Forum:Proposed Changes to the Wiki

Changes we would like to make to the Yu-Gi-Oh! Wikia

Hello!

Myself and a few administrators of the Yu-Gi-Oh! Wikia (to date, Deltaneos, Cheesedude and Dinoguy) have been discussing the future of the Wiki, and in particular to how we are perceived by the community at large. Some changes have already been agreed, and some we have felt important enough to put to the community, because they directly impact what we information we offer to people. First, let's discuss what we want to get rid of.

Tip Pages

Tip pages have morphed from something designed to explain strategies, to being a catch-all article that, in many ways, covers either nothing significant, or covers the bleeding obvious (such as what a card can be searched by, etc).

We are of the opinion that tips should be explained within the greater context of an actual Deck or Strategy Page, rather than explain piecemeal potentially across many cards.

Trivia Pages

This is a section we get a lot of stick over from many players and readers, because the quality of the trivia we have is so poor, and in many cases, completely unproven. We want this to disappear, and save the 'worthwhile' trivia (usually Trivia related to a card's place in the universe of Yu-Gi-Oh!) within the main card page itself.

The following should be going ahead, barring any major objections.

New CardTable

Dinoguy and Deltaneos have been hard at work creating a new table to house card information, using Tabber and JavaScript to allow us to use space more efficiently. This has the advantage of allowing us to include a greater depth of information on the card itself, while allowing for a 'neater' way of presenting information then at present. A preview version can be seen here.

Namespace Condensing

We have a lot of namespaces, so we want to focus on how best we can store information without duplicating where users can find it. Our plan is to merge Card Gallery and Set Card Gallery to Gallery, merge Card Errata into Card Lores (because Errata is within the focus of examining Lores), rename Set Card Ratios to Ratios, and delete the articles made so far, remaking them when we have a better way to implement them, and renaming Set Card Lists to Lists.

New Semantic Database Section

One of the things we're also coming across is how we can best create semantic databases of cards by set. As readers are aware, this is one of our most lacking and sorely needed functions. Before I go further, I want to say that this would in no way affect card articles as they stand, I would not want to remove their current place in the Wiki. However, what we'd like to do is create separate pages for each card ever released.

Articles would be formatted like "Blue-Eyes Ultimate Dragon (EN-JMP-UR-LE)". These would also be placed into a separate namespace, "Cards", to prevent them being searched in the same vein as our normal card images. This would allow us to generate dynamic lists for each and every set in each language, list alternate rarities easily, allow us to accurately tell how many images of each card (either by name, category, language, or other criteria) we physically have on the Wiki. These card articles would still also include Type, Attribute, Rank/Level, ATK, DEF, Number and Lore information, because this information will potentially be used in future semantic applications.

These Articles would also distinguish if the name has changed since release (important for HERO cards, and others), and they would also directly include Edition, Rarity, Set, Language, and the language-appropriate name for the card.

This would, in effect, be an ongoing side project alongside our normal operations, but the benefits this could bring could be immense in the long run. This would bring the Wiki almost up to par with Netrep, with the only obstacle left to tackle being Rulings, but that shouldn't be too difficult. For now, having the ability to search by set and by language would be immensely useful.

Card Names

In the medium-to-long term, we could like to move the visibility of non-official names of cards (specifically, languages other than English, French, French-Canadian, German, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, Japanese, Korean and Chinese) to a Card Names article; they would still be documented on the main card page itself, and would remain semantically searchable, but they would only be visible to users on the Card Names page.

With languages like Chinese and Portuguese, where only a handful of cards have names in these languages, the visibility would be toggled, so unofficial names could still be listed, but these unofficial names would be, like above, only viewable in the Card Names articles.

Summary

We hope users will work with us on these proposed changes, we realise that this may potentially upset a lot of people, but we ask that users accept why we feel that such changes be necessary.

Just to also let users know, we also have a Twitter account for the Wikia. Simply follow TheYuGiOhWikia to get updates on what's happening!--TwoTailedFox (My Talk Page) 22:35, March 2, 2013 (UTC)

Discussion below this line

Regarding Trivia: I fully agree, there's too much blatant speculation and (the ones that are pushing it) things that aren't backed with an actual reference/citation. The anime (the decent ones) stuff could honestly be moved to the card appearances, since that's where everything anime-wise should be anyways. Shardsilver (talk • contribs) 22:54, March 2, 2013 (UTC)

That's... a lot of work, and some of it may not be able to be done using a bot. But in general, I agree. Also, the Card Table could have a bit more colour than just gray and blue. Energy X ∞ 23:14, March 2, 2013 (UTC)

• Noted, it's a WIP. Fairly confident that the span of colours will include ones that we have now.--TwoTailedFox (My Talk Page) 23:19, March 2, 2013 (UTC)

I am a huge fan of this idea of having a different page per set/language of the same card. This would help a lot collectors like me ! --Wilimut ^Talk_Mail Paris, 10:07, March 3, 2013 (UTC)

I do agree that the Trivia pages seem to be a little nonsensical, ie a lot of the Trivia is a little 'far-fetched'. I'm of the opinion they don't really serve a great purpose to the wiki, nor do they really reveal anything.

