User talk:TheWombatGuru

Welcome to factorio! We hope you will contribute much and well. You will probably want to read the help pages. Again, welcome and have fun! Kovarex (talk) 14:04, 8 July 2014 (CEST)

The localised headline

Hi! Does it possible make at this wiki the localised headline for non-English pages by DISPLAYTITLE? I was trying use it but it isnt working... TF2 wiki use it and is working! What do you think about it?--Vitduo (talk) 23:13, 29 August 2014 (CEST)

But the Russian page doesnt use dispaytitle look here. Its strange--Vitduo (talk) 23:21, 29 August 2014 (CEST)

I looked into it, this is how they do it: They have implemented display title in Template Item infobox, the displaytitle is automatically the same as the name parameter in that template. I don't know why the germans added the displaytitle tag into the actual article, that isn't necesarry. I think it's best for this wiki to just start by placing the displaytitle tag in every article, we'll think about a better way later. TheWombatGuru (talk) 23:27, 29 August 2014 (CEST)

But I am not sure that the displaytitle works--Vitduo (talk) 00:03, 30 August 2014 (CEST)

The magic word DISPLAYTITLE seems to be disabled, we'll look into that later. TheWombatGuru (talk) 10:26, 30 August 2014 (CEST)

Template:Crafting

Hi, just saw you removed the output field of the template. Did you have thought about recipes that produce more then 1 items like Land mines for example? FatMcK (talk) 23:18, 14 October 2014 (CEST)

Hello, I did not remove the output field of the template. I added a shortcut for the template: When not calling the output parameter it will evaluate to the name of the page without the language suffix and the amount will be 1. If you do however call the output parameter, it works just like before, as you can see at Land mine. TheWombatGuru (talk) 23:24, 14 October 2014 (CEST)

Ok, saw it. How could I think you don't think about this .. ;)

But I wonder if it wouldn't be better as it was before. Do we need the output in the recipe when it is included in the infocard templates when it should be reasonable that the input produces the item of the page a user currently is when the output is 1? Or in short, wouldn't it be better to have the output optional? FatMcK (talk) 23:33, 14 October 2014 (CEST)

I'm not sure if I fully understand you. Do you mean we should by standard not show the output if it is the same as the title of the page, with amount 1? We could do that, but I fear not all people will understand. And the other question. Do you mean removing the crafting grids of all pages and only showing them in the infocard? Yes, I'm against duplicate information, but I don't know if we should only put it in a table on the page or only in the infocard. TheWombatGuru (talk) 23:38, 14 October 2014 (CEST)

You have a good point for the first part, also we would get off a standard. At least for the infocards I don't can think about any exception at the moment.

For the second part, I would remove the crafting grids as soon as the infocards are added. Double informations are really not needed and add the risk that at some future point (maybe with another game version) someone changes only one of both shown recipes or something.

Additionaly I think outside infocard recipes are only usefull for 'multi pages' like Speed module (research) if there are any for items. FatMcK (talk) 23:58, 14 October 2014 (CEST)

Ok, I agree, as of now I will include crafting recipes in the infocards only, though they do still need a lot more testing on there sandbox pages, I hope we can replace the current ones with the sandbox ones soon. TheWombatGuru (talk) 00:01, 15 October 2014 (CEST)

Redirections deletions

Hey, guy, do not be in a hurry to delete renamed pages. Many pages have links to renamed pages' old names, so you often disconnect this system. Please, use tool "what's links here". E.g. Special:WhatLinksHere/Piccone_di_ferro. Thanks. Vitduo (talk) 22:47, 18 October 2014 (CEST)

Yeah, I'm sorry, I knew I would break it, and was planning on fixing it later, shouldn't have done that. TheWombatGuru (talk) 23:07, 18 October 2014 (CEST)

Ok, thanks. Vitduo (talk) 23:29, 18 October 2014 (CEST)

tier not tire

Was the presence of the word "tire" in this revision of Underground belt a typo, or did you genuinely mean to indicate the rubber ring that goes around wheels of vehicles? Regardless, I fixed it about half an hour ago.--Twisted Code (talk) 19:21, 7 June 2015 (CEST)

Twisted Code, thanks for correcting, I meant tier as you corrected.

