages" links lacks a "Random Page" link. Special:Random should be there, no? Havoc Reaper 48 00:38, March 21, 2010 (UTC)

Hello