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Notability, self-promotion and redlinks

In the interest of getting some clarification to the ongoing discussions about notability and self-promotion, how do you feel about WAD authors creating pages for their own works if they've already been redlinked? I'm mostly asking this in relation to the redlinks for Gomorrah, which I've been contemplating creating a page for but refraining from out of respect for the rules against self-promotion. Would you see it as such if I were the one to create the page, given that I'm the wad's author? And more importantly, do you deem Gomorrah notable enough to warrant a wiki page in the first place? --MF38 (talk) 04:50, 3 January 2024 (CST)

Thanks for asking. It was Dynamo who redlinked it and the release topic looks favorable, so it seems notable indeed. Thus I think you creating the article is no problem. --Xymph (talk) 05:10, 3 January 2024 (CST)

Alright, thanks for the swift response! --MF38 (talk) 05:43, 3 January 2024 (CST)

Sorry!

Apologies for editing the Bonus level page "live" while you were constantly approving my edits. I should probably learn how to use my userspace as a sandbox before properly publishing edits. Individualised (talk) 06:01, 23 February 2024 (CST)

Not necessarily, but please use the Show Preview and Show Changes buttons to carefully and repeatedly check your edits before submitting them. --Xymph (talk) 06:03, 23 February 2024 (CST)

Mapper stub

Sorry for poking but, since I can't find the relevant info, what does it take exactly to remove the 'stub' status from a mapper's page? personal trivia? info on projects outside of Doom? a certain number of external links? Thanks in advance 109.54.167.114 20:32, 11 April 2024 (CDT)

An intro of one generic sentence, which most mapper pages start with (from this script), is stubby. Once there is more meat on that bone, or indeed other parts of the article besides the main body of work, it no longer is stubby, I guess. There is no strong guideline, but it follows from the policy and FAQ that incomplete articles are tagged 'stub'. Once it's complete "enough" the template can be removed, although that is subjective to page and person. --Xymph (talk) 04:56, 12 April 2024 (CDT)

Doom Power

Hi! There are a few issues with dp template. First, it is called forum, not forums, just check the upper central part of its main page (in mobile view at least). Second and most important - the forum is sometimes purged and archived, which will imo F up all of the links. Archives are stored here. --Nockson (talk) 06:28, 15 April 2024 (CDT)

In English, I thought a forums system (like phpBB) is referred to in plural, but google search results indicate that opinions vary, and it can also be called a forum (with sub-forums). So either way is fine with me. I am aware of their (self-inflicted) archive problem, and added support now. --Xymph (talk) 07:18, 15 April 2024 (CDT)

Request - Account removal

Hey Xymph, it's been a while since I visited this site.

I'd like to request that my account (VyRianS) be removed since I no longer actively use it. Would removal and the masking of content attribution be possible (so it does not turn needlessly on search results)? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by VyRianS (talk • contribs) .

You'd want to talk to Quasar about that, he's an admin --Robotcthulhu (talk) 13:34, 31 December 2024 (CST)

More on notability and redlinks

I don't mean to sound like I'm criticizing your decisions - after all, your position in the wiki is far more established than mine - but I find it curious how you undid Roasterock's edit here on grounds of Obzen not "appear[ing] to be particularly notable" and yet you haven't removed the ColdWire redlinks that I added (admittedly somewhat shamelessly). Unless you just missed those edits, but somehow I can't imagine they would have flown under your radar. Anyway, for what it's worth, the DW threads for the two projects have similar like counts at about 80 each, but the Obzen thread has about twice as many replies on it as opposed to ColdWire's. I would just appreciate some further clarification as to at what point you deem a project notable enough to warrant (eventual) wiki coverage next to being a Cacoward recipient. And since I drew your attention to it, I'll happily remove the ColdWire redlinks as well if you wish me to. --MF38 (talk) 07:23, 18 January 2025 (CST)

Fair question. I hadn't paid particular attention to ColdWire. I looked into Obzen, because it mystified me that this was Roasterock's first edit, 4.5 years after creating an account. Obzen is a megawad by a very prolific mapper, but the maps (at first glance in SLADE's previewer) seem to be rather simpler and smaller than most of his works, thus giving the impression of an in-between, speedmapping project -- i.e. similar to all the PUSS contributions. Also, I asked Dynamo (my go-to person for community happenings as I don't follow DW forums much and mod releases not at all), who had "never heard of it before". That in itself isn't decisive either, but Obzen also got only a single demo on DSDA in 15 months, so it doesn't seem to appeal to speedrunners either. All that combined led me to unlinking it, more than the (indeed) fair amount of spheres/likes.

