User talk:Porplemontage/Archive 14

Power Moon Tables
I would like to discuss your official decree on the way to do the Power Moon Tables. You call for the Moon #, name, image, and description for each table, but that ends up looking like this. The amount of vertical space this takes is horrendous, and it makes finding a specific moon take much longer than it should. On my laptop I can only see about 5 rows at once, on my phone (an S8 with the longer screen) I can see 8 rows when zoomed out, and on the mobile format of the site, I can only see 1 row at a time. I hope you can see the problem this creates, especially when most kingdoms have around 50-100 power moons. In contrast, this is a much better way of displaying the power moons on the kingdom pages. on my laptop I can see about 30 rows at once, on my phone I can see nearly the entire list at once, and on the mobile format I can see about 6 or 7, depending on the amount of text accompanying it.-- 16:56, 2 November 2017 (EDT)
 * @Eldritchdraaks: This is a TEMPORARY decree, so we don't take any big steps towards resolving the issue until the tables are all complete. 17:04, 2 November 2017 (EDT)
 * I want to convey as much info about the moons as possible, and images are an important part of that. We could do a gallery, but then you'd put the moon number and name as the caption and lose the description, which is also important (unless you, uh, linked to a separate article for each moon). The table is the only option to include all the info I want while keeping everything on one page. -- 17:07, 2 November 2017 (EDT)
 * Understood. In an effort to keep things simple and not overrun the kingdom pages with the ghastly large tables, I suppose I now support making separate articles.-- 17:15, 2 November 2017 (EDT)
 * However until the proposal has gone through and a decision has been made, can we default to the simpler lists? Just until that point. It will provide the same necessary information, minus the picture which will already take a long time to obtain.-- 17:20, 2 November 2017 (EDT)
 * I thought of another option, which is this. The kingdoms have a Power Moons section, with a gallery of the Moons and the Moon names as the captions. At the top of the Power Moons section, there is a link to "List of X Kingdom Power Moons" which features the full table. -- 17:44, 2 November 2017 (EDT)
 * On mobile format, galleries display as a single column, and only about 4 would fit on screen. Is this an option for what to do until the proposal, or after?-- 17:47, 2 November 2017 (EDT)
 * I will test this idea. It would be implemented before the proposal. -- 18:07, 2 November 2017 (EDT)
 * Using the galleries would force readers to go to the article pages to get a tiny bit of information about them. The table and list, at the very least, say something about how to obtain the moons. If that bit of info isn't on the kingdom page, it makes looking up the needed information more tedious. The table/list could keep the single short sentence about the moon, and then you can go to it's main article for what amounts to a walkthrough to obtain the moon.-- 19:14, 2 November 2017 (EDT)
 * What are the results of your test?-- 21:26, 2 November 2017 (EDT)
 * The gallery provides the reader with a more visual and less-overwhelming display of the Moons. If they wish to find out more about a Moon, they simply click the Moon title and are taken to the spot in the table with more information. These links also help with search engines by associating each Moon title with the list of Moons page. If we were ever to give Moons their own articles, the Moon title links in the gallery would simply be changed from the list anchors to the Moon articles. Based on these results, the test was good. -- 21:36, 2 November 2017 (EDT)
 * Perhaps think of this way: A reader needs help finding the power moons, but doesn't want to resort to outright looking up exactly where they are. The easiest way is to view the names of the power moons, which hint at how to get them. If the photos are they, they risk getting spoiled because they can't not see it, but if there's just the description beside it, one can easily choose not to read it. The names would still link to the table/articles, as they do now, and they would provide the images for each both. In the past couple hours I've gone through a handful of sites with their own lists of power moons and the best formatted ones are on the Mario Party Legacy site, where they have the list of all the moons, sans description, and upon clicking the name takes you to its page with the image and description.-- 21:48, 2 November 2017 (EDT)
 * I don't know that it's for us to worry about spoilers vs. non-spoilers, I just want to present the info in a nice and accessible way. While a list of names linking to the table/article (and a short description next to them) gets the job done, right now I think the gallery is a more pleasant option. It's possible that the sheer number of Moons in some of these kingdoms will make me want to switch to lists, so we'll see how it goes. -- 22:27, 2 November 2017 (EDT)
 * Here's a mockup of how it would look with a page like metro kingdom with 81 moons.-- 22:57, 2 November 2017 (EDT)
 * You're not going to like this, but I think I still like that better than a basic list. Sorry! -- 23:04, 2 November 2017 (EDT)
 * I once again defer to the mobile format of the site, as well as point out again the amount of scrolling this requires on any device. It makes searching through the gallery for the moon you need more confusing, because your eyes are constantly darting all over the screen, and it gets worse when you have to scroll and your eyes have to readjust to find the next line, which is made more difficult with the sea of images taking priority of your eyes, rather than the names. You can tell I'm trying really hard here when I need to bring in data on how the human brain+eyes work. Now, how about this: instead of each and every image on the page, we use a map. I'm already working pretty hard to piece together the brochure maps from the games to use on the wiki, which is hard because it's not displayed flat in the game.-- 23:37, 2 November 2017 (EDT)
 * If you're looking for a specific number moon, it's not difficult to quickly scroll through and get there on mobile. It is what it is. If you're just perusing the list, then the images are nicer to look at than a big wall of text. I had considered an image map for a minute, if it's even possible with all the layers, but if you're looking for a moon number and don't know where it is, the whole thing falls apart. And a map with everything listed underneath isn't much different than just the list. -- 00:08, 3 November 2017 (EDT)
 * Is this up for debate? Can I make a proposal for this?-- 00:29, 3 November 2017 (EDT)
 * You can create it. I'd like to know what others think. -- 02:55, 3 November 2017 (EDT)
 * I've made the proposal over here -- 14:46, 3 November 2017 (EDT)
 * Scratch that, the proposal is on the main page.-- 15:46, 3 November 2017 (EDT)
 * It's also disagreeable in that Darker Side only has ONE Power Moon, thus breaking the consistency. All the more reason to split them into separate articles. 17:59, 2 November 2017 (EDT)
 * That one Power Moon will get its own article anyway, wouldn't it? 18:00, 2 November 2017 (EDT)
 * ...Taking into account a situation like Bonefin Galaxy and Kingfin's Fearsome Waters. 18:28, 2 November 2017 (EDT)

