Doom Wiki:Central Processing

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Special:Uncategorizedimages
Happy third birthday, Doom Wiki!

To honor this anniversary, today I will begin a boring task, in recognition of all the boring tasks that had to be done to get the site started (by Fredrik, radius, Insertwackynamehere, and others).

Background reading:. Basically, due to a bug in MediaWiki, categorized images were sometimes listed as uncategorized. The bug was fixed, but not in such a way that the backlog of mistakes was cleared. There has recently been another MediaWiki upgrade, so I will try one more time to clear the backlog automagically. If this fails, however, I will simply assume that the staff has more pressing tasks to hand (this was 3 upgrades ago after all), and double-check all 600+ tags manually. Ryan W 17:39, 5 January 2008 (UTC)

The cron job has finally run again, and Special:Uncategorizedimages looks empty. My apologies to those generous PWAD authors whose map images I have put into a category marked "Items without confirmed copyright status will sooner or later be nominated for deletion". Hopefully this is temporary, or at least no more permanent than the "cleanup" article tag. Ryan W 15:02, 20 January 2008 (UTC)

Hexen Wiki announced
A wiki about Hexen was founded last week by User:Lordareon. (At the moment its edit history consists of 1 welcome-box template and 2 image uploads, plus the usual edits by bots.) How do people feel about this?

I could see why some Wikians might not want to be associated with the demographic Doom attracts by staying compatible with modern hardware. ;>   In any case most wikis are not in our enviable position of being able to draw on an existing community right from the start. On the other hand, should the Hexen Wiki grow large and active, we would have to rethink any duplicate content (similar to the way Encyclopedia Gamia omits full walkthroughs for Zelda, Metroid, etc). On the third hand, the "infant mortality" of wikis is so high that maybe it doesn't make any difference what we think. Ryan W 20:11, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

Uh-oh (NPOV biographies)
I don't know if anyone noticed me on #zdoom the other day talking about the CodeImp article, but the situation is getting a bit weird. I would really appreciate it if other people could provide opinions, especially people who know CodeImp. (Maybe he thinks we're going to become just another site with unsourced statements about him &mdash; we do still have quite a bit of crap in the bio articles, in general.)   Ryan W 19:21, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

I have temporarily hidden the bio in question until this policy is clarified. Here is the thread from User talk:CodeImp: Let's discuss this, please.   Ryan W 17:18, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

Ryan W, you asked for my opinion on it. I've been avoiding replying simply because I don't want to get drawn into what is probably an inevitable flamewar over the subject. The other thing is that I don't really know enough about the ZDaemon/multiplayer community to know one way or another how significant an event this is.

If I had to pick a side, I'd probably say that this is a significant event worth mentioning, and it should be included in the article. As far as I know, CodeImp has not denied that the accusations against him are true, and we aren't bound by any deals he made with the ZDaemon staff. The ZDaemon article has a pretty lengthy controversy section, but perhaps his side of events for this particular drama is missing.

I think it's important to realise that articles about people don't exist only to portray their subjects in a favorable light. If we're going to decide on a policy, perhaps an "opt out-all or nothing" policy might be a sensible option - ie. people can choose to have their biography removed if they choose, but if it stays, they don't get to choose what is displayed on it. Fraggle 01:47, 26 February 2008 (UTC)


 * As an aside, I'd like to ask CodeImp specifically: please clarify what you mean by "Remove your unjustified accusations or remove my whole profile, before I feel the need to retaliate" because it really sounds like you're making some kind of threat against the site. If it is, we should be seriously considering how we should be reacting to this. Fraggle 01:56, 26 February 2008 (UTC)


 * Let me add real quick that the article is not making any unjustified accusations. The statement "CodeImp has been accused," is entirely true because someone (not a Wiki) has accused him. This statement can be backed up as well by linking to the forum post in which the claim was made.