As for ColdWire, those maps are notably more elaborate in previewing, so they don't give a speedmapping vibe and I don't have a strong opinion about whether or not the wiki should cover it. But if there's more to either WAD I'm unaware of, then please share. --Xymph (talk) 09:19, 18 January 2025 (CST)

Okay, that makes sense to me. I will confess that ColdWire is a project I made myself (for the most part at least), but I didn't redlink it with the intent of self-promotion. Rather, I redlinked it in case it would become notable enough for wiki coverage later on, if it isn't already. For that same reason, though, I'm also fine with removing the redlinks, like I said. It does have a stable release as of last weekend when I released RC1, but I'll refrain from creating an article for it until/unless you give me the greenlight on it. Obzen I'm not particularly familiar with myself either, on the other hand. --MF38 (talk) 09:39, 18 January 2025 (CST)

So, returning to this discussion after some time - specifically in relation to the ColdWire redlinks - would you be okay with me creating the article at this point? I have a pretty comprehensive draft that I've saved to a text file, it'll just be a matter of copy-pasting its contents into the text field and hitting the Save Page button if you're willing to give me the greenlight. --MF38 (talk) 11:10, 31 May 2025 (CDT)

I'm fine with it. But that promised idgames link isn't coming anymore then? --Xymph (talk) 15:02, 31 May 2025 (CDT)

The submission to /idgames did allegedly go through fine, not sure what's taking so long for it to appear. It's been about a week since I responded to the verification email - guessing all I can do is wait a little longer still. Anyway, thanks! --MF38 (talk) 15:11, 31 May 2025 (CDT)

Processing usually happens only in the weekend, on Saturday and/or Sunday. And as it turns out, ColdWire is now in gamers.org newstuff. Can take until tomorrow morning for DW's database to pick it up, not sure how often that runs.
Btw, remember to put in the correct sections/cats with the title image. --Xymph (talk) 15:23, 31 May 2025 (CDT)
Uh, with hundreds of examples to learn from, that's not how it is done... Nockson fixed it for you (and beat me to it) ;-). --Xymph (talk) 15:42, 31 May 2025 (CDT)

Alright, I was sort of suspecting that could be the case. --MF38 (talk) 15:25, 31 May 2025 (CDT)

gdturbo crop

Hi! Were you able to download the crop of Going Down: Turbo that I've shared with you on IRC yesterday? I have troubles with loading DW, so I'm asking here. --Nockson (talk) 03:25, 14 March 2025 (CDT)

Yes. --Xymph (talk) 03:28, 14 March 2025 (CDT)

Cheers

Just wanted to thank you for the courtesy edits! Much appreciated :D --Rezalon (talk) 12:47, 10 May 2025 (CDT)

Advice on referencing sources of trivia

Hi,

In the updates I am making to Fava Beans I would like to add trivia to as many maps as possible. Most of the individual maps of Fava Beans were released standalone first and have individual text files that accompany the respective WADs. I have had a good look for these and found a web archive that houses most of them.

For instance, for E1M1: Gaspra Armory (Fava Beans) there are the following two links (first for the archive container and then just for the text file):

https://discmaster.textfiles.com/browse/2983/ACTWARE3.BIN/ACTWARE3/LEVELS/GASPRA
https://discmaster.textfiles.com/view/2983/ACTWARE3.BIN/ACTWARE3/LEVELS/GASPRA/GASPRA.TXT

There are similar links for other maps. Is it ok for me to add content to the trivial section of the map wikis and then add these references as external links? Or what would you suggest I do? I guess my concern is that the linked source may not be approved by DoomWiki for this - so I wanted to check, any advice? Improversgaming (talk) 10:21, 30 June 2025 (CDT)

That site got the disc from archive.org, which we generally accept as source. Seems to me the text links are okay to use in cites (with a References section) while the main/file links could be added to the External links section as the original release link of the map. I'd just caution against adding stuff that's too iffy; the trivia entry should still be relevant to the pertaining map. --Xymph (talk) 11:27, 30 June 2025 (CDT)

Ok, sounds sensible. To be clear, you are happy with the links direct to discmaster or you want me to find the equivalent links directly through archive.org. Also don't expect a lot of content from these, just a few bits and pieces. Improversgaming (talk) 11:38, 30 June 2025 (CDT)

discmaster has been used directly before, so that's fine. --Xymph (talk) 11:47, 30 June 2025 (CDT)

Thanks! Improversgaming (talk) 12:27, 30 June 2025 (CDT)

Fava Beans complete / Maybe Base Ganymede next!

