User talk:Silverstrike

Talk page Archive

Hi there!
Welcome to our wiki, and thank you for your contributions! There's a lot to do around here, so I hope you'll stay with us and make many more improvements.

I'm really happy to have you here, and look forward to working with you! Tullis 05:01, 28 January 2009 (UTC)

Article management template colours
It might be nice to use the Split colour scheme for the article management templates, to help them stand out and separate them from the articles themselves. Ideally, at some point, we could add commons icons to all of them too, in order to emphasize their "extra-articular" nature. --DRY 21:12, March 2, 2010 (UTC)
 * I agree that they should look different - but perhaps use other background color, the white clashes too much with the article background. --silverstrike 21:18, March 2, 2010 (UTC)
 * Sure. Reduce the brightness or mix in to get an off-white or a cream or something.  --DRY 21:25, March 2, 2010 (UTC)
 * How does this look:


 * I see two problems: the first is the color of the "bluelink" which merges with the background, the second is with the split image, but that could be fixed by uploading the same image as PNG with alpha transparency. --silverstrike 21:38, March 2, 2010 (UTC)
 * Changing the image is no real problem; the link colours, however, are. It's certainly not urgent for the moment.  I'd suggest sticking with the white for now, and we'll change them all once we can find something that works.  --DRY 22:07, March 2, 2010 (UTC)


 * I thought of another way to emphasize the tag without the need to use the blinding white background:




 * The redlink looks okay to me, a little pale but still distinguishable from the background. If you don't like it, I'll revert back to the white background until we'll sort the issue through the stylesheet. --silverstrike 22:31, March 2, 2010 (UTC)


 * Realizing that taste is very subjective, of course, I would have to opine that I don't much care for it. --DRY 22:34, March 2, 2010 (UTC)
 * White it is, than. --silverstrike 22:36, March 2, 2010 (UTC)
 * Perhaps the same blue as the background of a &lt;pre&gt;?
 * The bluelink becomes invisible. Technically, we can use colors that don't clash with blue or red:


 * I played picked a color as close to gray as possible to achieve neutrality - the red and blue look fine to me (actually, the red looks bad even on the default background of the wiki), but I could play around a little to achieve the required result. --silverstrike 23:37, March 2, 2010 (UTC)
 * That looks pretty reasonable to me. (On the other hand, I didn't personally particularly mind the white either.)  --DRY 23:52, March 2, 2010 (UTC)

I made another example with the background from the dark scheme, but worked on the border to make the tag more noticeable:  The double border does most of the work here, but I think that it's better then the white background. --silverstrike 00:11, March 3, 2010 (UTC)
 * FWIW, that doesn't render properly for me here (somewhat antiquated Firefox 3.0.11 on Linux). It looks like the table isn't filling the div, but there might be another reason.  --DRY 00:17, March 3, 2010 (UTC)


 * The problem is that the table inside the div didn't have, so it collapsed based on the content. I have played a little with the cleanup template as base for the tag styling:


 * I added an image and made the border pale orange - I think that it's a step in the right direction, though using a brighter background color and further emphasis on the border might help. I'll continue playing around with the tag tomorrow until we reach a basis for all wiki tags. --silverstrike 04:10, March 3, 2010 (UTC)


 * For my part, I'd really like the management templates to stand firmly out to grab attention and make it clear that they are in no way part of the article text. White actually serves that purpose reasonably well, to my mind.  (Keep in mind that there should, in theory, be very few of these in play at any one time and they are not, by definition, intended to be permanent parts of an article.)  --DRY 04:41, March 3, 2010 (UTC)
 * Well, make it a little bit more noticeable and changed the bluelink color to match. The only problem will be for the talk page link that can't be changed through the code (unless both states will be blue), but with a minor change to the stylesheet we can make it work. --silverstrike 06:25, March 3, 2010 (UTC)
 * The orange background is also suitable. --DRY 06:43, March 3, 2010 (UTC)


 * As I see it, yellow (and orange to an extent) means 'Notice'. Red (or sometimes dark brown) means warning - so I tried using this method for color choosing. The only issue that remains now is what to do with the link colors. the first two links can be set manually to blue, but the third is a dynamic link (the talkpage doesn't always exist). I can use the '#ifexist' function to work around the issue, or let you make the color tweaks by editing the wiki's stylesheet. --silverstrike 07:04, March 3, 2010 (UTC)