 * How the Doom Wiki admins handle blatant threats from someone who's been accused of cyber terrorism, well, that's none of my business. Zack 15:14, 26 February 2008 (UTC)


 * Cyber terrorism?? Please calm down.  This is supposedly about our policy, not about CodeImp, and even so, all he's really said is that he's tempted to add (sourced!) dirty laundry to the ZDaemon article in turn, which may be only fair.    Ryan W 17:37, 26 February 2008 (UTC)


 * After this issue is resolved and the appropriate changes are made to the article, will it be possible to lock the article from being edited except by admins? This would prevent possible future biased edits to the article. Zack 15:14, 26 February 2008 (UTC)


 * It is possible, although the people at the central wikia will try to talk us out of it. They say, "If 99 percent of the edits are vandalism, that's one thing, but is it really worth shutting out hundreds of thousands of new people to deal with four or five troublemakers?"  Although I don't know that our own target audience deserves quite that much idealism  :>  and although this particular article may already be about as long as it's going to get, I do kind of see their point.    Ryan W 18:03, 26 February 2008 (UTC)


 * Ideally I would like to see these type of unfortunate, but obviously notable community incidents documented in this wiki. Unfortunately documenting them accurately in NPOV might prove to be impossible in practice since the subjects are often huge flamebaits and tend to draw people to do biased edits (and often it's even hard to tell which edits are biased and which are not). Because of this I would argue that we should refrain from documenting this and other similar incidents. Plus, even though such drama might in a way be notable community history, I still wouldn't consider documenting it nearly as important as documenting, for example, famous PWADs. In other words, I consider this wiki complete enough even without articles about such things.


 * What we should do about the CodeImp article, I'm not entirely sure. Maybe first remove the controversy part and then lock the article as Zaximus mentioned? -- Janizdreg 01:36, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

I personally think that as it stands, this part of the article on CodeImp should not be on the wiki. Before Zack edited it, it did not fit the NPOV requirements. (I think this part has already been thoroughly discussed, so I'll leave it at that.)

Zack changed this to state that it was ZDaemon that made the accusation, thus altering what the article was about (an article about ZDaemon accusing him of doing it versus an article about him actually doing it). While this made the article fit the NPOV requirement, it brings up a question of notability. An accusation alone does not provide the grounds for notability. In order to be notable, the accuser needs to have at least some form of proof to back them up (which the aforementioned post on the ZDaemon forums lacks). I mean, accusations (without evidence) happen in the community all the time, should we include them as well? Considering the crap that goes around in the various Doom forums sometimes, I'd hate to see the state of the wiki if people knew they could do that and get away with it.

As it stands, in order for this article to remain, at least one of two things would have to happen. One way is CodeImp would basically have to come out and say "Yeah, I did it, and here's why..." However, I don't expect him to actually do that, nor would I ever ask him to, as he himself said they both agreed to drop the issue. Asking him to go against his word would call up ethical and moral boundaries I refuse to cross, even if it provides more knowledge of the subject matter that enables us to draft a more complete article. Other than that, ZDaemon would have to provide a third party with (or post to the wiki itself) the evidence they say they have, and I don't really expect them to do that either.

Anyway, to bring my ramblings to a close, without CodeImp's POV or ZDaemon showcasing concrete proof that he did it, I just can't see this part of the article ever meeting the NPOV and/or notability criteria. - Nuxius 07:07, 28 February 2008 (UTC)


 * IMHO this is a very sensible analysis. It also avoids another side effect of courtesy deletions: ZDaemon isn't a person, so we might delete the CodeImp article and add accusations to the ZDaemon article, which makes the wiki as a whole unbalanced the other way.  I endorse your slippery slope argument (and Janizdreg's as well, although so far no one has seriously proposed abandoning NPOV).


 * Note that this would actually be a pervasive change to our current practice about sources. The written history of a gaming community is expressed almost entirely in media with no fact checking: forums, Usenet, e-mail, IRC, BBSes.  This logic therefore strikes out a massive amount of our existing content which seems to have consensus but can never be proven (Anders Johnsen is one of the top 5 players of all time, the ZDaemon source closing was controversial, Plutonia 32 is unusually hard, Controls, Free Hissy, ... )  Even this is really somebody's personal web site &mdash; authoritative, yes, but in need of corroboration.


