Forum:Projects

This thread is a follow-up to Forum:Problems.

I've got a few projects for you, as does Chia.

Categorizing Cleanup
As of now, we have about sixteen categories about Modern Warfare 2. Four of them don't even have good grammar in the titles.

However, the Barrett .50cal page was not CATEGORIZED. That's extremely unprofessional.

We need to clean up our categories, merge some, and delete some. We need to make sure that all 2000-ish of our articles HAVE the RIGHT categories.

NOTE: If a page appears to not be categorized, check the page without being in edit mode. All of the navigation templates, such as Template:CoD6 Weapons, add categories as soon as the category is put on the page.

Would it be necessary to add the template to the messed up articles? It seems a bit tedious though. 00:15, May 8, 2010 (UTC)

Where do we find these uncategorized pages? I'll Help out.  Talk 01:48, May 8, 2010 (UTC)

Special:UncategorizedPages Darkman 4 01:50, May 8, 2010 (UTC)

No more info about the guns in real life
Lets face it, our weapons pages are filled with info about the RL versions of guns in the games, with some having more info about the RL gun than the in-game gun. This is the CoD wiki, not the Gun wiki. Lets get rid of all that crap and make it so our weapon pages only cover the weapon in-game. This also includes any comparisons with the RL versions of the gun.

If you're looking for somewhere to start, the MW2 Pistol, Machine Pistol,Shotgun and Assault Rifle pages have already been purged of crap. Use them as guidelines for what to get rid of. Darkman 4 22:52, May 7, 2010 (UTC)

I've gone through the LMG ones, do we go through the history of the World War ones? Smuff 00:17, May 8, 2010 (UTC)
 * Yeah. Darkman 4 00:19, May 8, 2010 (UTC)

We need to revise the Weapon policy to reflect this change. I'm all for removing history sections. Treat the weapons as fictional. --Scottie theNerd 01:43, May 8, 2010 (UTC)


 * If someone wants to view the history of a gun they can go to wikipedia or a gun wiki or whatever. I'm with the removal the history/Real Life sections. 18:05, May 8, 2010 (UTC)


 * I believe a small summary about the weapon should be included.
 * ie - The M16 is an assault rifle developed for the United States military in (year adopted). It has been the standard-issue rifle since the Vietnam war, and is widely used by many nations.
 * Seeing as how that gives a background, is short, sweet and to the point.  Warpig  3|1|2 18:18, May 8, 2010 (UTC)
 * A small, short summary should be included. 18:22, May 8, 2010 (UTC)
 * No. Any sorts of RL info is an invitation for gun nerds to shit on the page, and I'm not having that. Darkman 4 18:23, May 8, 2010 (UTC)
 * Well there's that also. No gun info then. 18:27, May 8, 2010 (UTC)
 * That's a horrid way to put what you're saying. And we are honestly to treat CoD weapons as fictional?  Warpig  3|1|2 18:29, May 8, 2010 (UTC)
 * Up to a point, yes. -- Emblem-burgertown.jpg EightOhEight Talk 18:32, May 8, 2010 (UTC)
 * Yeah. It prevents people from cluttering up the page with dumb gun nerd crap like how the M16A4 doesn't have a forward assist or whatever. Darkman 4 18:32, May 8, 2010 (UTC)
 * The problem is manifest in many ways. Very few of the users on the wiki have any experience with the weapons presented in the game and most articles point of numerous "inaccuracies" between in-game weapons and their real-life counterparts. A lot of this is trivia that is written by people whose only knowledge of firearms is what they read on Wikipedia. CODwiki is a very poor source for firearm information -- and that's precisely why we shouldn't have any. We need to differentiate between real-world content and in-universe content. By extension, we should reconsider articles that are about real-world elements, such as country articles (e.g. Australia, United States). --Scottie theNerd 18:54, May 8, 2010 (UTC)
 * When you have this info you get tonnes of jackasses coming on and listing every innaccuracy with the gun in-game, the SCAR once had about 10 lines of it. History sections are the wiki begging for another PGB. Smuff 19:17, May 8, 2010 (UTC)
 * Question - Should we take out RL pictures from weapon pages? Cpt.Z sig1.png Talk 19:45, May 8, 2010 (UTC)
 * Yeah, I think we should. Let's go China on this history.--AR_Sig.jpg 19:48, May 8, 2010 (UTC)
 * Overlord agrees with all. But really the only info the wepons pages should have about the real one is that its an (insert weapon type here) that was brought into service in (insert year here.) Rambo362 00:08, May 9, 2010 (UTC)
 * But why even that? It's not relevant to the fictional universe of Call of Duty. If we include that, we might as well include the other "essential" bits of information about a weapon, including its calibre, barrel length and manufacturer. We can't arbitrarily include a weapon's service length without including everything else. The only thing the intro should include should be something along the lines of: "The M16 is an assault rifle featured in Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 and Call of Duty: Black Ops". --Scottie theNerd 03:42, May 9, 2010 (UTC)
 * I've got an idea. How about we post a link to Wikipedia's article about the gun (if there is one), so people can check the gun's history there instead? Example: "The FN SCAR-H is an assault rifle featured in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2". Sergeant Insignia.png Sgt. S.S. Talk
 * That´s a great idea Sgt. S. S. Talk,but I thik we can mantain a 1-2 lines intro.
 * What about including info about whether the gun appears in a movie? Because if we are getting rid of real life facts, the Models just look stupid without a reason as to being in a game 120 years after there invention.~Agold21