Beta Version Before Merge
I created a sandbox page for every article management tag, and listed all of them on User:Silverstrike/Sandbox/TestingGround. --silverstrike 12:16, March 3, 2010 (UTC)
 * I decided to introduce a support template for the maintenance tags (User:Silverstrike/Sandbox/Tag) that manage all the styling for the tag. This cuts down on allot of redundant code/styling and uniform their appearance. I also expanded the TestingGround page and divided it into two sections: the first shows the usage without the tag, and the second with it.
 * If the Tag template will be accepted for use, I could expand it to allow setting the type of tag (either 'Notice' which handles article management tags or 'General' for any other type of tag - like the disambig tag). --silverstrike 13:49, March 3, 2010 (UTC)
 * I prefer the transparent background images (i.e. fully orange background) to the white image background. For the centred messages, I think it would look better if the image were immediately left of the text, rather than flush with the left of the banner.  For the non-centred banners, we should probably standardize the left margin so that they all line up.  Otherwise, looks good.  I haven't formed an opinion yet whether coalescing styling in a single template is a good idea or not.  Pro, it simplifies global changes.  Contra, it makes individual variation harder &mdash; as you discovered with PointsOfInterest and friends.  Even if a styling template is only used in one context today, they have a nasty habit of being reused in other contexts down the line.  Middle ground might be to use a template during development, and then subst it on release.  --DRY 16:06, March 3, 2010 (UTC)


 * I see your point regarding the Tag template, I just remembered today that help.wikia.com implement their tags in that fashion. We'll subst the final version as you suggested (we can still keep the TestingGround page for later use (in case we need to redo the styling - it will help keep all styles uniform).
 * RE: styling: I'll try to follow your input, although I think that we may encounter some problems with aligning the image right next to the centered text; they are different cells in a table and the centering is based on the cell width, but I'll give it a try in any case. --silverstrike 16:24, March 3, 2010 (UTC)


 * BTW, what do you think about the disambig tag at the top? --silverstrike 16:26, March 3, 2010 (UTC)

I changed the Tag template to allow setting image and text cells styles, which will allow styling for individual tags. I also went ahead and changed the proper tag templates - from your comments I understand that you generally approve of the templates (and they do the work better then the current ones). Any further tweaks could be preformed on the proper templates (I currently have no idea how to make the changes you suggested - but will continue to work on them). --silverstrike 14:46, March 5, 2010 (UTC)

Table and infobox colours
I was under the impression that you were changing only the white infoboxes. The table modifications (points of interest, minerals, etc.) are a step backward, I think. We've lost the header row differentiation. (In passing, now that I see the infoboxes in situ, I think they need a bit more border: either thicker or brighter, so as to clearly delineate them from the background. --DRY 23:58, March 2, 2010 (UTC)
 * Note too that there are probably quite a number of inline tables using the #666999 colour scheme. --DRY 23:59, March 2, 2010 (UTC)
 * I see your point regarding the points of interest. I'll make another change and if you still think it doesn't look good, then revert the changes and I'll continue to work on it from my sandbox.
 * If were going to make the change in colors, I prefer to check all pages that use the purple background and change it accordingly -- it may take a couple of days, but I think it will be worth it in the end. --silverstrike 00:11, March 3, 2010 (UTC)
 * The ME:2 minerals table looks a little odd now too. I'm not sure if that's because you're half way through, or a rendering issue at my end, or if it's just me.  (The table rows now lack borders, which may be intentional but seems odd since the header does have borders.)  --DRY 00:16, March 3, 2010 (UTC)
 * I broken up the color scheme for the PointOfInterest template that cascaded to all other templates that use it. I think I've sorted out most of the issues with the colors, and I'll fix them in a few moments. --silverstrike 00:19, March 3, 2010 (UTC)
 * (Edit conflict) One other small point. I didn't even realize that the header colour was different in the infoboxes until I looked very closely at Colony.  It's more noticeable there because there's no offsetting image like for the majority of planets and systems.  Perhaps a slightly brighter shade?  --DRY 00:21, March 3, 2010 (UTC)
 * No problem, I'll work on the header color.
 * RE: PointsOfInterest: I made a few changes and its gone from bad to worst. I would appreciate if you could rollback the changes I made and I'll continue to work on that template from my sandbox. --silverstrike 00:28, March 3, 2010 (UTC)
 * Rolled back, as requsted. --DRY 00:40, March 3, 2010 (UTC)
 * Thanks :) and sorry for the mess I made. --silverstrike 00:45, March 3, 2010 (UTC)