 * Having said all that, I think your idea is better than any of my three ideas. Readers who like speculation can, well, google the word "Doom".


 * I implore you, please, never to apologize for rambling. If more people here rambled more often, we wouldn't have to re-ask their opinions fifty times before we could more forward with a consensus.    Ryan W 01:56, 29 February 2008 (UTC)


 * Did someone say "abandon NPOV?" Heathen! Seriously, doing that could turn this wiki into a YouTube thread. We don't want that! :P


 * After reading Nuxius' words on this it occurs to me that we probably are making a big deal out of something trivial. All we know is that CodeImp was accused of something. Is an ACCUSATION really a noteworthy thing to have in a person's article? The purpose of most wikis is to share knowledge, not political garbage.


 * The media has accused Eric Harris, doer of bad things, of having been influenced by Doom. Such an accusation is significant only because a significant portion of the community has felt an impact by the actions, both by the shooting itself and the accusations made. (Which of those two actions has affected us more than the other probably varies from person to person, but that's off topic anyway.) Point is, an accusation CAN be significant enough to document if the accusation itself has had a noticeable effect on Doom or the Doom community.


 * Well, DID the accusations of ZDaemon against CodeImp have a significant impact? Seems to me like it was just a bit of drama on one forum thread, maybe on IRC too, that upset a dozen lusers, woke the trolls and lasted no more than a week. If there was any notieable damage it was on CodeImp as an individual, and all we're doing as a community is reopening his old wounds. Hell, this here thread may very well have gotten more attention than the original drama years ago that started this whole thing.


 * So I'm changing my mind. I think the bad words can go away. Perhaps it can be mentioned briefly (if not already) in a controversy section on ZDaemon. Doens't even have to mention CodeImp. Just "it upset some guys on a forum." :P I'unno.


 * Hillary 2008 Zack 20:01, 11 March 2008 (UTC)


 * Zack summed my thoughts up pretty well in his second paragraph. What I was saying really only applied to accusations, Ryan W, not everything on the wiki. I personally think that accusations need to be handled differently that your typical information in a wiki article, as they call a person's credibility into line, and without sufficient proof it could be considered slander, and that is no light matter. Nuxius 01:24, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

Level set boxes
For the level articles a box is used listing all the levels of the set the level in question belongs to. For Doom II wads it lists this as either 1-10, 11-20, 21-30, and 31-33 (secret), correspondingly. Since in Doom II the first sky goes all the way to level 11, I think it'd be more consistent to show 1-11 for the first part, and 12-20 for the second. Who is like God? 13:01, 16 March 2008 (UTC)


 * US$0.02: This convention is certainly not set in stone (and COMPET-N agrees with your divisions as well).  If you feel like grinding through every navbox and every MAP11 article and changing all the links, you're welcome to do so.    Ryan W 11:03, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

Categories pages
At least as far as the more practical ones are concerned (levels come to mind), these are unhelpful in giving the information any sort of hierarchy due to relevance, bunching PWAD levels, offshoot game levels, and the main Doom levels alphabetically. One solution could be to use a disambiguation page (which could add some more basic info too), giving the category (MAP01 in various WADs, or something) as one of the options to go to. The original PC Doom level would appear as the first option of the disambiguation. Keep in mind that when saying "E1M1" 95% of the time people are talking about E1M1:Hangar (this applies to ExMx and MAPxx levels in general). I think the category system is cool but as it stands doesn't work well as a result for the "Go" button. Who is like God? 14:03, 21 March 2008 (UTC)


 * The "Go" button could be improved by changing the redirects at "ExMx" and "MAPxx" to point to the id levels (which used to be the case; see Talk:E1M1). You may be correct that there is a clearer way to structure the categories overall, but three or four rounds of discussion haven't produced it yet.  Could you give a couple of specific examples?  It's not supposed to be easy to accidentally navigate to a slot category from a stock map, what with the navbox sitting right there, and Commercial games/Levels linked from the main page.    Ryan W 17:14, 21 March 2008 (UTC)


 * Yeah, I agree with making ExMx and MAPxx go to the original levels. At the top each could have a note providing a link for when you're looking for levels in that slot in general, or for a level in that slot in a PWAD or other game/version. I don't really have any ideas on making categories per se clearer, as all I'd thought was using a disambig in the middle in a case like levels (but just redirecting to the original seems better in retrospect). Who is like God? 19:02, 21 March 2008 (UTC)


 * Are you saying that each slot category should have a subcategory for stock levels only? That seems a tad overblown, given that most slots will only have two (for ExMx) or five (for MAPxx).


