Notices

the idea is to have 2 threads: one for everyone to just send their "game", which will have a lot of posts, and another one, constantly updatable, which will have all that information in 1 single post. the second one would be made sticky for everyone's convenience.

I dunno about you, but I know many people who never browse any wikis. The idea of a template is nice, but we should post it for the first of the two threads described above.

Idea/suggestion/waste of time (you determine in which category it fits): create a poll asking people how often they read wikis. I'm ready to bet that more than 50% will say "rarer than each month". And the fact that they will participate in that poll will prove that they read forums often.

so I opt for the sticky post.

I hadn't understood that you were putting everything in a single post in the second thread; that removes the objection about people spamming the dedicated thread, but raises a new one: post-size limit.

I don't generally browse wikis; I search them when I am looking for information.

As you say, many people are clueless about search, so maybe the sticky thread should be on searching, not games...

As for the poll, I'd say it's probably a waste of time; it's a nice self-selected sample, what about all those who read wikis and not forums? But seriously, you seem to have pretty well decided, so why bother?

ok I know some people wanted this and some did well I don't have awhole lot todo today so I started a games list in the wiki no one has to use it if they don't want to but I have the basic formation of how I think it should look like. If you never knowledge of wikis is not strong send me any info you want in the game section. the like to the section is http://www.internettablettalk.com/wi...itle=Game_List or you can search Game List on wiki or you can click on game is in Game section of front page of wiki. Ps only have one game on there now will work on more in a few mins.

Well, I tableized the emulators section. I think this is a much tidier way of presenting the information; comments? (Before I go hog-wild editing everything, which I've no great inclination to do anyway, least of all if no one else likes it...)

I'm also not sure about categories; shooters is rather broad, perhaps we'll need subcategories, as we've got FPS, side-scrollers, and top-downs...

Some of the others might also merit subcategories in some larger category; not playing them much, I have no precise notion where to draw lines amongst strategy, board, and puzzles.

Finally, I'm not sure about game engines as a category; that's a technical distinction (and not always a useful one), whereas the other categories seem to be genre of gameplay.

I personall don't like hte table since it kinda crames alot of data on a site that really isn't that wide to start with. As far as what games a strategy, board and puzzles. Well strategy are normally games like Civ, Age of Empires and stuff like that. Board games are well board games like Chess, Checkers, and puzzles are stuff like bejeweled, pac man and such. Game engine needs it own category becuase well you need more then just he engine to play the game you need the data file for the game as well. I would put it with emulators but its not really an emulator. Also using the table like you did it doesn't put each game on the contents which once you get several hundred games on here you would want them all listed in the contents.

OK,
I'm OK with the WIKI, but I agree that there are people who come here to the forums and don't generally go elsewhere for information.
So, how about a compromise. A well maintained WIKI, AND a sticky thread that says:

"For a good time, click here!"

Well, maybe you could phrase it differently. :-) But that way, people who come here can go to the first post and see "Hey, there's something I can click on with a game list, yeay!!!"

desiv

yeah that would be easy to do just have to get the Admins to set it as sticky

Well, it doesn't cram much data, actually; mainly the space is taken up by ridiculously verbose and redundant descriptions. But I see where the main use of lateral space is (which exacerbates the wastage), and I'm gonna go fix it right now.

EDIT: Now it displays well in portrait on my N800 (at 100% zoom); I think that should be good? (The tallest entry is only 5 lines high.) BTW, all these long url auto-links are the main thing preventing it from working well on narrow screens; is there a reason not to wikify them?

Still, some editorial work is needed on those descriptions; I don't want to get involved in that, a debate over formatting is sufficient without heating things up with content editing.
Pacman is puzzles? I'd have taken it to be arcade. What about strategy games played on boards? To me it seems that, while the lines between these may not be quite clear, they all (except pacman) are distinct from arcade/action games. So I was thinking they might be subcategories...

But I don't know; don't really care either.
But how is this page trying to be organized? By genre, or by technical requirements? Both is not good, it makes it difficult to find the games you want because they could be in either place. And what about game engines like lxdoom, that come with a shareware version of the files? The "need" for a separate category seems to dissolve here, but people may look in the game engine category anyway, knowing that it is a game engine, and not knowing that the wad is included.

I suppose we could put up a poll on this, but I think very few people really think having a several-hundred-line TOC is a good idea. What would be the point of that? (I'm really open to explanations, but I can see no reason it's helpful.)

You know it really doens't matter to me, you can format it how you like. You have done nothing but complained about everything I worked on but this thread is several days old and I was the first to do anything with it. You can do it how ever you want and you can even dig up the info and put it on the wiki also. As far as the descriptions go most of them are copyed from the post about the game. I decided if there was one not to edit it. Maybe we need a seporate Page for Game Engines that don't come with data, and put the engines that come with data just under the game list section. Like I said on the TOC yeah you don't need it but if you have 300 games on this page it is going to be long real long so you have to scroll through even if you know what game your looking for. Either way I really don't care.

OK, let's call it all constructive criticism on all sides.
We are ending up in a better place than we were, and I'd like to thank everyone for that!
There are issues to be worked out, but we won't address them all now.
If we come up with a design that works well for now, but we have to change it in 6 months because something became too large, that's OK. It'll still be better than what we have now in the forum.
Categories are always tricky. I reorganize my movie collection every few months. It's the nature of the beast.
I would suggest keeping it as small as possible.
If someone wants something longer or more screenshots, there should be a link to something else (webpage or a forum post). I like the concept of making sure this is accessible by users with tablets.

Thanx again for everything. I think it looks great, and all ideas are appreciated, even the really dumb ones.. I mean... there are no dumb ideas.. Yeah, that's it..

desiv