(Reset indent) How about using a variation of the border colour #334 or #333344  as the infobox heading background, and leaving the caption with the default background? --DRY 04:39, March 3, 2010 (UTC)
 * I'll try it out :) --silverstrike 06:38, March 3, 2010 (UTC)
 * Made the change as you suggested (Planet) and the title really seem like a title now. If you don't have any issues with that color I'll go ahead and update the rest of the templates. --silverstrike 07:19, March 3, 2010 (UTC)
 * That seems pretty good to me. Good work.  --DRY 15:58, March 3, 2010 (UTC)

Table styling
You'll need to take care when styling tables, like that added to Equipment. With the header colour and border colour exactly the same, you lose the header rules unless you take extra care. --DRY 16:00, March 6, 2010 (UTC)


 * I noticed that. Actually, Spoo12 made a change to the header borders in the MineralScanning template to work around that issue. Either we go with his approach, or we find another background for headers in data-tables. --silverstrike 16:24, March 6, 2010 (UTC)


 * Sure, whatever is best. Work something out between you.  --DRY 16:35, March 6, 2010 (UTC)

Resources article merge
Thanks for taking care of that. One detail though: when redirecting or deleting a page, you should also take a look at, e.g., Special:WhatLinksHere/Resources and make sure that inbound links are still going to make sense (and, ideally, don't create any new Special:DoubleRedirects). --DRY 16:37, March 6, 2010 (UTC)
 * Damn. I knew I forgot something. I'll go through the list and update the links. --silverstrike 16:47, March 6, 2010 (UTC)
 * You don't necessarily have to change the links. Just sort of check the flow and see if they still make sense.  Any double redirects are much, much lower priority.  Somebody usually sweeps them once a quarter or so anyway.  --DRY 16:51, March 6, 2010 (UTC)

Congratulations!
According to a lovely diatribe left by Throwback in response to your comments on the Talk:Tupari page, you are now apparently one of the admins who sit around in our "rarefied air of elitism" ensuring that this site conforms to our "common, yet secretive, vision." So congrats on being one of the Illuminati! I tell you, you just can't make some of this stuff up! :) SpartHawg948 00:50, March 11, 2010 (UTC)
 * Thanks, I actually sat and wrote him an answer (though, I'm pretty sure I spoke gibberish - too tired for those discussions) - I find his comment as somewhat insulting. But then again, some people will find any reason to blame anyone that does not agree with them at least 90% of the time.
 * I think I'm in good company with the other illuminati :) - but I'll distance myself from the discussions, no good can come of it. --silverstrike 01:04, March 11, 2010 (UTC)
 * Indeed. There's another user who is commenting too, but I'm not hopeful as to impartiality, as I've already pretty much been called a liar by that user. We'll see what happens. I think Throwback is still just steamed about not getting to have a major hand in the Timeline re-do, as the Timeline page was his big thing for a while. Oh well. Can't make everyone happy. And I agree 100%! I'm completely happy with the company in our purported "conspiracy of secrecy"! :) SpartHawg948 01:07, March 11, 2010 (UTC)

Not cool
If your going to undo one of my edits, please leave an edit summary to tell why. . . so why did you remove the templates I added? Merrell 22:46, March 22, 2010 (UTC)
 * No need to get all flustered, I just hit the "save page" button prematurely, I generally try to leave a summary on my edits. I reverted your edit because the armor pages use the ItemsList template and images should not be uploaded to those articles manually (you can take a look at the current discussion on the Colossus Armor talk page for more information and additional links regarding this template). --silverstrike 00:13, March 23, 2010 (UTC)
 * Thanks for clearing this up, but next time, please leave an edit summary, It'll help avoid situations like this. Merrell 20:42, March 25, 2010 (UTC)

