Database Small Things

[Lordmonkus]

As most of you may or may not have noticed I generally keep my nose out of database related stuff, it is outside of my area of skills and knowledge. However I have not been blind to the regular complaints from people about how it is being moderated and people contributing to it. So keeping in line with my "Small Things" thread idea that was a relative success I figured I would do the same thing here for you database people. What I would like is for those of you who contribute to and moderate the database to post your issues and complaints in this thread. This way we can have all the issues in one place instead of spread out across separate forum posts and on discord.

After enough feedback has been given I will hand this thread over to @Jason Carr to figure what can be done to address any issues.

[Lordmonkus]

Alex Edit: See Issue #179

[FistyDollars]

1. The database has slowed down a fair amount. Not a big deal, but inconvenient. 
2. Accountability for repeated bad submissions. We need a system whereby we can hold people accountable for submitting too many bad entries. I've had to delete the game "Chavez" so, so many times.
3. On the flip side, accountability for bad moderation. I've seen a fair number of games get approved that should never, ever have been. 
4. Moderators need to be able to leave comments on submissions they've moderated, that the next person in the queue can see. I.e. If someone tries to submit the game "Chavez" yet again, I could leave a note to the next moderator explaining that the game should be rejected, as it's a regional version of Riddick Rowe Boxing.
5. A dark theme would be nice, the pure white background is murder on my eyes late at night.
6. I'd appreciate an option in my account settings to be able to turn off the Bible quotes at the bottom. I respect Jason's beliefs, and I know they've helped him out a lot, but I find the quotes distracting and (a bit) unprofessional. I've had to make a custom AdBlock filter to disable them.
7. For games where there's not a Box - Front, have the thumbnail for the game be something like a Screenshot - Game Title, just so there's artwork instead of a blank space. Makes it all flow nicely.
8. A platform for Win 3.x would be appreciated (and it wouldn't be difficult to do, MobyGames has one.)
9. Add Genres like Educational and Board/Party Game.
10. This one seems odd, but I've been thinking that I wouldn't mind a couple unobtrusive ads on the page if it would help bring in some revenue for the hosting of the database.
11. Finalize the guidelines, and post them somewhere less hidden than a Google Document owned by a former staff member. We need people to see it, and easily.
12. There are too many DOS games. Oh God, there are so many. Why did I decide to do all the DOS games. I'm barely at the C's. Oh God what have I done.
13. Send me a pizza.

Alex Edit:

1. Resolved

2. See issue # 179

3. See issue # 179

4. See issue # 344

5. See issue # 217

6. Already discussed with Jason. Non-negotiable.

7.  See issue # 161

8.  See issue # 304

9. See issues # 279, 301, 114

10. Will advise once discussed. Opened issue 346 to track public opinion.

11. Guidelines patially implemented. Created issue # 347 to track progress. Priority for this item is high.

12. Oh god why, you poor man.

13. I only have leftovers, but they're still good. Want 'em?

[Landcross]

I hope this is the right place, but it's certainly a small thing: please rename the 'Holland' region option to 'The Netherlands'. Calling the country Holland just sounds so 'dumb' to people who actually live there (*cough* *cough*) and more importantly The Netherlands is simply the official name as far as I know, not 'Holland'.

Alex Edit: Opened issue #348 to track this change.

[Freestate]

ok, here we go.

First: We need a rejections and message inbox, and notifications. With the actual system nobody check the messages and repeat their mistakes again and again. We need a separate mail and a notificator to the contributor. You have 15 rejections, check your contributor inbox. The persistence of uploading chavez or final fantasy vi gives me crazy and i lost my temper more than one time, for sure the uploader don't see the message because the system, and keeps trying again an again!

Second: We need to clean seriously the tags genre and developer/publisher. Now is a mess with tons of duplicating names in companys and a ridiculous brief list of genres that is too short to define more than 45 years of game story. Generic tags like adventure or action make jesus cry and kills kitten. We know clearly what is a fps, a beatemup, a shootemup, a visual adventure, a sandbox, a point and click adventure an go on... I really hate the brief genres list.

Third: There's no point on keep open the release date tag until we don't have regional dates or a fixed criteria, we all see day by day that someones prefer the release of their country and others put the first release. I'm tired of seeing this. Block the option or define clearly that only the first release date in all the world is mandatory, same with publishers (WE DON'T HAVE REGIONAL TAGS) BLOCK TOO.

Fourth: Keep the roms hacks separate in the database and launchbox. I don't want to see behemoth listings of supermario world hacks or have scrapping errors for this tons of material. Only allow the visibility of the rom hack and their use by a command disabled by default.

 

Alex Edit:

1. Opened issue # 349 to track this change. That's actually not a bad way of handling it.

2. Issue #259 will track this.

3. see issue #189

4. issue #350 opened to track this request

Edited September 17, 2017 by Vlansix
Added BB issue tracker references.

[hubz]

I'd personally love the ability to cancel my submissions. As right now once I realize I screwed up I have to remember to watch it and make sure if it gets approved that I go back and submit my fix.

 

Alex Edit: See issue # 86

[Landcross]

7 hours ago, Freestate said:

Second: We need to clean seriously the tags genre and developer/publisher. Now is a mess with tons of duplicating names in companys and a ridiculous brief list of genres that is too short to define more than 45 years of game story. Generic tags like adventure or action make jesus cry and kills kitten. We know clearly what is a fps, a beatemup, a shootemup, a visual adventure, a sandbox, a point and click adventure an go on... I really hate the brief genres list.