Basic Article Maintenance
There are plenty of orphaned pages (make sure to refresh so you're not interfering with one another) to be fixed. When they're fixed, update the cache so it appears crossed out.

Another problem is stubs.

I've included both categories into the monaco toolbox below the sidebar.

--  EightOhEight Talk 18:31, May 8, 2010 (UTC)

Overhaul project
Lately, people have been spreading misconceptions ranging from our wiki being one of the best out there (it is most certainly not, as I will explain shortly) and that our mainspace is "complete" and there is nothing else to edit (which is also far from the case).

This wiki is currently plagued with numerous problems that need to be attended to as soon as possible, most of which won't be easy to treat.

Nearly any time you look at the Recent Changes, forty or more out of the fifty actions shown are blog posts. This makes patrolling the Recent Changes nearly impossible, and as a result much more vandalism gets through undetected. I have personally had to pretty much abandon all usage of it because of how purely ineffective it is. To fix this, we could to disable the blogging feature, just get in the habit of posting less, or somehow find a way to get the blog actions off of the Recent Changes—which I don't know whether or not if it is possible.

Also speaking of blogs, recently, a blog about getting 'girl advice' was posted on so much that it was listed on the PS3 Gaming Wiki's page for most popular blogs. This is not good by any means, and just goes to show that many of our blogs have absolutely nothing to do with or topic here. I'm not saying that we should enforce an iron law about all blogs having to pertain to our game, but just the fact of how many of the blogs we have are purely off-topic is not a good sign.

Now, the main point of this post I'm making is that our mainspace, quite notably, is filled with pages that either need expansion or need to be created in the first place. Most anything from Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, World at War or Modern Warfare 2 is covered at an at least basical level, but people seem to be forgetting that there are over a dozen other currently-released games. Anything from the hand-held games is awful, most things from the early games need fleshing out, and we only have one article on any of the cellular ports.

We are the only fansite out there that is going to cover the less-popular games from the series, so if we do a bad job at it we have failed our readers.

Look at Thompson, our current featured article. The World at War section is nice, but look at the section on every other game—especially Call of Duty 2: Big Red One and Roads to Victory. Our featured articles are our articles that are the best of the best of what we have; they're supposed to show off how good of an encyclopedia we are. But when our featured articles aren't even completed, that must mean our average articles are complete rubbish by inference.

I'm not asking for anything to be voted on here. What we need to see happen is every user who can contribute to articles that need help, contribute. It doesn't matter who is reading this; I'm still talking to you. As a wiki, we need to get together and do our best to overhaul the condition of our mainspace, whether or not it is high-traffic.

At the end of the month, anyone who legitimately helped with this overhaul will receive a special medal award to denote that they helped during this project.

