User talk:Porplemontage/Archive 13

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General Question

I've noticed a few behaviors from you that I want to ask you about how you manage your Wikis. Do you generally have a hands-off approach and let the people who want to contribute to the wikis decide how it should be presented? I ask because you only seem to intervene when absolutely necessary and your editing is seldom. Or am I looking into it too deeply and you are just a busy person that doesn't have much time to contribute like the rest of us? --Wildgoosespeeder (talk) ^{(Stats - Contribs)} 15:34, 2 May 2016 (EDT)

I view my main function as making sure that everything works technically. I do have a largely hands-off approach to allow the wiki administration and community the room to do what they feel is right. Every now and then I will step in and steer things in a certain direction, but this has gotten rarer as the wiki has gotten more established in its policies. --Steve (talk) 20:42, 2 May 2016 (EDT)

RE:Image black borders

I have a few issues with that practice. I explained myself on A gossip-loving Toad (talk)'s talk page. Users have cropped over the years and we don't mention it in the {{aboutfile}}. I'm not inducing the black borders on the images if that is what you think I am doing. That is how Paper Mario (and some other but not all N64 games) render. I don't have any idea why Nintendo did that with some of their games. Diddy Kong Racing doesn't do this but games like Paper Mario do. It gets even worse when dealing with cropping a screenshot with the dialog bubble open as the bubble renders over the black box. In general, I find that people have a lot of misconceptions about the N64. --Wildgoosespeeder (talk) ^{(Stats - Contribs)} 22:46, 2 May 2016 (EDT)

I completely understand that you're not adding them, and that is how the game technically is. But the wiki isn't necessarily meant to be 100% technically accurate in all instances. In this case, looking "nice" trumps technical accuracy, and I believe that it looks nicer cropped. Cropping to 296x200 even with dialog bubbles is good (1). You can mention that it was cropped from the technical resolution in line 4 of {{aboutfile}} to coincide with image policy, which I'll add this to. --Steve (talk) 23:00, 2 May 2016 (EDT)

For the crop you provided to this image, you cut off part of the dialog box, which is what I said would happen. The crop you provided to this other image, I guess that is more acceptable. The only remaining concern is consistency with other N64 images (because the 1x internal resolution is ~320x240), such as the Paper Mario Title Screen comparing that to the examples you edited. I'm still quite torn between cropping or leaving the screenshots as-is. We would have to go through each image that has cropping done to it. I say we bring this issue up to the rest of the MarioWiki community because I don't want to accidentally spread false information through the implications of cropping. --Wildgoosespeeder (talk) ^{(Stats - Contribs)} 23:15, 2 May 2016 (EDT)

Cutting off that little piece of the dialogue bubble is fine, as the crop is done to match the main view of the image. The title screen doesn't have a black border, so it doesn't need to be cropped. The consistency is what it is, and it's based on whether or not a black border is present (or pieces of a black border, in the case of the dialogue bubbles). This doesn't need community input, and I'll be happy to provide an answer for any other cases you're unsure about. --Steve (talk) 23:25, 2 May 2016 (EDT)

I'm afraid we are going to have to agree to disagree with this issue. For MarioWiki in general, we should represent Nintendo's flagship franchise as accurately as we can without projecting our biases onto it. The dialog box is part of the game view and if you crop the dialog bubble out, you crop a part of the game view out. It just looks off and bad. Anything within the ~320x240 is considered the game view. I guess the best thing for me to do right now is stop uploading screenshots for N64 games until we can get input from others. I would really prefer that before you make anything official policy. I'll still upload, just not N64 game screenshots because of this issue we are having with the images that doesn't seem to exist with other game systems. --Wildgoosespeeder (talk) ^{(Stats - Contribs)} 23:40, 2 May 2016 (EDT)

OK, that's fine. Cropping has always been the unofficial policy, and we're just not going to change that practice. I think the images look significantly worse with the black borders. --Steve (talk) 23:53, 2 May 2016 (EDT)

