Moderator Guidelines and Contributor Rules

[Vlansix]

@CliveBarker - Here's to hoping it will be ;). (This is part of me having to do stuff I wouldn't normally. I don't like dealing with content distributors/dealing with end-users/etc, I'm just the invisible maniac that codes the game and procrastinates on stuff he doesn't like doing :P.).

Anymoo, didn't mean to discuss this here, let's get back to mod stuff :).

Two quick questions:

1) What's the appropriate procedure for processing requests where validation is next to impossible? (i.e. someone inputs a release date for a title with none assigned and all of the reputable websites are either in conflict with each other or have no information on the subject)

2) Anyone interested in a chrome extension to allow searching the launchbox DB for highlighted text? I found that when I'm looking for duplicate games while moderating, the whole process could be easier if I could just highlight part of the game name, right-click it and hit "lookup on LB games db" for an initial overview. I've got a prototype, i'll add it to the third party tools (as long as @Jason Carr doesn't mind) if there's anyone interested, and once I've added some bells and whistles to it.

Edited October 15, 2016 by Vlansix

[Evil_Orko]

I'm interested in that tool.  I've been contributing to the DB a lot lately and it would definitely be helpful.  thanks for making it!

[Vlansix]

@Evil_Orko - Just in case, a beta version is available on the third party tools forum.

[SentaiBrad]

I just updated the Guidelines given a lot of the changes that Alex (@Vlansix) has made! So if you are curious, check out the updates and let me know if you disagree with anything. The wording might also need to change a bit, so if you have any suggestions, please feel free to make the suggestion on the documernt.

@FistyDollars I saw the changes you requested, but I didn't exactly know how to go about it, so I think I updated it well. Merging the consoles is still planned though, so I didn't remove that completely. It's just that now Scrape As and Alternate names are here, the consoles just need to get merged merged, so the other regions versions get preserved.

[Freestate]

On 12/11/2016 at 3:58 AM, SentaiBrad said:

I just updated the Guidelines given a lot of the changes that Alex (@Vlansix) has made! So if you are curious, check out the updates and let me know if you disagree with anything. The wording might also need to change a bit, so if you have any suggestions, please feel free to make the suggestion on the documernt.

@FistyDollars I saw the changes you requested, but I didn't exactly know how to go about it, so I think I updated it well. Merging the consoles is still planned though, so I didn't remove that completely. It's just that now Scrape As and Alternate names are here, the consoles just need to get merged merged, so the other regions versions get preserved.

I have a suggestion for names. When a game is fantranslated the fangroup translates also the title. Maybe is good to add as USA name, the translation given by the fangroup. For example Ranma ½: Akanekodan Teki Hihou. Its title alternatively translates into "Ranma ½: Treasure of the Crimson Cat Gang" or "Ranma ½: Treasure of the Red Cat Gang"  the last name is used on a good fantranslation, i uploaded as legit USA name. If not maybe is good to add some tag like Fantranslation USA name, like we have with covers. I upload other alternate games for improving scrapping with some issues like adventure island 4 or adventure island IV etc. The issues with pokemon and pokémon, or the spiderman, spider man, spider-man games, and other things with romanji adapation of japanese names, all of this all is in my opinion alternative naming without region.

And maybe we need some clarification on guidelines for the categories fanart and reconstructed. My opinion is that the reconstructed may be only these that match very close the original but lacks some element or we have the original one in good quality, if the reconstructed is varely indistinguishably and very close to original one, to assure the maximum quality we suggest to reasign as original one. The fanartboxes may be only for these that have reinterpretations an other art.

And please, may add too a reminder to not upload rom hacks, and send a mail to all contributors with the updates. Many don't read them.