 * If I'm once again misunderstanding you completely, maybe you should make a test case out of the MAP01: Entryway article. If people like your method better than the current one, then I volunteer to copy your changes to the other 67 slots.   :>     Ryan W 20:16, 22 March 2008 (UTC)


 * At the top each could have a note providing a link for when you're looking for levels in that slot in general, or for a level in that slot in a PWAD or other game/version.


 * Actually, it's already pretty much set up like this at the top of every map page, see MAP01:_Entryway for example. Unless you're talking about something beyond that?


 * I do agree that the id levels should be easier to find when a user uses the search box, though. Although your method of forwarding E1M1 to E1M1: Hangar (Doom) instead of Category:E1M1 would work great for Doom, things get complicated a bit for MAP01, as there are 3 'official' MAP01s. Perhaps in that case, we could add a note at the top of each category listing giving easy access links to the various maps that occupy that slot in Doom II/Plutonia/TNT, so the user doesn't have sift through all the other PWADS to find that information. - Nuxius 23:32, 22 March 2008 (UTC)


 * Quite true, I had forgotten the levels already had a template at the top leading to the slot category. I do think the Doom and Doom II levels are more "notable" than the Final Doom ones. While Final Doom has become more popular now by being bundled with the main games it's not id's own work, and references still and almost always mean Entryway when talking about "Map01" in a looser context (e.g., if a demo without a text file is pointed out as a a "Map01" match, that's Doom II's level, or if someone says "like in Map01" while explaining an editing technique without added context, they mean Hell on Earth's as well). That's why I had thought of a disambiguation between the core id level and the category when the user types a level slot (it doesn't decide whether the category or the core id level is emphasized, but lets the user choose). Leading directly to the id level page as I proposed above initially loads more stuff, which might be redundant for anyone looking for such levels in general. Another more economic option is to directly put a link to the core id level at the top of any corresponding category page: This is a general grouping of all the levels occupying the MAP01 level slot, if you are looking for the level from Doom II by id Software, see MAP01: Entryway (Doom II). Who is like God? 22:48, 24 March 2008 (UTC)


 * I think I like your last idea because it can be coded in about 10 minutes, reduces the total loading time for people with PDAs and other underpowered machines, and acknowledges the large group of readers who could care less about editing or LMPs and just wants walkthroughs for the Xbox/Collector's Edition maps, which do include Final Doom.   Ryan W 23:13, 24 March 2008 (UTC)

Reference/glossary section
What do you guys think about adding a "dictionary" type section to the wiki? It would be there to define technical terminology, community terms, expressions, and to add useful definitions that don't merit or need articles. Even lump types, file names, and such minutiae could individually be defined. All of which could be linked to articles for clarity. The Wikia team said they could create a namespace for such entries. Who is like God? 01:14, 22 March 2008 (UTC)


 * My take: Every term in that "dictionary" should at least be a redirect, if not a whole article.  Therefore, as it says on the main page, this is already a dictionary.  Obviously there are benefits to compiling a self-contained document, but IMHO those benefits would be outweighed by the labor required to maintain hundreds and hundreds of descriptions in two places each.    Ryan W 22:18, 24 March 2008 (UTC)