Things in particular that need your help include:
 * Anything related to the hand-held instalments
 * Anything related to games before Call of Duty 4
 * Redlinks that need articles
 * Any stubs

Don't know where to start right now?
 * Level articles, such as Tankers or Arnhem Fire (or The Hornet's Nest, even), should generably be as detailed as The Brigade Box
 * Weapon articles need pictures of their appearances in lesser games
 * Character articles, like Jonathan Shepherd or Jason Wescott, need creation
 * Other characters, such as Dunne and Anderson (Finest Hour), need detailing and expansion
 * Make any of the game articles as close to being as detailed as Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2

Here are some special pages that can assist you in finding things that need help:
 * Special:BrokenRedirects
 * Special:DoubleRedirects
 * Special:LonelyPages
 * Special:NewFiles
 * Special:NewPages
 * Special:ShortPages
 * Special:UncategorizedPages

This whole overhaul project will last until the end of May, so if you want to be of help to the Wiki, go and find something you don't normally look at and make it into something great. 02:15, May 9, 2010 (UTC)

There are quite a few pages that have been created, but not linked to (yet mentioned), there are also an amount of duplicates, as Warhorse Five-One was.  Warpig  3|1|2 02:46, May 9, 2010 (UTC)

Recent-Changes Patrollers lead the way!  Warpig  3|1|2 03:45, May 9, 2010 (UTC)


 * This is the sort of thing we need. Seriously, now that there's a big list of things we need to do, I'm far more encouraged by leadership to clean some of this stuff up rather than watching people squabble over the fate of one troll. I honestly would have taken up these project earlier, but the lack of consistency and discussion has proven attempts futile. I hope that we can establish consistent standards in older game articles so that we know what to do. --Scottie theNerd 03:56, May 9, 2010 (UTC)
 * By the way, you can filter the recent changes page using the drop-down menu on the page. --Scottie theNerd 04:09, May 9, 2010 (UTC)

The Recent-Changes Patrollers is pretty much the only useful usergroup we have. Usergroups can have the same problem as blogs.

These proposals are great. I'm sure we can get back in shape for the release of Black Ops. 08:54, May 9, 2010 (UTC)

I'm in. This wiki needs cleanup. 10:02, May 9, 2010 (UTC)

I'm game. This wiki is the first I used, I will not stand around while it hits the fan.Rambo362 13:21, May 9, 2010 (UTC)

Nintendo DS articles
Whoever owns an Nintendo DS and has any of the Call of Duty games for it please feel free to help out with any related articles. Anything categorized under the following need help desperately. Also, anything red in this template and this template need to be madehttp://www.wikia.com/skins/common/progress-wheel.gif 02:39, May 9, 2010 (UTC)
 * DS weapons
 * Call of Duty 4 DS Weapons
 * Category:Call of Duty 5 DS Weapons
 * Category:Call of Duty: World at War (Nintendo DS)
 * Category:Call of Duty: Modern Warfare: Mobilized weapons


 * I appreciate the thought, Hax, but please, check with an admin before proposing something. It's fine, by the way. -- Emblem-burgertown.jpg EightOhEight Talk 02:56, May 9, 2010 (UTC)

Could somebody also make sure the level order is correct and make sure the right levels go to the right group (as in which go to Navy, SAS, etc.) -- Poketape Talk  04:27, May 9, 2010 (UTC)

I have CoD4 for the DS, I could help a bit, but I don't know how to get good pictures. I could help with writing. 10:11, May 9, 2010 (UTC)

Image licensing
I've deleted or provided licensing thus far for a little more than 200 images for the last couple of weeks, but that is nowhere near the 700 more that are in need of attention. It's hard to believe that some images could have survived this long without copyright status when they really are supposed to be deleted after a week, but there are some files that have been around for more than a year that are still around without any licensing. Any help I can get in rectifying this massive pile of unlicensed images would be great, but the case in point here is that users need to be more vigilant of providing licensing when they upload files, as it really does add up over time. 11:50, May 9, 2010 (UTC)

Jesus Christ. I'll do what I can. Chief z 11:58, May 9, 2010 (UTC)