[Cebion]

6 hours ago, Freestate said:

I have a suggestion for names. When a game is fantranslated the fangroup translates also the title. Maybe is good to add as USA name, the translation given by the fangroup. For example Ranma ½: Akanekodan Teki Hihou. Its title alternatively translates into "Ranma ½: Treasure of the Crimson Cat Gang" or "Ranma ½: Treasure of the Red Cat Gang"  the last name is used on a good fantranslation, i uploaded as legit USA name. If not maybe is good to add some tag like Fantranslation USA name, like we have with covers. I upload other alternate games for improving scrapping with some issues like adventure island 4 or adventure island IV etc. The issues with pokemon and pokémon, or the spiderman, spider man, spider-man games, and other things with romanji adapation of japanese names, all of this all is in my opinion alternative naming without region

I like the idea of the Fantranslation game. 

But I don't like Submitting different names for IV and 4. That's a databse thing and can be fixed from within. So when you search for 4 it also searches for IV and so on. Same goes with spiderman vs spider-man etc. I think that can be fixed within the gamesdb. But @Vlansix can say more about this. 

At the moment the names in the detail pages take a lot of space but Alex wanted to look into it to make it much prettier.

Edited November 13, 2016 by Cebion

[Vlansix]

Roman numerals should already be parsed as numbers by the search functions on the website. If they arent being scraped that way from within LaunchBox, that's something we'll look into once we add alternate name scraping for it as well :). (I'll have to fix both the "add new game" and generic website search to parse through alternate names as well, but that shouldn't be too difficult.)

As for the space thing, it's difficult to make them smaller, unless I were to list then in a text box in the same manner as genres/developers and then popup a window (see the "add new image" window) to allow editing them. Lemme know what you think :).

 

P.s. might be better served bringing this discussion into the stickied development thread in the features section.

[Freestate]

9 hours ago, Cebion said:

I like the idea of the Fantranslation game. 

But I don't like Submitting different names for IV and 4. That's a databse thing and can be fixed from within. So when you search for 4 it also searches for IV and so on. Same goes with spiderman vs spider-man etc. I think that can be fixed within the gamesdb. But @Vlansix can say more about this. 

At the moment the names in the detail pages take a lot of space but Alex wanted to look into it to make it much prettier.

I think is better to improve scrapping with this alternates with contributions than expecting that all the work to do fall in the devs. Think it like a scrapping contribution. And besides that, we have the moderation system to avoid crazy lists. I expect 4 alternate names at most with thinks like the advanced dungeons and dragons games, the disney games, spiderman etc. The tipical diferences between interpretations, legit cover content, full titles etc.  The devs can't manage all the posible scrapping issues by coding, the moderators are more aware that what issues with naming do the trick and contribute to manage that. We push the coil, they make a good boiler!

And, as you can see, there's no problem with alternate names with the actual system, we have tags for regional names and naming without tags. The aspect may be with 2-3 legit oficial moderated names and various alternate names.

[Cebion]

Well I think we could have the category "alternative spelling" For things like Spider-Man. So Spiderman would be another spelling. I agree with you on the Advanced Dungeons and Dragons etc. that should be an alternative title. 

But another entry for IV and 4 is silly 

[Freestate]

11 minutes ago, Cebion said:

Well I think we could have the category "alternative spelling" For things like Spider-Man. So Spiderman would be another spelling. I agree with you on the Advanced Dungeons and Dragons etc. that should be an alternative title. 

But another entry for IV and 4 is silly 

Well, in this actual state is a way to go. I agree with you, maybe some tags like you said clasify the tinggs a little more but at the end, we have the same. I thing that only the 2/3 regional names may be under tag the other could be alternate spelling, alternate numbers, formely know.. as you wish, but there's no need in my opinion to strict tagging. Only are to cover an issue and are there for the good. When we scrape and download info, i thing that the regional names may take priority, the same we have with image data, you can have various fanartboxes on the db and backgrounds but the priority falls into legit ones if you wish. Is a measure only for improving search and scrapping system.