 * A glossary/dictionary and an alphabetical listing of encyclopedia articles are different things. Dictionaries define terms in essential ways, provide origins and uses for words, and possibly usage examples. The encyclopedia gives broad overviews of relatively heterogeneous subjects. Each will vary in its scope of entries and similar entries will generally not be equivalent, as many words or phrases are pointless as encyclopedic subjects and various subjects can't be reduced to a basic set of definitions. What could make a great article may roughly share the scope with eight relatively unrelated definitions in a dictionary, and what could make a dictionary definition may translate to a measly encyclopedia stub or four different articles touching upon subjects related to the basic term. Who is like God? 07:43, 25 March 2008 (UTC)


 * Perhaps we could add a Glossary or Definition category? Another possibility is to add "related definitions" as a section in articles, either defining stuff on those suitable articles or pointing to sections on other articles that provide the appropriate definition (when a related definition pertains to more than one article or subject). Who is like God? 21:56, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

Lower case template
Does anyone know how the lowercase article name template in the Wikipedia works and if it can easily be implemented here? See their id Software article for an example. Who is like God? 01:23, 28 March 2008 (UTC)


 * The source is here, but it does seem to include other templates and a magic word in it, so I don't know how easy it would be to implement it here. Who is like God? 19:21, 28 March 2008 (UTC)


 * Yeah, wikipedia markup is getting convoluted these days. Let's see.


 * is a parser function, not a template. The other two transclusions are purely bureaucratic and don't need to be imported.  All the magic words should work because they are listed here.  Therefore, the relevant issue is the condition  $wgAllowDisplayTitle=true , which we can't check ourselves; you'll have to ask the staff/janitor people about that.    Ryan W 04:26, 29 March 2008 (UTC)

Monaco skin
Hullo! I am Kirkburn, your friendly local Wikia Gaming Helper!

We are switching over all the default skins (for anon users) to our new skin "Monaco" this week. Most of the big wikis have already switched (i.e WoWWiki, Wookieepedia Dofus and FFXIclopedia.

It is now the main actively developed Wikia platform. As a successor to Quartz, it comes with even more customizability - you can find out more on w:c:inside:Monaco Skin Customization, where you can also find out info about the new features and widgets available. I have taken the liberty of already creating your MediaWiki:Monaco-sidebar, but you can customize it much further with more links.

An admin can set the default site skin via the skin section on Special:Preferences, or by editing MediaWiki:AdminSkin. If users wish to see another skin than the default, they can untick "See custom wiki skins (recommended)" on the same page.

We really want wikis to move on to Monaco partly because it's more awesome than Quartz and Monobook and partly as it is where the bulk of our resources are currently aimed :) Please report any problems or questions with Monaco here

Thanks for listening! Kirkburn (talk) 13:23, 10 April 2008 (UTC)


 * Note that as Doom wiki did not previously have a skin set, I have set it to monaco-slate. If there are major objections to the change, it is okay to change it back, but you must be forewarned that Monaco is "Wikia's default skin", and you may miss out on future developments. Kirkburn (talk) 18:26, 10 April 2008 (UTC)


 * We need to do some work here, as Monaco seems kind of outdated/less robust, compared to MonoBook. Who is like God? 21:23, 10 April 2008 (UTC)


 * Outdated and less robust? In what ways do you mean? Kirkburn (talk) 17:12, 11 April 2008 (UTC)


 * Perhaps I'm wrong in part, as before I couldn't find my preferences, for example, but I see they're on a pull-down menu. Aside from using the old flat logo, the sidebar contains some stuff that clutters things a bit (game series, gameplay, etcetera), especially since some of those things are fine just being on Entryway (the main page), and "Central processing" (general Doom wiki discussion) isn't so accessible. The current sidebar and top arrangement on MonoBook is simpler, highlighting the more important stuff without redundancy (user page is both by itself and in "more" on the top right). Who is like God? 17:41, 11 April 2008 (UTC)


 * To be fair, myk, all those things have always been in Quartz AFAICT, so they probably reflect the consensus among large gaming wikis. My guess would be that, unlike large gaming wikis, we don't purposely try to attract new players or form a social network within Wikia, because Doom is so old that we assume the community is fairly static.  Therefore, we have no reason to work intensively with the staff to develop new MediaWiki customizations (see the Wikia listservs for everything you could ever want to know about that), so we shouldn't expect new features to make sense to us immediately.  I know I'll keep using Monobook until I seek the Havens &mdash; if it ain't broke, don't fix it.    Ryan W 19:33, 11 April 2008 (UTC)