Hey Xymph. Just a quick note to say thanks for the patience, support and efforts you made in bringing up the Fava Beans Wiki. My work there is now done - but I will continue to monitor my watchlist.

I expect to take a break but would like to come back to update the Wiki for Base Ganymede. I have selected this WAD as I have good familiarity with it and it has been released as an official add-on so has broader reach now. It is a much bigger endeavour as a three-episode megawad. From an initial spot-check review the map entries are basic stubs with secrets added. I would look to initially focus on creating the Walkthrough and Areas / screenshots sections from the ground up.

I have added an update and some lessons learned to Improversgaming. Let me know if you have any thoughts or suggestions. Thanks. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Improversgaming (talk • contribs) .

Sounds like a good plan. Note that some lessons, like signing, are already mentioned in the welcome post. The pointers there offer a lot more to learn. --Xymph (talk) 05:53, 3 July 2025 (CDT)

Ok, thanks! Improversgaming (talk) 06:12, 3 July 2025 (CDT)

Garden of Medea Edits

Greetings! I am asking you for advice on re-adding trivia that was suggested on this page:

https://doomwiki.org/w/index.php?title=MAP09:_Garden_of_Medea_(Vestiges_of_Grandeur)&diff=533819&oldid=533237

Someone added correct info before, but did not properly source it. Since it's been removed twice, I decided to ask you first if the linked sources below are sufficient explanation.

At 0:46 and 2:44 you can see Kaiser (creator of the map) comment on his design of the map, and you can also see the similiarities between her on-screen avatar and the mural in the level.

twitch.tv/videos/2558763595

Kaiser comments throughout the video, specifically on the night and fire wall murals at 4:35. The video also features the streamer's full reaction to the level.

twitch.tv/videos/2541744937

Thank you!

Zoyahu (talk) 11:12, 5 September 2025 (CDT)

I guess there are sufficient (sometimes indirect) indications in the clips of Kaiser's intention as a tribute, that this would work as an I&D entry. Provided it's written up in a coherent way that's also understandable to wiki visitors unfamiliar with Twitch culture and terminology – such as myself. ;-) A screenshot of the mural (which I now see has the texture name TRIBUTE1) and the night/fire panes in the map would make it clearer. Screenshots should have reasonable dimensions btw, full HD is too large. --Xymph (talk) 15:57, 5 September 2025 (CDT)

Bullet Points Within Categories

I'm a little confused about using bullets (*) within categories. Do you only start using them once there are two points of info? Are the ones in empty categories solely placeholders? The I&D on the main Dreamblood page has one point in it with a bullet, I assume that is actually incorrect?

--Zoyahu (talk) 16:32, 7 September 2025 (CDT)

I guess there are no hard rules for this, just conventions that grew over time. I&D usually has multi-sentence paragraph(s), so no bullets; Trivia often has short single-sentence entries, so bullets. For map pages, {{Map skel}} shows which sections have and don't have bullets, which serves as a guideline. Bugs entries don't have bullets, although they're often short (but full paragraph descriptions are also common), because a bug entry itself can contain bullets, and nesting them looks less good. --Xymph (talk) 03:06, 8 September 2025 (CDT)

Deleting Images

I uploaded eight new images for the Doom 64 Reloaded gallery, but some of those are from different levels than the ones they replaced. The two that are from the same maps I marked for deletion. Is it ok to delete those other three old images without a direct same level replacement? I can upload new images of those maps because I have them on hand, but then they won't be used since Reloaded doesn't have individual map pages. Zoyahu (talk) 12:45, 13 September 2025 (CDT)

They're not linked anywhere now, and it's pointless to keep them lingering in Special:UnusedFiles forever (too many entries there already). Maintenance can also pertain to keeping them out of that list, and reducing disk usage. What I initially missed is that File:REDART.png was also removed from the article, without a suitable replacement. Since it illustrated the story, I don't think that was desirable. --Xymph (talk) 13:15, 13 September 2025 (CDT)

I will delete the images then. The removed artifact image must have been a mistake on my part, I'll make a more optimized image for it and put it back later.

