Moderator Guidelines and Contributor Rules

[Thanatos_Prime]

3 hours ago, Freestate said:

You're totally missing about the issue, is more important to tag diferently legit art and fan created art, due to the explained lacks in database that's not posible in 3d boxes or clear logos and triggers mixed downloads. It's preferable to lower the  need of arrange things manually after. And no, not all art is mandatory to tag it regionally, backgrounds as an extra decoration is not mandatory (common sense), fanart is an extra (to complete missing media or personal appeals) i thing that keeping it as i explain regionally untagged to avoid mixed downloads is common sense.

Sorry mate. I understand what you are saying and I fully disagree with you. Let users download everything in the database and then they can decide what to keep and what to delete to give the user the maximum amount of choice. We should be the arbiters of that choice as little as possible. You should spend your energy on getting the dev team to add the Cart Fan Art category and not in trying to break things so they don't download.

Edited July 5, 2021 by Thanatos_Prime
sleepy

[Freestate]

2 hours ago, Thanatos_Prime said:

Sorry mate. I understand what you are saying and I fully disagree with you. Let users download everything in the database and then they can decide what to keep and what to delete to give the user the maximum amount of choice. We should be the arbiters of that choice as little as possible. You should spend your energy on getting the dev team to add the Cart Fan Art category and not in trying to break things so they don't download.

The database improvements to avoid this issues was demanded a lot of times for many years, but the devs aren't interested or is not their cup of tea after the left of viansix, that worked in that part. Untagging regionally 3d box fanart or clear logo fanart is less harmful in batch media downloads than having mixed sources (legit releases. fancreations) . Fan creations are still there but the people don't found them overlaped or taking priority of real restorations due to region priorities. It's was an accepted workaround by many moderators. I'm not only a moderator but a heavy creator and contributor to have an eye candy and comprehensive sources in database (mainly focused in snes, almost completed with thousands of my restorations of boxes, cards, fanart etc) and many others. And it piss me off a lot to destinate many hours, months and years to provide a bulk download with only legit and real art, with the best posible quality to see this effort destroyed with some creepy creations mixed with heavy work (we don't have an standard for fanart and many creations are fast, just shabby cuts of the original japanese boxes and with poor resolutions or care.

I'm promoting this criteria thinking on the best outcome for new users or people who don't want to spend a lot of time arranging their collections and having to manually clean their media downloads to erase LQ art or inconsistencies.

One of the best quirk of launchbox is not having to add media by hand, and the database, and the tons of work of many contributors to upload clean and HQ quality art. Not everybody has time to arrange their collections, and priorityze released art over fan workarounds is a way to demostrate love and respect for the kind of experience launchbox can provide. To download unadressed scans there's a lot of places in the internet, and heavy manual arrangement is mandatory in other frontends and there's a lot of media packs out of the database. I think that working hard to make a difference isn't a bad thing.

Edited July 5, 2021 by Freestate

[neil9000]

4 minutes ago, Freestate said:

And it piss me off a lot to destinate many hours, months and years to provide a bulk download with only legit and real art, with the best posible quality to see this effort destroyed with some creepy creations mixed with heavy work

So are you saying that your work should get priority over the work of other people that make art that you dont personally like? Thats not how this works, it's a open database and users are free to submit any content they like, if it's good enough it will be accepted into the database. Just because you dont like it or want to see it doesnt mean others feel the same, others may not like your work and prefer something else. Choices are good.

[Freestate]

1 hour ago, neil9000 said:

So are you saying that your work should get priority over the work of other people that make art that you dont personally like? Thats not how this works, it's a open database and users are free to submit any content they like, if it's good enough it will be accepted into the database. Just because you dont like it or want to see it doesnt mean others feel the same, others may not like your work and prefer something else. Choices are good.

I'm not saying that. I'm not generally speaking, it's about lq media elaborated in a rush from many many years ago. It's not about personal preferences, it's about overall and objetive quality, good resolution, better sources, cleaning, no artifacts etc. Nobody is gonna be satisfied with a 200x150 resolution false usa 3d box with a bad cut of the japanese box when it's available the only real and released box for the japanese release perfectly clear and arranged due to some usa tagging in it as it was a real usa release. Everybody without a short fuse knows what i'm saying, there were a lot of media like that years ago and it was erased because wasn't good enough. It's not about rejecting art for personal preferences or some crazy megalomaniatic ideas, it's about a workaround till we have fan tag for 3d boxes, fan tag for clear logos, and other missing issues in the database, to avoid mixing.

As you can see English isn't  my native language and sometimes is difficult to explain some topics.

Edited July 5, 2021 by Freestate

[MITUB3R]

Hello friends, I would like to ask a question. In moderation I have got a new entry to moderate in which the user wants to add a soundtrack to an existing game, my question is whether the soundtrack of a game can be called DLC (since being a soundtrack it does not add any new content to the base game) and as this is a video game database, I have doubts as to whether to accept it as DLC or not. Thanks in advance!.

[neil9000]

Just now, MITUB3R said:

Hello friends, I would like to ask a question. In moderation I have got a new entry to moderate in which the user wants to add a soundtrack to an existing game, my question is whether the soundtrack of a game can be called DLC (since being a soundtrack it does not add any new content to the base game) and as this is a video game database, I have doubts as to whether to accept it as DLC or not. Thanks in advance!.

I would reject it, we are a games database, not a audio one. If someone wants to add music to there own collection thats up to them, but we shouldnt allow it in the database.

[MITUB3R]

1 minute ago, neil9000 said:

I would reject it, we are a games database, not a audio one. If someone wants to add music to there own collection thats up to them, but we shouldnt allow it in the database.

Got it, it's just what I thought. Thanks!