/sandbox templates

Hello! I see some teplates with /sandbox (...1, 2) ends. I see they're more useful than regular, but there is the difference in using. Could you unificate or "upgrade" (move the code from /sandbox to non-/sandbox) these different versions. These templates are really useful, especially on non-English pages... But I confused what I should use or change. --Vitduo (talk) 00:29, 1 July 2015 (CEST)

Hi, I'll try to do that soon, but no promises, Vitduo. TheWombatGuru (talk) 12:47, 18 July 2015 (CEST)

About the Main page

Hey there. The recent edit that you made to the new content section of the main page seems to not update on the actual main page when not logged in. I'm not sure why this is, it seems to only remember the old cached version with the info from V0.11. The "News" panel is the same way. You might want to contact the devs to get them to give some insight on getting the wiki fixed. I'm not even sure if the wiki should really be bothered with too much considering the game's not fully released. Your thoughts? --Gangsir (talk) 20:46, 5 August 2016 (UTC)

Hello Gangsir,

You can perform a null edit by clicking on edit on the main page and saving it without changing it. This will refresh the cashe. As far as I know, the wiki updates its cashe every once in a while, in order to not slow it down too much, though I'm not 100% sure this happens automatically on this wiki. I will read into it. I'd support you contacting the developers, though I do not think it's that much of a problem for now.

Then onto your second point about not doing too much on the wiki. I don't agree with this, since lots of people are already playing it and there needs to be a spot where you can get information. I also think it would be too much work to create the entire wiki when the game is officially released. This would also mean that on the release date, no information can be found on the wiki.

If you're up for it, and you've got some time, I'd like to think about how we should work on the wiki, what pages should look like, writing guides etc. TheWombatGuru (talk) 20:53, 5 August 2016 (UTC)

Unfortunately, I don't have the user permissions to make direct edits to the main page, nor deletion of other pages, etc. I have the lowest permissions as far as I can tell.

If you look at my contributions, I've been going around for the last month or so and fixing pages that hadn't be updated in a while, or contained a lot of bad grammar and 1st person referrals created a long time ago. As for talking about direction of the wiki, I'd be happy to talk to you about suggested changes. From what I can tell, you've been around longer than me, so do let me know if there's any unwritten rules or recommendations from the devs on how the wiki should look.

As for my personal view of how the wiki works, I notice how there's lots of individual pages containing 1-2 paragraphs of text, I think those should be merged into the page they're connected to, and deleted. An example would be [[Railway/Do_not_cross_the_tracks]], which feels like an unnecessary page that should just be merged with railway. There's lots more pages like this one that feel unnecessary and redundant in some cases. It's not really professional to make tiny pages just for one or two tips, which the old wiki editors seem to have done. Plus, all the redirects, list pages like Tips_&_tricks and whatnot need fixing/deletion. Not to mention people unsure of image naming convention, causing broken image links. Let me know what you think.

Update: I created a template for disambiguations, usable by {{disambiguation}} on any page that lists multiple things. I've done this already to Capsules and Armor. Let me know if this is cool and I should keep changing pages like these. --Gangsir (talk) 21:48, 5 August 2016 (UTC)

Hi,

I've seen you in recent changes quite a lot, so you're willingness to help is good, I however do not have the ability to promote someone, or I do not know I have it. I cannot even remember how I became an admin, I've been inactive for more than a few months.

As for your view on how the wiki should look, I love it. It's exactly as I envision it. I do however think we should have short pages on all in game things like items, machines etc., maybe even all technologies, and then general information about it on pages like 'Technology', 'Automation', 'Mining' etc. As for all the small and impossible to navigate tips and subpages, we should get rid of them. I don't think subpages shouldn't be used in the main namespace.

I like your disambiguation page idea, but I think the pages your mentioned as examples should contain a lot of general information about armor and capsules respectively, so I don't know if the template would be good for those kind of pages, but I'm certain there will be pages that disambiguate to multiple not related topics where the template would fit perfectly. TheWombatGuru (talk) 22:40, 5 August 2016 (UTC)

Oh, I wasn't asking for a promotion (even though it'd make me more useful), I was just saying I can't do the edit. As for the disam. pages I made (you're welcome for the template), I have to disagree and agree with what you said. I envision a system similar to other game wikis, where they have disambiguation pages to help people searching for a certain item on the tip of their tongue, as well as concept pages for people looking for info in general about a game mechanic. Examples of a concept page would be a page called Mining, and would talk about how mining works in the game, where as "plural" pages like Capsules should list all capsules in a disam. page. A concept page for capsules would be something global like "Throw-able weapon", which would also list all capsules, grenades, etc, as well as info about what defines a throw-able weapon. Or, use a quick summary system like the Armor page has, which is like a disambiguation-concept page hybrid. This is my favorite, and why I made the armor page like it is.