Just to be clear, there was nothing wrong with my black border uploads and borderless screenshots are just your preference, correct? I just don't want to get on your bad side or get in trouble with you. --Wildgoosespeeder (talk) ^{(Stats - Contribs)} 00:11, 3 May 2016 (EDT)

You didn't do anything wrong because there was no set policy against the borders and I believe that your intentions were good. Just know that moving forward, there is now a policy that they must be cropped. Hopefully we can fix the existing uploads. --Steve (talk) 00:40, 3 May 2016 (EDT)

...and that is where I think we need to discuss it with the other MarioWiki contributors instead of just you making the call what we should do with our images before submission. I'll feel better about the whole situation if we do that. A few users have questioned my N64 uploads and just those kind of images in the past while others would agree with my N64 uploads. --Wildgoosespeeder (talk) ^{(Stats - Contribs)} 01:27, 3 May 2016 (EDT)

I feel strongly enough about this that it doesn't matter. If the proposal didn't go my way, I would veto it. I believe that it's in the best interest of this wiki to have clean, borderless images. --Steve (talk) 01:40, 3 May 2016 (EDT)

Do you know how many images that is that we need to modify to meet your specifications? This would apply to all the screenshots the contributors have ever contributed. Remember how I said this issue applies to N64 games only? There are a select few non-N64 game screenshots that have black borders or letterboxing, but that is usually cutscenes and not regular play, and that is why I excluded them originally. This also increases unnecessary maintenance, which I don't think anyone would appreciate. This also adds an extra step before submission, which might increase the chances of someone screwing up the crop. I think there are enough problems getting transparency right for sprites. Bazooka Mario (talk) brought up a good point to me in the past that images uploaded are best first-come, first-served on User talk:Wildgoosespeeder/QualityRequestTypes/sandbox. I think I provided enough reasons why you shouldn't enforce this but rather it should be kept as a suggestion at best. --Wildgoosespeeder (talk) ^{(Stats - Contribs)} 02:01, 3 May 2016 (EDT)

It doesn't matter. Replacing existing, cropped images with black-border images isn't exactly helping things. If improving the image quality is worth it, then it's worth going the extra step to remove the borders. Obviously, we have non-ideal images all over the place. They will continue to be fixed as we go, but the policy should represent the ultimate goal. --Steve (talk) 02:29, 3 May 2016 (EDT)

A lot of the images I was replacing had emulator mistakes, too small, JPEG literally converted to PNG (unnecessary bloated file size), blur, artifacts, images better as a clean PNG rather than in the JPEG format, applied video filters (against MarioWiki policy), and so many other kinds of issues. The cropped status wasn't one of those issues. It just looks like I did that. Take a closer look at the archived images compared to my cleaner counterparts. --Wildgoosespeeder (talk) ^{(Stats - Contribs)} 02:50, 3 May 2016 (EDT)

Yes, I understand the quality improvements. Unfortunately, the border is an extremely noticeable undesired element. But now all they need is a good crop and they'll be perfect for our purposes on the wiki, so that is great! --Steve (talk) 03:04, 3 May 2016 (EDT)

OK, but can a regular talk be opened on MarioWiki:Image Use Policy just to gauge a reaction? No {{TPP}}, just a regular {{talk}}. I really do think that your simple change isn't so simple as you make it sound. --Wildgoosespeeder (talk) ^{(Stats - Contribs)} 03:20, 3 May 2016 (EDT)

Yes, talk about it there. My user talk page can only take so much. --Steve (talk) 03:23, 3 May 2016 (EDT)

OK! Now I feel better! --Wildgoosespeeder (talk) ^{(Stats - Contribs)} 03:24, 3 May 2016 (EDT)

Wiki chat

I got banned by chan serv all because I asked for op and the others talked about op. I didn't see in the rules about requesting for it getting you banned.SuperLuigi (talk) 18:47, 4 May 2016 (EDT)