[MITUB3R]

Hello, something strange happened to me. I have requested to remove an image of a game from the database because it was duplicated. However, it was rejected, but the photo has been deleted anyway. In the reason for rejection it says "No reasons were given, most likely because this moderation came in before the completion of the rejection reasons system" and I don't quite understand what that means. Thanks!

Edited July 29, 2021 by MITUB3R
Mistake

[Thanatos_Prime]

3 minutes ago, MITUB3R said:

Hello, something strange happened to me. I have requested to remove an image of a game from the database because it was duplicated. However, it was rejected, but the photo has been deleted anyway. In the reason for rejection it says "No reasons were given, most likely because this moderation came in before the completion of the rejection reasons system" and I don't quite understand what that means. Thanks!

It was already marked for deletion by another person and deleted from the DB before your request could be fully processed.

[MITUB3R]

Just now, Thanatos_Prime said:

It was already marked for deletion by another person and deleted from the DB before your request could be fully processed.

Thanks

[MJF]

Just wondering something. Does the no dashes as separators rule also apply to alt names, or it only for default/primary names?

[Thanatos_Prime]

2 minutes ago, LordEvyl said:

Just wondering something. Does the no dashes as separators rule also apply to alt names, or it only for default/primary names?

Alternate Names cover a multitude of sins. One of them is to allow matching ROM names that might contain dashes, so they can include dashes.

[MITUB3R]

I have a little doubt about rule 2, which says "Game names should reflect the box of the game, with the exception of games that break scraping in LaunchBox.
- For example, Alien 3 breaks scraping with it's superscript 3. "

My doubt is that when I go to add a title, in the examples it tells me that I should write DOOM 3 instead of DOOM III, because DOOM 3 is how it comes in the box. In short, my specific question is: Can't you put numbers in the titles or can you put them?

Thanks in advance!

[Thanatos_Prime]

2 minutes ago, MITUB3R said:

I have a little doubt about rule 2, which says "Game names should reflect the box of the game, with the exception of games that break scraping in LaunchBox.
- For example, Alien 3 breaks scraping with it's superscript 3. "

My doubt is that when I go to add a title, in the examples it tells me that I should write DOOM 3 instead of DOOM III, because DOOM 3 is how it comes in the box. In short, my specific question is: Can't you put numbers in the titles or can you put them?

Thanks in advance!

Numbers aren't a problem. Doom 3 isn't a problem but if it was Doom³ then it might cause a problem. Though I remember at one point Jason mentioned that only the dashes in default names caused issues after some fixes he did, I'm not sure what the status on superscript numbers (power of like ³, ², ⁴ and so forth) and so try to avoid them.

[MITUB3R]

2 minutes ago, Thanatos_Prime said:

Los números no son un problema. Doom 3 no es un problema, pero si fuera Doom ³, entonces podría causar un problema. Aunque recuerdo que en un momento Jason mencionó que solo los guiones en los nombres predeterminados causaban problemas después de algunas correcciones que hizo, no estoy seguro de cuál es el estado de los números en superíndice (potencia de like ³, ², ⁴ y así sucesivamente), así que intente para evitarlos.

Thank you very much for the quick and efficient response and clarification!

[MITUB3R]

Yesterday, in the moderation queue, I got a request to add a title called "Microsoft Art Gallery", as I have been able to inform me is an interactive learning guide. I wanted to know if this type of educational software can be cataloged as a game here on LaunchBox. I honestly think that like Micorosft Encarta it could not be added because it is a digital encyclopedia this should not either, but I would like to know your opinion or if the rules contemplate it. Thanks, as always.

[Thanatos_Prime]

14 hours ago, MITUB3R said:

Yesterday, in the moderation queue, I got a request to add a title called "Microsoft Art Gallery", as I have been able to inform me is an interactive learning guide. I wanted to know if this type of educational software can be cataloged as a game here on LaunchBox. I honestly think that like Micorosft Encarta it could not be added because it is a digital encyclopedia this should not either, but I would like to know your opinion or if the rules contemplate it. Thanks, as always.

Here is a good thread all about that subject.

 

[MITUB3R]

Thank you very much as always for the help

[MITUB3R]

Hi all! Sometimes I see games that have releases in Japan and other areas of the world and have a name in Japan and another in those areas, like for example in North America in English. However I see some of those games that have the Japanese name as their main name. I understand that we are a database of games in which the main language is English, so my question is: Should those titles be preferably with the name of the launch box in North America? Thanks as always for the help.

[Thanatos_Prime]

1 minute ago, MITUB3R said:

Hi all! Sometimes I see games that have releases in Japan and other areas of the world and have a name in Japan and another in those areas, like for example in North America in English. However I see some of those games that have the Japanese name as their main name. I understand that we are a database of games in which the main language is English, so my question is: Should those titles be preferably with the name of the launch box in North America? Thanks as always for the help.

Primary name should be the North American one, other names as Alt names. Though, be careful. Some of the Fan Art boxes look really convincing, which causes some people to upload them as actual Box Fronts instead of correctly uploading them as Fan Art Box Fronts. Ignore Fan Art for game naming. If I'm unsure, I skip it and let someone who knows the platform better do the voting. While we are on the subject, remember that release date is based on whatever was the very first release date without regard to the region where that happened. So you will often get a game with a NA primary name and a release date over a year before that was released in North America because it is using the Japanese or European release date.  

Also, we try to avoid using Kanji in primary name but instead use the phonetic translation (there is probably a better phrase for this, someone help me out) so instead of using 絶対に本当！

 ...we would use, Zettai ni hontō!

 

Though again, kanji in alt game names is acceptable.

Also you can use tools which allow you to take pictures or download the art to verify game names in other languages. I mostly use my cell phone and Google Translate, but I'm looking forward to trying this out: https://ian-nai.github.io/In-Browser-OCR/