I'm of a mixed opinion of the card tips pages. I think they're really helpful when looking for searchers in particular. I will admit, it has become a challenge as "Sangan" is now banned. This means we have to transfer it to the Traditional Format section. That will require a lot of work and time. I'm happy to get started on it, although it may flood recent changes slightly. =D This problem could become an issue as each ban list is released. I would prefer the tip pages to stay but I am open for them to change their format.

And for the rest... This wiki is constantly evolving. So, this brings change. From what changes I've seen, they've looked great. As Delta pointed out, the CardTable image of the card uses up a lot of excess space which is unneeded. I think it's a great idea to condense everything down into a manageable, easy to read article. The tabbers enable even more content into a confined space.

TTF's visit to Wikia seems to have proven very helpful and productive and it shows that Wikia are very much willing to help us. A lot of these changes will have stemmed from that which I am very pleased with. =D

If I may sound so bold; I'm not sure the Curse network could have offered as much as Wikia are right now. --Spongebob456 ^Talk 19:57, March 3, 2013 (UTC)

Trivia Pages: Can you please show examples of Trivia that should be removed?
Namespace Condensing: About time.
New Semantic Database Section: Would cards of other languages use the English name for the page title? If a card had its name changed, do we use the old name for the page or the new name?
Card Names: Why not move the unofficial name itself instead of just moving the visibility of unofficial names to the Card Names article? It would be redundant to have it listed twice and the names can still remain semantically searchable wherever the name is placed.
-Falzar FZ- (talk page|useful stuff) 21:26, March 3, 2013 (UTC)

Current vein of thinking is that trivia outside of the Yu-Gi-Oh! Universe be removed.

Indeed

They would use the English name in the article title, mainly to keep it simple, and more organised.

If the semantics were to be removed from the card article itself, they wouldn't point there. We'd have to add another semantic property to link back to the correct article.--TwoTailedFox (My Talk Page) 21:35, March 3, 2013 (UTC)

Card Names: How about if you transclude the Card Names page onto the main page via the card table. On the Card Names page, have a template where you add the unofficial names and it will visually display the names, if the page is transcluded, the name will be added to a property without displaying it.

-Falzar FZ- (talk page|useful stuff) 21:55, March 3, 2013 (UTC)

I personally have no objection to that idea.--TwoTailedFox (My Talk Page) 03:22, March 4, 2013 (UTC)

A few notes on trivia. Much could be moved to the prose sections of the new card pages. "Good" trivia" is something we can easily maintain that way ("this card appears in the artwork of "X", this card is the strongest "X", etc). The rest of the trivia is not a great loss and I wouldn't object to just getting rid of all of it (this is the sixth card that X, LOL really unlikely reasonthis is why "Number whatever" is that number, "this card looks like something from outside YGO because both things were based on the same thing", etc). Cheesedude (talk • contribs) 13:12, March 4, 2013 (UTC)

While I agree on removing trivia about things looking similar because they are based on the same thing or if both are based on common things (like robots) which have millions of designs and are bound to have another one looking similar.

I don't think trivia about a monster looking similar to something else that is unique and has many similar aspects should be removed. -Falzar FZ- (talk page|useful stuff) 05:08, March 17, 2013 (UTC)

One (long overdue) change, I'd like to see is the technical renaming of the site from "Yu-Gi-Oh!" to "Yu-Gi-Oh! Wiki" or "Yu-Gi-Oh! Wikia". Among the places where you'll see the site name as "Yu-Gi-Oh!" are the title tags, the project namespace and the {{SITENAME}} magic word. The title tags mention is an easy fix. The rest we'd need staff to change. -- Deltaneos (talk) 23:13, March 12, 2013 (UTC)

Seconded.--TwoTailedFox (My Talk Page) 17:37, March 13, 2013 (UTC)

If you remove the searchable thing from the tips page please move it to the Trivia page. I find those useful.--DarkMastero (talk • contribs) 19:48, March 15, 2013 (UTC)