Edited November 13, 2016 by Freestate

[SentaiBrad]

There are going to be some games that are going to have a lot more than 4 names, Pokemon is translated in to at least 7 or 8 languages. As well, 'Fan Translated' should be it's own category, but not 'English Fan Translated' or what ever, because more and more games are getting translated in to more and more languages.

That said, Alex is right, this should carry over in to the Database Development Thread instead of the Guidelines thread, unless there are some Guideline concerns.

[MrDiggle]

As we now have a official naming and alt naming guidelines that prioritize on NA names, should we also prioritize on NA release dates or should we use the earliest release date?

[SentaiBrad]

Currently, yea, lets try and match the facing date to the facing name, and if we are unsure if a facing name is correct when trying to set a date, that user could look in to that as well, as I am confident there are tons of games that will need to be fixed up. That said, Alternate Dates are planned as well, so dates can be set to regions, like names now can.

[221bBS]

Hello everyone,

Just trying to see if it's worth editing in the database. I've submitted a few edits to see how well it goes. Not sure how I like the anonymous thing. Makes it hard to keep track of problem mods. But with enough active mods, guess this shouldn't be a problem? I'm use to editing being open, MusicBrainz.

 

Just wanted to as a few questions.

1) How do you guys like to handle subtitles?

Example: Tomb Raider: The Prophecy

Would you guys like...

All colons (MusicBrainz style): Lara Croft: Tomb Raider: The Prophecy

Colon and Dash (this is what I submitted): Lara Croft: Tomb Raider - The Prophecy

Colon and Parenthesis (don't think you guys would like this): Lara Croft: Tomb Raider (The Prophecy)

 

2) How would you guys like to handle series naming and naming in general (altered is OK or as is):

Example: Super Mario Advance

Currently, it's what I call series friendly. 3rd in series has been switched around and the 1st has added text not in the title. But all conform to a series format for easy sorting.

or do you guys prefer as is (my preference):

"Super Mario Advance 3: Yoshi's Island" becomes "Yoshi's Island: Super Mario Advance 3"

"Super Mario Advance: Super Mario Bros. 2" becomes "Super Mario Advance"

Thanks in advance 

Edited November 30, 2016 by 221bBS

[SentaiBrad]

I generally prefer to keep to what's on the box, and then based-ish off the No-Intro set myself. With - taking the place of : in Windows because it has to. There is also an accurate way to spell something and in what order according to the Developers. I believe in the Mario Bros 2 case, Super Mario Advance 3 comes before the unique titles to denote that it's apart of the Mario Advance Series. So it's not exactly the easiest thing, what's on the box is generally what to go by, but sometimes it's written on the box differently than what the developer does with it, and No-Intro may have something different as well. The only reason I like it close to the No-Intro style is for scraping. Those are the sets we recommend the most for ease of use, so It would stand to reason that a lot of users use them. However, what ever the box / developer says still takes precedent in the long run. Scrapability needs to be number 1 priority, and LaunchBox, for the most part, ignores - and : for a reason.

[221bBS]

2 hours ago, SentaiBrad said:

I generally prefer to keep to what's on the box, and then based-ish off the No-Intro set myself. With - taking the place of : in Windows because it has to. There is also an accurate way to spell something and in what order according to the Developers. I believe in the Mario Bros 2 case, Super Mario Advance 3 comes before the unique titles to denote that it's apart of the Mario Advance Series. So it's not exactly the easiest thing, what's on the box is generally what to go by, but sometimes it's written on the box differently than what the developer does with it, and No-Intro may have something different as well. The only reason I like it close to the No-Intro style is for scraping. Those are the sets we recommend the most for ease of use, so It would stand to reason that a lot of users use them. However, what ever the box / developer says still takes precedent in the long run. Scrapability needs to be number 1 priority, and LaunchBox, for the most part, ignores - and : for a reason.

I would think if you wanted this to be a database for games, the priority would be preserving data as is and not based it on scrapability. I do understand the need to be able to scrap titles but couldn't this be done with additional fields? Couldn't the No-Intro data be Incorporated into the game data base? Same with EmuMovies, have a way to save there titles into the database for better matching.