Also, I see some Doom 64 images in the unused category. Any necessary screenshots for Doom 64 I can make easily, so if the barrier to removing them is keeping them "just in case" I think those can be safely deleted too. Zoyahu (talk) 13:36, 13 September 2025 (CDT)

Yes, those are old screenshots that have since been superseded, so they can be safely removed. --Dynamo128 (talk) 16:23, 13 September 2025 (CDT)

Format for cropped/specialized/side images

I want to replace the image File:REDART.png on the Doom 64 Reloaded page, but I'm not sure about how such an image (on the side of the page / cropped) should be formatted. The original image was full HD with the sides cropped (making the image roughly square) to focus the artifact. I think any widescreen images wouldn't look natural fitted on the sides of a page. Images on the side of other pages are in 4:3 from what I can see. Should I crop images to be square, 4:3 or whatever works for what I'm trying to show? And what size should it be? For an image in 4:3, 1024 x 768 seems reasonable, for square images I have no idea. Zoyahu (talk) 12:14, 14 September 2025 (CDT)

Widescreen images in galleries aren't uncommon (and can look very nice ;). Check out Eviternity or Dust Devil for example. --Gregor (talk) 12:33, 14 September 2025 (CDT)

Whole in-game scenes have the usual aspect ratio per the guidelines, but if an image illustrates a specific object, then smaller and squarish (or at most 4:3) dimensions are indeed better for that focus, IMO. Dimensions shouldn't be so large that the object becomes too pixelated, e.g. File:HACXPULS.png is still acceptable but File:HACXBARL.png not so much. There used to be more such object images for Hacx, until one of Dynamo's projects back in 2022 created in-game scenes that combine the pick-up and HUD sprites in one shot, e.g. File:HacxNuker.png. But I guess for the artifact, that may not be feasible if it doesn't appear in the HUD. --Xymph (talk) 16:02, 14 September 2025 (CDT)

Possibility to Automate Soundtrack Data

Hi Xymph! A page idea I would really like to see would be something like "List of custom music by frequency" which would catalog custom midis (not IWAD music) ranked by how often they show up in PWADs. I wonder if this is something XymphBot could automate to an extent? At least to collate what's currently covered on the Wiki to get a starting point? I mostly am curious about what is the most used custom MIDI across the board, I have a feeling it'll be something by NIN. If there's any hope of pulling that data please let me know, I'd be happy to set up a table/page for it. Thanks! --Grapes (talk) 23:20, 4 October 2025 (CDT)

As explained multiple times over the years, XymphBot is not an autonomous entity that can be given arbitrary instructions; it's just an account with the bot flag so that its (voluminous) edits don't clutter Recent Changes by default. Tasks are performed by scripts against the API, or sometimes against my database replica when needing to access large numbers of pages (like with listDeadAnchors.php). Changes are always made via the API, or manually.

The database approach could collect soundtrack info from all map pages covered under my .ini system in reasonable time, just like the lists of Wikipedia links, etc. The mean caveat is variations in wording/styling that may be tricky to collate, resulting in near-duplicate rows in the output table. Which, btw, I don't think belongs in main space, but I don't mind putting it in my user space, like the mappers ranking table.

Would you have a proposal which columns should make up the table? --Xymph (talk) 07:45, 5 October 2025 (CDT)

I basically figured the bot is your wizard in a box, because I'm too ignorant of its actual functions, sorry if it's been dredged up repeatedly! And yeah I don't mind putting it on my user space in a similar way, it's purely for personal curiosity anyway. For columns I was thinking something like... Artist_Name|Song_Name|Count|Map_List - the "Count" field can help truncate the list too, as I only want MIDIs which appeared, say, 5 times or more at a minimum. Map list would be a manual endeavour... I kind of want to also look into a way to mass check WAD files for any custom music, so I can dump a list to manually check, but that'll be a later task. --Grapes (talk) 10:10, 5 October 2025 (CDT)

See User:XymphBot for the long list of scripts, each performing a specific (or sometimes more general, like pregreplGen.php) task. Processing soundtracks is hampered by the large lack of consistencyin how they're defined. This also prevented the automatic conversion of WAD soundtrack listings to individual map pages that was suggested early 2022. The initial new script produces the User:Xymph/Soundtracks ranked by map count table.

