User talk:Ryan W/2015

Discussing deletion off target article's talk page
Please try to keep relevant discussion on deletion proposals confined to the appropriate article's talk page, as otherwise I'm chasing the discussion all over the place. --Quasar (talk) 16:40, 27 February 2015 (UTC)


 * Obviously. This particular case meets speedy deletion criteria 4 and 15, however, so I was posting to Jartapran's talk as a courtesy (in case he remembered something I didn't).  That said, it's not "uncontroversial" if someone objects, so I won't delete.    Ryan W (talk) 18:07, 27 February 2015 (UTC)

Youtube'ing walkthrough LMPs
I admire your dedication towards making "encyclopedic" .LMP files for Doom's levels. It would be nice if they were more easily viewable by ordinary web users of the website as there's obviously a barrier to entry with downloading a WAD, learning how to play it back, etc. There are also disadvantages to the LMP format - eg. inability to rewind or fast forward. So it would be nice if we could make them available as embedded videos. Putting them on Youtube would be the most obvious solution.

Ideally I'd quite like to come up with a script that can translate LMPs into videos and upload them to Youtube automatically. Chocolate Doom has an experimental branch that will dump videos, though it may be that something like PrBoom+ would be more appropriate (widescreen fits better for Youtube, and it's nice to have the higher res).

Anyway, curious what you think about it. Do we have any numbers for how many LMPs are on the site at present? Fraggle (talk) 01:12, 25 May 2015 (CDT)


 * Hi Fraggle. It's occurred to me, yes, and you make good points about practicality.  Some platforms don't support LMPs at all, or the user may find it helpful to watch on a separate screen (kids these days).


 * The counterargument is that the barrier is OK because some content is copyrighted. I for one don't consider my work important enough that the potential benefit outweighs the risk, given Google's past behavior.  However, most of our LMPs are freely licensed, so the uploader's permission isn't needed for reuse.


 * Counting demos is a bit slippery. Category:Original LMPs has 74 items, but a semi-manual wildcard search gives 106.  14 of those are -nomonsters runs with max secrets, 12 are "encyclopedic" walkthroughs, and 46 are concept art bullshit.  :D   Nearly all the others are bug demonstrations.    Ryan W (talk) 13:05, 25 May 2015 (CDT)

Account creation captcha
Thank you very much!


 * Er, no problem. :>   Happy editing!    Ryan W (talk) 16:10, 29 May 2015 (CDT)

EmbedVideo
You can still find all the info about EmbedVideo at mw:Extension:EmbedVideo - it has changed quite a bit because a new maintainer took it over and rewrote the entire extension, pretty much. We were in fact severely behind (v1.0, vs latest v2.2.6). I had to upgrade the extension due to the version we had not properly supporting the parameter, which I've added to Template:Youtube so that annotations are disabled. The video on Barrel suicide was 90% covered by large text boxes due to User:Fraggle's well-meant attempts to ward off a hoard of idiots that were making outrageous claims about that video on youtube (it would have been better to just disable comments on the video and let them fuck off, IMNSHO) --Quasar (talk) 09:55, 21 July 2015 (CDT)


 * Thank you, but I can't even locate the original issue now (I think it was someone trying to use one of the obscure services), and honestly that's a good sign I wasted my time. If and when we actually see a correctly formatted call that doesn't work, I'll take another look.    Ryan W (talk) 22:29, 21 July 2015 (CDT)

Old SEO page
The project is still "active" but that list is very out-of-date at this point as it was based on what were then - a couple years ago already - the most often searched phrases that returned us in the search results but at positions of 9.x, meaning we were at risk of falling off the first page of hits on Google. If I were to pull the list now, there'd invariably be a lot of differences. But also as we discussed on IRC, various things on that page have been misinterpreted or taken in less than useful directions too and I'd like to avoid that happening. Either way there are sure to still be things on that list that could be visited and improved which is why I went ahead and undeleted it. I personally never stopped working on the "project" there because it's ultimately part of improving the site overall. --Quasar (talk) 11:17, 27 September 2015 (CDT)


 * Hi Quasar. Good to hear that work is ongoing, because it's quite an important task IMO.  Nothing I've said previously was meant to contradict that; I apologize if it sounded so.
 * My main question is how non-search-engine-experts can help. By editing, or by staying out of the way??  You said on IRC that many improvements don't require a total rewrite, only a well-placed disambig or page move.  Great, less effort per article, but smaller edits must be hard to delegate, because in the 10 minutes it would take to offer advice you could just do it yourself...
 * During the prior discussions, I began revising Plutonia, which I think does need a rewrite because it's a core topic, the title isn't going anywhere, and almost all the 2011 content comes from one source. I would have sandboxed it first, hoping for additions/corrections from people who were actually in the community back then.  Was I on the right track at all (at least in theory)?    Ryan W (talk) 19:12, 29 September 2015 (CDT)