User talk:Spaceeinstein: Difference between revisions

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→‎"GTA Era" categorization

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Gboyers

Executive Manager, Managers, Executive Managers, Interface administrators, Administrators

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 :::I understand that [[Vice City in GTA III Era]] is a bit silly, but at least it actually describes what it's about: Vice City in the GTA III era. The old title, [[Vice City in GTA Vice City]], made it easy to overlook VCS, and we ended up with a separate article: [[Vice City in GTA Vice City Stories]]. As for title capitalisation, I personally just think it looks nicer, and it's actually one of the policies that makes me prefer being a part of this wiki over others. I understand your concerns, particularly the one about links in sentences, but this why I make use of redirects; To link to [[Police Car]] for example, I would simply type [[police car]], and it wouldn't make the link look ''formal'' (although I know that A-Dust and Gta-mysteries seem to be against linking to redirects). <tt><nowiki>[[police car]]</nowiki></tt> is also easier to type than <tt><nowiki>[[Police (car)|Police]]</nowiki></tt> for example, which is useful for users not familiar with complex naming policies, for both linking and searching. '''[[User:JFletcher|JFletcher]]<sup>''[[User talk:JFletcher|Talk]]''</sup>''' <small>(formerly User:Biggest gta fan ever)</small> 06:13, 13 April 2011 (BST) '''EDIT:''' Redirects can also be used with the eras. When referring to an era within a sentence, it actually makes sense to type ''XYZ is a company in the [[GTA IV era]]'', which will redirect to the appropriate article. '''[[User:JFletcher|JFletcher]]<sup>''[[User talk:JFletcher|Talk]]''</sup>''' <small>(formerly User:Biggest gta fan ever)</small> 06:18, 13 April 2011 (BST)
+::::ZS - I'm not sure why you suggest Wikipedia having aggressive editors is a good thing. Having people who care a lot about detail and organisation is really, really useful (you and A-Dust being the two here), but if everyone was like that, nothing would get done. On this wiki, we decide things by consensus. As I said, I'd like to hold a discussion (not just with staff) to decide the best way for us to proceed. Either most of us agree, or someone eventually has to make a decision, but that's a long way off. If people have a problem, it is easier for them to complain here, because they won't get their head bitten off! I really don't think we should model ourselves on Wikipedia, for two main reasons. Firstly, they cover a lot more than GTA, so their naming and conventions were not made specifically to suit a wiki about GTA. For example, because they use "series" for every other TV show, film series and game series, they use it for GTA games too; when it might not be the best term. Secondly, we got a LOT of users who don't like the way Wikipedia does things, particularly how the administrators treat the newer users. So yes, take inspiration, but we certainly shouldn't use the fact that they do it as justification for doing it here. I don't think anyone here thinks we should just copy them.
+::::So let's look at our options and figure out what the best overall solution is for this wiki (rather than just the correct one, the current one, the easy one, the pretty one or the Wikipedia one).
+::::If we just used 'GTA III' to sometimes mean the era and sometimes mean the game, that would get VERY messy. This is why we use "GTA 1" which is not technically correct (the game was simply called 'Grand Theft Auto'). I don't believe that the best way to do things is to be technically correct, then disambiguate with brackets, such as "Grand Theft Auto III (series)" and "Grand Theft Auto III (game)". I find that very ugly, and very difficult for new users to use, and awkward for everyone else to use. At the moment, everyone knows exactly where a link to [[GTA III]] is going to go, and everyone can use it easily. If we adopted the Wikipedia approach, it would not be clear. It would be harder to use, less clear to new users, more awkward for old users, and would require a LOT of cleaning up when people got it wrong. I don't want everyone to go to a disambiguation page 90% of the time. One bad example is the Musewiki, where *EVERY* page has a disambiguation of brackets. It's horrible to use, and with no redirects (and correct punctuation required), it can be impossible. For example [http://www.musewiki.org/Futurism Futurism] reveals nothing, but [http://www.musewiki.org/Futurism_(song) Futurism (song)] and [http://www.musewiki.org/Futurism_(tablature) Futurism (tablature)] do.  I appreciate my "Police Car" names aren't 100% accepted, but "Police (car)" and "Police (force)" are just ugly and not nice to use, and it stops us grouping similar vehicles with different names together (like [[Limo]]). I really like our sensible way of doing things, it feels more like natural speech ''"oh I drove the police car in GTA 1"'' not ''"I drove the Police (by which I mean the vehicle not a man with a moustache) in Grand Theft Auto (by which I mean the first game in the first series of the Grand Theft Auto series, rather than the entire series of series)"'' and I think it makes us stand out.
+::::Also, "Vehicles in GTA III" could mean the era or the game, and we'd need to disambiguate EVERY page which has anything to do with with I, 2, III, IV and V games and eras. Whereas currently "Vehicles in GTA III Era" is very clear and everyone knows what to expect, and everyone knows how to find it when they want something regarding an era. Same goes for "Vice City in GTA III Era" refers to the whole era, allowing for "Vice City in GTA Vice City" to be a sort-of sub-page.
+::::If we used 'GTA III Series' that wouldn't have most of the above problems. It is also probably the most technically-correct term. However, I don't think it's as unique as 'era', and this may cause confusion. At the moment, we use 'series' to refer to the whole GTA series of games, just like the Halo series or Red Dead series. We don't use it to mean a specific era or "season" (like how a long-running TV series is broken up into seasons, each containing lots of episodes). Whilst these problems could be overcome, it's a lot of effort, and it will still confuse people. I'm not sure about international people, but I think most English-speaking people would be able to understand 'era' and then recognise it every time it was used on the entire wiki (with no exceptions). I appreciate that 'era' implies time (when it's not all about that) but I don't think that could confuse anyone or make life difficult on this wiki.
+::::Additionally, we use 'Title Case in Titles' because (imo) they are titles, not sentences. I appreciate that most of the Internet is changing to using 'Sentence case in titles' as if they are a first line of an article, which is sometimes appropriate, but not for us. Sentence titles tell a story, like "Man escapes from mental hospital and eats his dog"; title case titles are names of pages "List of Famous People". Everything on GTW fits into the latter category, so it seems logical to use title case for our titles. I appreciate it's not the same as Wikipedia or some other sites, but I think it works for us. Again, I'm open to discussion on this.
+::::I think both of these issues are  too important to get wrong, and it's fundamental to how we run this wiki. As you all know, I'm a big fan of making things simple and easy, even if it's not *technically* the proper way. I think 'era' is a nice, simple, easy and consistent way to refer to eras throughout this entire wiki; using series would be okay if we always had, but factoring the change of thousands of pages makes it really unattractive as an option, using disambiguations is messy and awkward (even if it's the Wikipedia way, or more technically-correct). Those are my thoughts - but I'm open to discussion here, and we'll agree by consensus. [[User:Gboyers|Gboyers]] 11:03, 13 April 2011 (BST)