Table displays on mobile devices
Hey there, Porplemontage; relaying a heads-up from someone saying that the tables are not displaying well on mobile devices. Are you aware of this situation by any chance and if so, do you know if there might be a solution in the works to deal with it? --M. C. - Profile | Talk Page 11:18, 9 November 2017 (EST)
 * They look fine to me. I'm not sure what one would do. -- 14:08, 9 November 2017 (EST)
 * Yeah, I saw that someone else was working on a solution to that even after I posted this inquiry to you. Should be fine now. --M. C. - Profile | Talk Page 14:10, 9 November 2017 (EST)
 * After MeritC removed the rewrite template and consulted you, I thought I'd see how I could adjust the tables on the Super Mario 3D World. Not perfect, but at least they aren't going off the screen anymore. Was a simple fix. 14:19, 9 November 2017 (EST)

APNG Revisited
In the past, there were three proposals about the controversial APNG format and someone suggested you were opposed to the idea for the time being (can't find exactly where you expressed disapproval). That was 2016. As of 2017, starting with, is natively supported without the need of a plug-in. I tested this with Bulbapedia, as they have been supporting APNG for years. Still holds true with the latest versions. What is your stance now? -- 06:03, 11 November 2017 (EST)
 * Then the biggest issue now is that thumbnails would not be animated here and you'd have one format that behaves differently from the rest. Either way, with Chrome support, I'm neutral and it can be decided via proposal. -- 13:16, 11 November 2017 (EST)
 * I would hold off the proposal until MediaWiki software can animate thumbnails of APNGs like it can for GIFs. To avoid confusion, I would recommend creating a policy to ensure that PNGs are distinct from APNGs through extension. Don't upload an APNG as *.png and vise-versa. If it happens anyways, treat it like Discouraging the OGG Extension (File:PMCS Ludwig Animated.png should be moved to File:PMCS Ludwig Animated.apng). Also prohibit converting GIF to APNG to expand a previous proposal's outcome. -- 14:12, 11 November 2017 (EST)
 * In the current situation APNG won't be supported at all for thumbnailing. MediaWiki recommends ImageMagick for thumbnailing, and the person in charge of handling PNG images within ImageMagick is a member of the PNG Development Group and as such deliberately refuses to support APNG images. I think the main way to solve this with the current tools is writing a script that uses the APNG Disassembler and APNG Assembler command line tools, and unless we can easily come with such a script, it probably would be better to contact the people maintaining MediaWiki about this.--Mister Wu (talk) 12:26, 12 November 2017 (EST)

Identifiers
Hi, I want to see if I can get your approval before I propose this: I want the wiki to stop using series identifiers to refer to entities. This causes confusion for readers totally unfamiliar with the given subject; take Block Star (Mario Party series) as an example, because I think most would initially think it's an item, not a minigame like what it really is. By having a game identifier, I think it helps remove the ambiguity immensely. Also, keep in mind that some entities exclusive to a series suddenly appear outside the series they debuted in! Basically, my proposal would be to change the series identifiers to game identifiers of the game the subject first appeared in; we could also do this only for levels. Any thoughts? 17:48, 13 November 2017 (EST)
 * Using the series is technically more correct. Using the first game implies it's only in that game, which is worse than implying it's only in a series. And changing Block Star (Mario Party series) to Block Star (Mario Party 6) does nothing to change any implication of whether it's an item or minigame. The Spiny Shell is best known from the Mario Kart series, so using that identifier is not a crime. Moving it to Spiny Shell (Mario Kart 64) is just less accurate, imo. -- 19:00, 13 November 2017 (EST)
 * Sorry but I thought Toadette was talking about using an identifier like Block Star (Minigame) instead of series or specific games.-- 19:11, 13 November 2017 (EST)
 * ...Right. You do have a point... Time to make an alternate proposal: KEEP the series identifiers for all concrete subjects (items, objects, enemies, karts, bikes, tires, gliders, etc.) but add "series" at the end of each identifier so that they're not mistaken for individual works (I think that was my actual concern.), but REPLACE the series identifiers for all abstract subjects (worlds, levels, minigames, stages, race courses, etc.) with the identifiers of the game they first appeared in. How does that sound? 15:53, 14 November 2017 (EST)
 * Sounds like you're just adding unnecessary complexity. I think "series" is only added when it's necessary to differentiate from a game - it's not needed for Mario Kart since there is no game called Mario Kart, but it's used for Mario Party to differentiate the series from the game called Mario Party. And again, Block Star (Mario Party series) is still better than Block Star (Mario Party 6) because it appears in later games of the series as well. -- 16:22, 14 November 2017 (EST)
 * "(Mario Kart)" is actually arguably confusing for readers not very familiar with the series. It makes it sound like that's a game, when really it's not. 08:01, 15 November 2017 (EST)