 

As for Super Mario Advance 3, I find it hard to believe that they really wanted it called "Super Mario Advance 3: Yoshi's Island". All indications point to them wanting "Yoshi's Island" as the main title, and lesser importance to the series name "Super Mario Advance 3", You can check out the images from the database and on MobyGames.

[SentaiBrad]

It doesn't matter how it looks on the box, but what Nintendo called it in print, and they titled it with Super Mario Advance first. That's usually not something that gets debated, because it's a fairly closed discussion honestly. We also do have Alternate Names in place on the database. Also, you are right, accuracy is certainly important, but our Database serves LaunchBox as the end goal, and no amount of alternate names can make Windows display certain characters, so Ranma 1/2 for example, gets 1/2 spelt out like that instead of a superscript 1/2. 

[221bBS]

3 minutes ago, SentaiBrad said:

It doesn't matter how it looks on the box, but what Nintendo called it in print, and they titled it with Super Mario Advance first. That's usually not something that gets debated, because it's a fairly closed discussion honestly. We also do have Alternate Names in place on the database. Also, you are right, accuracy is certainly important, but our Database serves LaunchBox as the end goal, and no amount of alternate names can make Windows display certain characters, so Ranma 1/2 for example, gets 1/2 spelt out like that instead of a superscript 1/2. 

Nintendo seems to prefer calling it "Yoshi's Island: Super Mario Advance 3". It refers to the Wii version but it's the same game.

[SentaiBrad]

Then sure, in this case that's what it should probably be called.

[dionymnia]

Can I ask people's opinion about how changes/moderation should apply to arcade games, specifically in regards to hardware versus "platform"?

There have been a number of edits that have come through my moderation queue with the platform changed from "Arcade" to "Sega Naomi". I do recognize that Sega Naomi may be the specific hardware/system for those games (thus necessitating different BIOSes and the like), but shouldn't they all still remain in the broader category of "Arcade" for the purposes of the Launchbox Game DB?

They don't use different emulators (they're all still run through arcade emulators, like MAME, FBA, etc.). But if the games are being fragmented into different lists within the Launchbox Game DB based on the hardware/system designations of Naomi/CPS/Neo Geo MVS/ etc., then that would mean that when someone imports a MAME romset and selects "Arcade," there are going to be several games that won't scrape properly. The user would have to specifically identify the games that need to re-scrape as Naomi/CPS/NeoGeo/etc. Casual or new users who are just wanting to import the MAME roms and a set of BIOSes aren't automatically going to understand that distinction. However, advanced users who do want that distinction are already still able to separate the different hardware/systems by using the "Scrape as" option (import as "Sega Naomi", scrape as "Arcade").

I think I saw somewhere that there was some planning to implement sub-categorization of platform metadata, so perhaps that will end up resolving the issue in the future (Arcade --> Sub: Naomi/CPS/NeoGeo/etc.). Until then, however, I would imagine that Arcade should be the primary classification for, well, arcade games - regardless of the hardware/system designation.

As I said to start, I've been seeing several edits come through changing the platform from "Arcade" to "Sega Naomi". I have been rejecting those changes, with an explanation of my rationale that "Arcade" is the better broad designation. It would seem that other mods don't agree and have accepted the changes, as I see that those games are now listed in the Naomi platform. I feel pretty firm about my reasoning, and I don't agree that those changes should happen, but I wanted to open it up for discussion - if nothing else, to establish consistency in moderation decisions. If I'm really wrong in my rationale or even if I'm just in the minority opinion, then I'd like to know that - I will suck it up and stop rejecting those changes. Ideally, however, I'd like to convince people to see it from my point of view.

Either way, could a guideline be established for this? It would be helpful for maintaining consistency in editing and moderating the DB, and ultimately would also ensure that users would know what to expect when importing their games.