The types of pages that I have a problem with, and should be made into disam. pages, are pages that just list templates to bring a bunch of articles onto one page. It's ugly, and redundant. Example being: [[Armor Modules]]. It just uses templates to bring info onto the page, this should be made into a disambiguation, pointing to all the different modules. What modules are should be talked about on the modular/power armor pages, and what each one does should be talked about on their respective pages. As it stands now, it's poorly formatted and unnecessary. But, that's just my vision, it's similar to the system that other wikis use. --Gangsir (talk) 23:17, 5 August 2016 (UTC)

Ok, I agree with you on that, and I like that you're looking at, or know about, the way other wikis do this. Maybe we can create some kind of a todo list/page (if we don't already have it) and assign tasks to each other. TheWombatGuru (talk) 00:02, 6 August 2016 (UTC)

(Whew, that's a lot of colons) I think the [[Wiki to-do list]] page is supposed to be what you're describing. But, if it's only meant to be between us two, it'd be better to use a subpage under one of our userpages, eg User:Gangsir/GangWombatToDo. Thanks for helping me with this, by the way. I'm hesitant to make lots of changes without too much oversight and help. --Gangsir (talk) 00:43, 6 August 2016 (UTC)

For now a sub-userpage will suffice. I created one at User:TheWombatGuru/Wiki to-do list. And don't be afraid to edit, every mistake can be reversed, we can even back the wiki up to a few hours ago if something really gets messed up. TheWombatGuru (talk) 11:48, 6 August 2016 (UTC)

Concerning the pages on conveyor belts

From what I can tell, you seem to want to direct all belt related content to belt transport system, and keep the individual pages for each belt. eg Fast transport belt. I personally think that pages like Splitters should be dismbig pages, to keep BTS from getting too large and cluttered. BTS should only talk about how belts work, not talk about each type of belt, since that's already done on the individual pages for each belt. Let me know your plans. Oh, and it's easier to talk on an actual chat service, instead of the wiki talk pages. I'd prefer being contacted on Discord (Gangsir#2512) or Reddit (/u/Gangsir). --Gangsir (talk) 17:03, 6 August 2016 (UTC)

I only linked Splitters to BTS because it was in the category pending for deletion, I think it's a good idea to turn these into disambiguation pages. I've added you on discord. TheWombatGuru (talk) 18:49, 6 August 2016 (UTC)

Infoboxes or category pages

On the turret page all of the current in-game turrets are listed. Is this wiki moving away from individual pages with infoboxes and towards category pages that detail all of the items in that category with redirects on the individual pages leading to the category page? — Preceding unsigned comment added by TheWombatGuru (talk • contribs) 22:25, 26 August 2016 (UTC)

We are not. The current plan is to have disambiguation pages like Assembling machine and individual pages like Assembling machine 1. If you have any other questions, or are still not sure about what to do concerning this problem, contact me. And please end each answer on a talk page with 4 tildes (Like so: ~~~~)TheWombatGuru (talk) 21:01, 26 August 2016 (UTC)

Changing and breaking things

Generally I go through and fix/update things every time there is a major update for the games that I like to play. This takes me about a week and yes, while I'm updating things there are some broken links, but by the time that I'm done everything works because I go through and double check my work.

Unfortunately when you go and change things while I'm working (like the ConvertName template) it causes excess problems because you're breaking things that I don't know about while I'm working on it. An example is your change to the "modular armor" entry in the ConvertName template which then broke 3 different links in the research pages that I was working on and took a 20min detour just to figure out what had happened.

I've had problems with this wiki, the community surrounding it, and the admins here. There has been little support and last time I started doing a full upgrade to the wiki they created a dev blog that basically said the wiki had low traffic, wasn't worth it, and instead promoted a 3rd party guide. On top of being denied abilities to upgrade the wiki, delete old content, lock archived pages, and change css/js so that the infobox and parsing templates aren't complete spaghetti code. It seems like I was right in leaving this wiki the first time.

If you're interested in continuing the wiki rehaul for v13 (and soon to be v14) then here's a list of things that I haven't gotten around to yet:

• Updating all of the item pages (I've verified that all items should have pages minus the turrets, but that doesn't mean that their values are correct)
• The values and names of the following research pages need to be verified:
  • battery equipment
  • battery mk2 equipment
  • portable solar panel
  • portable fusion reactor
  • personal defense laser
  • discharge defense
  • modules
  • speed module
  • productivity module
  • efficiency module
  • effect transmission
  • rocket silo
• Images may have been changed as well so some of those may need to be updated (I think I got most of them though)
• Achievements:
  • Achievements page could use some love
    • What the achievements button looks like and where it can be found on the UI (along with images)
    • A description on how to track achievements
  • All of the individual pages need to be created
  • All of the images need to be added (minus the one linked below)
    • I would recommend using this this naming convention: name-achievement.png
      • Example:     So-long-and-thanks-for-all-the-fish-achievement.png