Sidebar
Hey Silverstirke, I noticed you haven't been around recently, and after talking with some other users, I was digging though the wiki, and noticed, after DRY pointed me in the right direction, that you and Tullis had actually created a new sidebar. I was just wondering if we could use it, and modify it if necessary, not in your samdbox however, and why it wasn't implemented. I sent you an email as well. Just covering the bases here. Please let me know. Thanks in advance. Lancer1289 22:16, May 21, 2010 (UTC)
 * Hey back, Lancer. I still check the wiki every once in a while, but due to heavy workload I had to take some time off (planning on coming back soon).
 * In regards to the sidebar: Tullis and myself finished working on the sidebar to make it more useful, friendly, and organized a while ago and it was suppose to be up and running by now (I have no idea why Tullis didn't finalize the changes) - so like you, I'm waiting for it to be implemented. --silverstrike 18:14, May 22, 2010 (UTC)
 * Ok then, I'll talk with DRY about implementing the changes, becuase Tullis hasn't been around for a while. So maybe he can implement the chagnes. Lancer1289 18:17, May 22, 2010 (UTC)
 * Sorry just another message. After looking though it, and after the long discussion on Tullis' talk page about it, which you two put a lot of work into it, I can see a few changes, three small ones. One: The ME2 Missions page has been deleted and the ME2 Assignments page is currenlty in the process of a discussion. Two: we do now have a page for all the DLC labeled in both ME and ME2, Downloadable Content. Three: The only other thing is just more archives for Cerberus Daily News. Apart from that, I think that it will do nicely. I know I am suggesting changes after the fact, but I thought I'd give you some updates about some of the things you might have missed. Lancer1289 18:28, May 22, 2010 (UTC)
 * I appreciate the input :). Those discussions need to be where the one of the admins could respond (this is, after all, the global wiki sidebar) - I'll look around the wiki and check what links should be updated, added, or removed/replaced. --silverstrike 18:47, May 22, 2010 (UTC)
 * No problem, anyway I left messages with all three admins and hopefully we can get this new sidebar up before July. However with Tullis absent and DRY having the same issues you are having, work overload, (I only have to worry about school work, not having a job is good but sucks becuase I have no money), and because Spart really doesn't to this kind of thing, according ot him, this may take a while. However, if that is the case, maybe we can talk to JoePlay about putting it up. Lancer1289 19:20, May 22, 2010 (UTC)

(reset indent) Hey Silverstrike, after talking with Spart, we hanaved to get the new side bar up. It looks great and you and Tullis did a great job on it. Just wanted to let you konw that it was up. Lancer1289 16:14, May 30, 2010 (UTC)

Oops
I guess that slipped my mind about discussing something like that. However as I said, I though consistency would be a good thing. That isn't a defense, just me trying to explain why it sliped my mind. Thanks again for the reminder, and Teugene created new versions so I figured we'd do it right this time around. Again thanks for reminding me of something that I should have remembered. Lancer1289 17:16, June 1, 2010 (UTC)
 * No apology needed. I think everyone makes that mistake at one time or another.
 * I agree with consistency on the wiki, I don't know what exactly you changed (need to take another look), but as long as its an improvement toward consistency with other templates, then I applaud the initiative.
 * If we're on the subject of community feedback, have you looked at the proposal I made a few weeks ago at DRYs talk page (should be the first comment) for the community board? I have a general go ahead, but need a little more work on the phrasing. I would appreciate your input and support on this endeavor. --silverstrike 18:00, June 1, 2010 (UTC)
 * Ok then I'll take a look at that as I haven't really looked at it, glanced over it a few months ago, but that was about it. Anyway, what I changed was the inculsion of the class pictures that Dammej made. They look simiar to the templates that use the Loyalty/Achievement pictures on the various squad member pages. Just so you don't have to go back and look. Lancer1289 18:06, June 1, 2010 (UTC)

Universal "Powers" template
You seemed to be an interested party, so I figured I'd drop a line here as well. I'm pretty sure I got the "universal" template working correctly finally. Check out the sandbox page for uses with all of them. If need-be, I can prototype edits to the original templates which just pass the parameters on to this new "universal" template. That way the pages wouldn't have to change (too much, anyway), and they'd still all have a consistent styling. Let me know your thoughts. Dammej 20:14, June 1, 2010 (UTC)
 * Hey, I implemented the changes as you suggested, and I feel like the templates are in a lot better shape now. If you could take at look at them and give your feedback at your earliest convenience, I'd really appreciate it. Thanks again for all the help! Dammej 01:20, June 4, 2010 (UTC)

AdversariesPowers / PowerDetail
I figured I'd bring this up on your talk page, since you seem like the primary maintainer of the template. If others should be involved, let me know.

What do you want to do about merging my changes into the AdversariesPowers template? Should this be moved to a new generic name, or would it be better/easier to keep the name, but still merge in the changes?