About developers/publishers is certainly true. An example I came across yesterday when I wanted to add the publisher to a certain game, there's:

• Apogee
• Apogee Software
• Apogee Software Ltd.
• Apogee Software, Ltd.

And they're all the same damn company as far as I know...  It makes both adding a publisher to a game and viewing 'all' games from a publisher really hard.

 

7 hours ago, Freestate said:

Fourth: Keep the roms hacks separate in the database and launchbox. I don't want to see behemoth listings of supermario world hacks or have scrapping errors for this tons of material. Only allow the visibility of the rom hack and their use by a command disabled by default.

That's something I was wondering about too. I'm new to Launchbox and the LaunchboxDB, but I was surprised to see so many romhacks in the db. And I don't quite like that. Because when you think about it, a romhack is a bit of the same thing has a 'mod' is for modern games. Are all mods allowed in the LaunchboxDB? When I was moderating some changes, I came across a few modern PC mods already, unsure what to do with it. My personal opinion is to just skip all romhacks, mods and whatnot; it's just a big can of worms. Draw the line at prototypes/unlicensed games and make a database that's actually useful for Launchbox as a program but also a good source of general game information. But that's just my personal opinion. 

[Jakatsu]

4 hours ago, Landcross said:

About developers/publishers is certainly true. An example I came across yesterday when I wanted to add the publisher to a certain game, there's:

• Apogee
• Apogee Software
• Apogee Software Ltd.
• Apogee Software, Ltd.

And they're all the same damn company as far as I know...  It makes both adding a publisher to a game and viewing 'all' games from a publisher really hard.

This definitely needs work, but first and foremost we'd have to decide what naming standard to use, for example should Apogee Software be just that or should we follow, let's say MobyGames naming standard and use Apogee Software, Ltd.

Then again, the only way to get rid of these would be to not allow users to create their own dev/pub names like one of the four above, but choose from confirmed list of names that have been verified and locked for modification. So you would type "Apogee" to find the publisher, and you could only choose the one verified and confirmed name for the company instead of creating a new one by typing Apogee Soft etc.

[Landcross]

Or this 'developer': Sega, Arc System Works (some programming)

That's 1 developer entity in the database (including the info between brackets). 

[Vlansix]

Hi guys.

I've added the appropriate issue tracker references to your requests. Please make sure to vote on them. so I know what you want me to look at :).

[Vlansix]

@Landcross, The Netherlands is already an available region choice. 

Being unfamiliar with the cultural intricacies of the region, would you say we need to remove Holland from the list?

[Landcross]

3 minutes ago, Vlansix said:

@Landcross, The Netherlands is already an available region choice. 

Being unfamiliar with the cultural intricacies of the region, would you say we need to remove Holland from the list?

Hmm, I was either very blind or someone added it in the meantime without removing Holland. Either way, having 2 names for the same country is even worse than only 'Holland'; that's bound to create confusion.
I propose to remove Holland and move everything that currently uses Holland to The Netherlands. It's simply the official (English) name of the country, no other way around it (here's a fun video about it).

And besides, most/all popular datfiles for roms also use 'The Netherlands' for naming roms too 

[Vlansix]

Awesome. The video cleared up everything. I'll transfer all the "Holland" entries to "The Netherlands" and remove the option :P.

[Vlansix]

@Landcross - Done.

[Landcross]

22 minutes ago, Vlansix said:

@Landcross - Done.

Cool, thanks! 

[Klopjero]

My small thing. I'd like to be able to filter my submissions based on status. 
So if want to see what submissions have been rejected I filter on rejected, instead of going though all of the 270+ pages of submissions.

[xevious1974]

There is a thing that I dont understand.

Scummvm si not a platform. It's a software, it is an engine but it is not OS or a platform.

http://scummvm.org/

 

So what I dont understand is...why people add Games to this "platform"?

A game run under an OS, like Amiga, or DOS, or Windows..not SCUMMVM.

Otherwise, dosbox should become another platform.
 

I dont agree having Scummvm like platform.

[Klopjero]

I'm not going to argue with you about this.. because basically your right in a way. 

in that regard though openbor and mugen games should be considered windows games. 

but the reason I think that these frameworks are listed as platforms is because they compartmentalize a whole host of games that are build upon a set of principles defined inside the framework and the amount of games build upon those is huge.

project Touhou..that shouldn't be a platform..definitely a playlist. 

and now I am going to argue with you though..it's ScummVM, Script Creation Utility for Maniac Mansion Virtual Machine it's a virtual machine..so it could be considered a platform..  

 

[FistyDollars]

5 minutes ago, Klopjero said:

and now I am going to argue with you though..it's ScummVM, Script Creation Utility for Maniac Mansion Virtual Machine it's a virtual machine..so it could be considered a platform..  

 

I hadn't thought about it that way. That's definitely a fair point to make, and as a result I'm inclined to vote for ScummVM being a legitimate platform, although I do think that having games added to it vs. just scraping the ScummVM platform as DOS/Windows seems redundant.

[Klopjero]

7 minutes ago, FistyDollars said:

I hadn't thought about it that way. That's definitely a fair point to make, and as a result I'm inclined to vote for ScummVM being a legitimate platform, although I do think that having games added to it vs. just scraping the ScummVM platform as DOS/Windows seems redundant.

well to be fair all emulators could be considered Virtual machines.