 * More specific suggestions for the sidebar menus:
 * Gameplay: Either remove the submenu for "Hazards" or add submenus for the primary topics also (e.g. weapons and monsters).
 * Top Content: Put "random page" back in, which according to the listserv is used 10 times more often than any other toolbox link.
 * Top Content \ Editor's pick: Name is misleading since it really means "edited the most times", not "hand-selected for quality" (e.g. allmusic.com).  Probably redundant with Special:Longpages anyway.
 * Doom Community: Submenus should be entered by hand, if that isn't screamingly obvious.
 * Doom Community \ Websites: Redundant with the "related communities" box below; a link called "Doom Community" should definitely lead to major Doom sites, not sites about other FPSes (the two do NOT overlap much, no matter what the staff says).
 * Wiki Community \ Featured users: Inappropriate for this wiki, since it is primarily an encyclopedia, not primarily a social network (e.g. wikifur, travel, Star Wars Fanon).  Maybe replace it with a link to the gaming hub.  A tool for listing users by edit count is fine, but hardly important enough to link from every single article.
 * Ryan W 23:58, 15 April 2008 (UTC)


 * How about voting on which skin Doom Wiki should use by default? And if one of the "old" skins happens to win but Monaco or some other skin improves a whole lot in the future, we can always do another voting at that point, right?


 * And in case you happen to agree a vote is a good idea, I'll state my own opinion. After thoroughly testing the Monaco skin and comparing it with MonoBook, I'm still voting for MonoBook. IMO it currently is a more functional and clutter-free skin than Monaco. -- Janizdreg 03:39, 12 April 2008 (UTC)


 * If we do keep the Monaco skin for some reason, I hope that we can change it to the Sapphire theme, as that most matches with the look (color wise) we had before. This Brick one is hideous, and it clashes horribly with the content sections style.


 * Personally, I find the Monaco skin to be a slight case of style over substance, and plus I'm a minimalist at heart, so it's an easy vote for MonoBook for me. Nuxius 09:50, 12 April 2008 (UTC)


 * I'm setting the default skin back to MonoBook for now, since it was solely Kirkburn's decision to switch over to Monaco. We should first reach a consensus on what the default skin should be before we actually change it. -- Janizdreg 18:14, 16 April 2008 (UTC)

Chex guy
I'm a little concerned about the user Chex guy. About 80-90% of his edits end up being reverted, deleted or otherwise undone. He's not a vandal though (his edits are more of the harmless but out of place -type), and a few of his edits have actually been slightly constructive and helpful. Unfortunately, overall he's doing this wiki a lot more harm than good.

I have no idea how these types of situations are usually handled, which is why I'm asking your help on deciding what to do. Personally I'm thinking about asking him politely to stop editing this wiki. On the other hand I'm not sure if we should simply let him continue editing and keep cleaning up his unworthwile contributions in the hopes that he might at some point make another useful edit. But yeah, penny for your thoughts. -- Janizdreg 06:32, 12 April 2008 (UTC)


 * It's not so much that he contradicts consensus (people do that when they're new) as that he doesn't explain himself: he uses no edit summaries, he never posts to talk pages when adding something unprecedented, and, if he joins a discussion at all, it's a monosyllabic restatement of his previous position without any line of reasoning. In a scholarly project, it's difficult to give someone the benefit of the doubt when we have no idea what his plans are.


 * Logistically, also, given the level of activity on this site, one user creates a noticeable burden if all his edits have to be double-checked. Common sense says that this is more likely to burn out a known good editor than to educate a dubious one whose RL life experiences have already failed to do so.


 * Absent evidence to the contrary, I tend to assume that User:Chex guy is like most computer users on Earth, and therefore that a given edit reflects only his personal opinions. If this hasn't had any effect, then it may be time for stronger measures, as Janizdreg says.    Ryan W 02:21, 13 April 2008 (UTC)