My thoughts: I figured that we might as well change the name while we're at it, since it now has an expanded scope. So far as I could tell from the "what links here" page on the template, only the ME2Adversaries template currently uses this, so any potential impact should be relatively minor. As for the new name: I was thinking PowerDetail, dropping the plural since this technically only works with one power. What do you think? Dammej 01:58, June 4, 2010 (UTC)
 * PowerDetail/PowerDetails seems good to me. I don't know what changes you made to the original template, but it should still work with AdversariesME2 after a couple of minor tweaks. I'll go through the changes tomorrow and will update the adversaries template after you finalize the changes to the Powers template. --silverstrike 02:22, June 4, 2010 (UTC)

You're correct. It should still work with AdversariesME2, changing only the name to PowerDetails. The two parameters I added to the template use the defaults that were established by AdversariesME2. As far as the changes I made, I added all of the ME1 talents that weren't already there, as well as all the passive powers in ME2. So far as I know, it's now a complete listing of every single power/talent in the Mass Effect Universe. In the cases where a power had an analogue in Mass Effect (e.g. Singularity), I added a switch on the "game" parameter, allowing the "caller" to specify which one they want.

I added the auto-categorization to the powers that I added, but only the Biotics/Tech categories. I wasn't sure about Combat talents, so I didn't change those.

I believe that's all the changes. Let me know if anything might cause a problem. Dammej

Series Names
Ignore my comment on the talk page. I have created a list of assignments and I was hoping to get your input. The first name is the mission or series of assignments that the heading deals with. The second name is what the series title will be called. For Mass Effect, I only chose missions that have a timeline, and we shouldn’t list all the variations on the journal entries of assignments, as many of them change over the course of the assignment, feel free to agree or disagree.


 * Mass Effect
 * Noveria Missions: Noveria Mission
 * Feros Missions: Feros Mission
 * Virmire Missions: Virmire Mission
 * Final Mission (Ilos + Final Battle): Break the Cycle
 * Cerberus Assignments: Cerberus Assignments


 * Mass Effect 2
 * Blue Suns Assignments: Blue Suns Assignments
 * Blood Pack Assignments: Blood Pack Assignments
 * Mechs and Rogue VI Assignments: Rogue VI Virus
 * Firewalker Assignments: Project Firewalker Assignments
 * Liara Missions: Liara and the Shadow Broker Missions
 * Prologue Missions: Prologue
 * Suicide Mission: Suicide Mission

What do you think? Lancer1289 16:31, June 4, 2010 (UTC)
 * The only issue that comes to mind is the problem for the author in guess what the template is suited for, that is, how will they select the series name/title? We could set it automatically through the template by checking the title, category, or other markup on the page. If we let the authors specify them, they will have to go to the template page to check what series names are available.
 * Another issue that now comes to mind is auto categorization. I can add a category (series, multi-part articles, etc.) automatically to every page that transclude this template, its somewhat redundant, but I thought I'll bring the idea up anyway. --silverstrike 16:50, June 4, 2010 (UTC)
 * Hmm, good point. Each series means something different to everybody. I'm thinking that we should put the templates using the default names that we can come up with. That way we can avoid any confusion and if anyone sees the need to change the title we can direct them to the template's talk page. On that page we should list the names that are used currently, and while it may be a little bit of a hassle, I think that it would at least direct people to discuss changes if they think they are necessary. I really don't see a need for auto categorization, especially for new categories, however that is my opinion on the matter. Lancer1289 17:06, June 4, 2010 (UTC)
 * I tried to make the template a little more user-friendly and added the help parameter that returns syntax reference and the available values for the series parameter (the actual behavior is not implemented as of this moment). The author will only have to specify the numeric value of the corresponding series. --silverstrike 18:39, June 4, 2010 (UTC)
 * Forgot to mention: in order to display the help instead of the actual navigation table, you only need to specify the parameter help with any value, but not empty: . --silverstrike 18:42, June 4, 2010 (UTC)
 * Looks good, and great addition. I don't see a problem with implementation. That makes it easier and now just to wait for some comments. 18:45, June 4, 2010 (UTC)
 * Well, finished the implementation. Will update the discussion page with the new info. --silverstrike 18:59, June 4, 2010 (UTC)
 * You did a great job on it, looks great. Lancer1289 19:12, June 4, 2010 (UTC)