Map pages linking to the without cat or one of the IWAD/port music articles are skipped, but you'll still find a lot of Prince tracks in the table from pages without such links. Also, the by/from column could only be filled with titles/composers that are embedded in italics, wikilinks or {{wp}} templates, because otherwise it is impossible to determine where a name begins and ends. I've opted not to limit to 5+ uses, so that sorting on the track and by/from columns can be used to find more subtle discrepancies between the same track/source.

Still, as you can see in the footer stats, a soundtrack could not be found on about 5600 map pages (including maps with no music replacement), despite it employing a bunch of different regular expressions to attempt matches with. Apart from the table, the script logs me unmatched map page intros, which already allowed me to fix a sizable number of inconsistencies over the past few days. More cleanup and script polish is still to do. --Xymph (talk) 09:19, 8 October 2025 (CDT)

ZPack Rejuvenated soundtrack

In relation to the comment you directed at me with this edit, I have to be going somewhere very shortly, but I can do the soundtrack for those map pages when I get back in about two hours. --MF38 (talk) 07:59, 10 November 2025 (CST)

Uhh, oookay. There really was no need to post that caveat, it's fine to do this whenever you can. Nobody here is on tight planning schedules. ;-) Thanks in advance. --Xymph (talk) 10:25, 10 November 2025 (CST)

Thanks

Just a quick thank you message for approving, and fixing up, my edits very quickly, and leaving comments when you do so I know what I should do next time. --RulesMcGee (talk) 13:54, 25 November 2025 (CST)

Cannot Save Edits

Hi. I finished the page for the next Revolution! map R n R, but it won't let me save it (even in an unconfirmed state). "A brief description of the abuse rule which your action matched is: Customer support spam." - Clustril (talk) 17:34, 6 December 2025 (CST)

An abuse filter rule blocked it - admin Quasar stored your edit as yet. --Xymph (talk) 06:29, 7 December 2025 (CST)

No idea why that could be. Also, "customer support spam" is kind of a weird name for a rule. Does "customer support" (whoever that is) routinely spam the Doom Wiki or something? - Clustril (talk) 10:58, 7 December 2025 (CST)

The string 'phone number' in your contribution matches part of the filter rule (along with phrases like 'customer service', 'tech support' etc), which have occurred in past spam edits, so it's a perfectly valid rule name. --Xymph (talk) 11:07, 7 December 2025 (CST)

Oh, I see. Yeah, "phone number" was just mentioning a poster on the wall in this map for a lost rabbit with phone number "6662001" (666 + the year Revolution! was released). - Clustril (talk) 11:29, 7 December 2025 (CST)

As long as we're on the subject of the map, I have a couple questions. 1) Are redirects OK? I think on my first uploaded map it was edited slightly (by you?) to remove redirects, and I think the edit note was to avoid them. That's why I haven't been using any. 2) How to I get my Bugs link in the Essentials into to drop down to the Bugs section when clicked? It's still not working for me, and I don't remember the code. Thanks. - Clustril 19:16, 7 December 2025 (CST)

1) Redirects should be avoided when they easily can, e.g. by placing plurals and similar extensions after the closing brackets. This saves a tiny bit of server load over the course of countless clicks by users and bots. But in the flow of writing prose, [[boxes of rockets]] is easier to read and edit by later contributors than [[Box of rockets|boxes of rockets]] and similar constructs. Also, using manual names instead of canonicals is not a crime, but avoiding redirects on terms like chaingunners is fine too. See MOS:PIPE for other reasons to use/avoid pipes.
2) Capitalization of anchors does matter. ;) --Xymph (talk) 04:13, 8 December 2025 (CST)

Delete Image

Do I ask you to delete an image? Can you delete File:Revolution!-MAP13-Secret1.jpg? I'm an idiot and uploaded the uncropped version. Thanks. - Clustril (talk) 13:16, 1 March 2026 (CST)

It pays to keep an eye on Special:RecentChanges: admin Dynamo deleted it yesterday. You could also have used 'Upload a new version of this file' on the existing path, btw. --Xymph (talk) 01:34, 2 March 2026 (CST)

Thank you. Like I said, I'm an idiot. I will definitely keep an eye on those things you said, but hopefully I won't have any more upload mishaps. :) - Clustril (talk) 19:49, 6 March 2026 (CST)

Added screenshot

Regarding your concern about an unused screenshot, I have added it to its respective article. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by SamuelPickles98 (talk • contribs) .