Oh and if you're interested in what my plans for the Infobox were, I would recommend making one infobox that is flexible instead of 10 different types and subtypes of infobox some of which are more out dated than the last. Stop using infocard and all of the nested templates - it only creates more problems - instead put css in an actual css file instead of running it inline. Also, changing the parsing (there is a technology, an item, and a few more) templates to use something like JS would probably be better than using wiki code which causes limited inputs or long load times (assuming you increase the number of inputs).

o7

Emailformygames (talk) 22:38, 26 August 2016 (UTC)

I'm sorry to see you go, and I hope I can turn you around.

I had already sent an email to the developers requesting you get more rights.

I'm also sorry you're not happy with how things happen at this wiki. I've only been an admin for a week, and before that, the wiki didn't have an active admin for about a year. This post shows you know your stuff, and if you want me to do some of this stuff until you have your rights, I'll do it without (well, I'll still look at it, but I won't be conservative) questioning.

I was really happy to see an active user appearing since I've been admin and it hurts me that I couldn't do anything to make you feel welcome/able to do what you can do.

About the infoboxes and infocards, I agree that they're confusing, but I did (2 years ago when I edited a bit on them) not have the skills to completely overhaul them. I've improved and maybe we can work on them together.

I'm sorry about the edit to ConvertName, I saw you put the output of the switch statement after every possible value like at "armor-making-research", that's not required, so I changed it and hoped you saw that. That's all. I didn't want to stop you form doing what you were doing.

Greetings,

TheWombatGuru (talk) 22:47, 26 August 2016 (UTC)

I mailed the admins a while back and I was turned down for rights. To an extent I understand their position - I'm a stranger on the internet asking for rights that could harm their website, but it completely blocks me from being able to create and test new infoboxes and parsing templates. They recommended creating code and emailing it to them to implement, but unfortunately it makes it extremely hard to troubleshoot or test the infoboxes before they're actually deployed - plus the lag between email and implementation is frustrating especially when there is something not working. While I don't care for Wikia anymore, at least there it was generally possible to get permissions to quickly upgrade things.

I don't blame you it's just a frustrating position because this wiki has potential, but the old code and lack of support or acknowledgement from the devs is fairly demoralizing especially after the dev blog I referenced earlier. My changes back then and the devblog. "Quite a bit of community effort went into it, however to be honest we don't really know if many people are using it. Also it is still lacking in completeness and up-to-date-ness." No idea why I would put 500-1000 changes and multiple days into upgrading the wiki if not many people are using it. Plus, after updating and verifying all of the information in the item and research infoboxes, moving pages to the correct names, updating images, putting work into updating infoboxes, etc. the information was still "lacking in [...] up-to-date-ness". Just seemed quite insulting after putting in so much work for free.

The things I listed are the general things that need to be done - for now I'm going to step away and possibly come back later or in v14. For infoboxes the best case scenario in my opinion is starting from scratch using mostly HTML - put the css in another file instead of doing it inline which infocard is trying to do and then parse with js or something instead of the templates (I'm not too familiar with parsing, but I know that doing it with wiki templates and wiki code is not efficient or easy to work with when doing more complicated things). I did notice that someone had gone through and made subtemplates to try and update the templates, but (at least when I was here last) they hadn't implemented it fully and so I had to use a mishmash of different templates to get things on the main templates to work. -- just looked and it was indeed your work :)

Unfortunately by using wiki code many things that should work don't. An example of this is switches as can be seen on the ConvertName template - if you don't have an output after each option the code will sometimes work while other times it doesn't (it's really finicky for some strange reason). This is one of the reasons I try to avoid using wiki code if possible - I think it has something to do with how wiki code is changed into real code (html/css) by the mediawiki software.

Emailformygames (talk) 23:36, 26 August 2016 (UTC)

First of all, thank you for the reply. I was quite scared you had taken off and I wouldn't see you again.

I read that FFF post as well back then, and I didn't like what they said as well. I then also reviewed the wiki here to the others out there, and they were more complete, but also more outdated, and now, the wiki is here is both quite complete and up to date.

I'll try to create the templates using external css and js files, though until your response I didn't know you could use javascript here, so that's gonna require some research ;p

I hope to see you back some day.

TheWombatGuru (talk) 00:25, 27 August 2016 (UTC)