User talk:Erik the Appreciator

Small Question
I recently had a little too much time on my hands and I whipped this up. I was wondering if I could make a link to it on the Class Series page and open the door for other people to do the same. Eventually, my hope is that we can give readers a wide view on different class setups. Tanooki1432 04:07, 22 March 2011 (CDT)
 * Well I guess so. Since this subpage of yours is written more informally than an article, it should stay at that subpage, and the link should probably be at the bottom and make some sort of reference that it links to a user subpage. Erik the Appreciator 12:40, 22 March 2011 (CDT)

Suggestion for future updates
I've noticed the little elemental bullets in use at the site. I've also noticed that the ones for Luna... really need some work. On top of that, we've got the inevitable introduction of a Sol adept, so distinguishing between Sol and Venus may get annoying. Might I suggest a few different images I've made? They should be fine in terms of integration, just replace the old ones with the new ones, and add Sol for when we get a Solian in the future. The Luna one is changed to match closer to the 'shadow of darkness' seen in dark dawn, the Venus is changed to reflect closer to it's representative color - more brown than yellow. Sol is a light yellow, reflecting light. Here's what I've got: http://i14.photobucket.com/albums/a314/acidadept/Sprites/Misc/ToKStarD2.png http://i14.photobucket.com/albums/a314/acidadept/Sprites/Misc/ToKStarG.png http://i14.photobucket.com/albums/a314/acidadept/Sprites/Misc/ToKStarL4.png

I've also got a picture of them grouped together for reference purposes (though a couple extras are thrown in as well): http://i14.photobucket.com/albums/a314/acidadept/Sprites/Misc/BulletSelection.png

Your thoughts on them? I figure it should help distinguish them in the future, on top of having them look better than that black... thing that Luna currently has. 75.60.182.188 12:51, 22 March 2011 (CDT)
 * That's definitely a helpful proposal, and like you said, those changes with Venus and Sol would only be made once Golden Sun 4 makes light-aligned Adepts a reality. Obviously, whatever colors the game might end up using for the bullets for light and dark elements will be what the wiki uses, and we can expect the developers of their own game to come up with bullet colors that appear different enough from each other that the difference can easily be seen (Sol and Venus). Right now there's never been any official bullet graphic for darkness released, but since the current black bullet graphic is a fan creation, there's nothing harmful about replacing it with your version right now. Erik the Appreciator 13:12, 22 March 2011 (CDT)


 * Heh, no problem. When I saw it I thought it kinda looked like the old version of the one I made for a project I'm working on over in the ToK, so I figured the same approach to making it was done.  Too bad a dark grey to black bullet just... looks like a black circle with a white dot in it.  At least this one should look noticeably more presentable. 75.60.182.188 13:28, 22 March 2011 (CDT)
 * Although I have to say, right now it looks a little too similar to the Jupiter star bullet that's in the Character template, and I can tell that the reason the dark and jupiter stars in your little montage above can be more easily told apart is because your Jupiter star is actually colored a little more consistently violet. It might be worth replacing the Jupiter star bullet next, so could you post your version of it here as a separate graphic from the montage? Erik the Appreciator 13:37, 22 March 2011 (CDT)
 * Heh, there's a reason for that - when editing the bullets for the project, I noticed that the Jupiter bullet was almost... kinda artifacty. The same things I did to edit the others I coudln't do since it was too varied - so I just made a new one that worked.  Here you go: http://i14.photobucket.com/albums/a314/acidadept/Sprites/Misc/ToKStarA.png . If you need anything else, let me know, 'k?

Think you could slow down a bit?
I know you're getting a lot of good work done, but some of us use the Recent Changes page to keep tabs on the wiki's progress. (Well, I do, at least, but I doubt I'm the only one...) You made 92 uploads in little over four hours, which really floods the page. While it is possible to display up to 500 edits at once, the default is 50, and I, at least, find it aggravating to have to increase the number of displayed edits on a regular basis. So in the future, if you're going to be editing many pages or uploading a lot of files, do you think you could split the project into smaller chunks and only do one or two per day? It would make things a little less overwhelming for the rest of us. The World&#39;s Hungriest Paperweight 17:32, 4 May 2011 (CDT)
 * Wasn't expecting this kind of request... In my defense, the nearly-hundred uploads in a few hours here is a special case I find hard to imagine being able to do again in the near future because of how out of the limited number of collections of things in Golden Sun that would require lots and lots of separate uploads, most seem to have been finished by this point anyway - from what I can tell, perhaps only a Psynergy icons project remains now, and taking in-game snapshots of monsters everywhere, cropping them, and uploading them into monster line pages individually would be something that would take lots of the spread-out time and occasional page-to-page editing you're talking about.


 * Now, the default you have right now for the Recent Changes is 50. Is that specifically a number you like for the RecentChanges to be at, or would you prefer it be at 100 or 120 or 150 at all times? Because it's possible to have the recent changes display any of those numbers of edits for you every time you go there without having to manually change it each time: go to your preferences to the Recent Changes panel, where you can not only type in the default number of changes the RecentChanges shows, but control how many of the days past are displayed, from a week to three months (O_O;). I hope this will help your problem...


 * And there's another strategy I think you'll find very useful: you can make the RecentChanges not display file uploads by clicking on the Namespace drop-down menu and selecting File, and then checking the Invert Selection box. Only actual edits will be shown, and due to how a file upload does take an obnoxious amount of space in RecentChanges whether there's a few of them or fifty of them, this is actually highly useful information for anyone that views RecentChanges to know. It's probably the most useful function of the whole Namespace/Invert selection bar of the RecentChanges page, especially because while I have this temporarily burst of inspiration to get long-incomplete parts of the wiki done, I wanna milk that to its fullest. Erik the Appreciator 18:19, 4 May 2011 (CDT)


 * The first thing I should say is that I don't usually log in until I plan on actually editing. If I'm just checking what changes have been made, I only see the Recent Changes page using the default settings. Even if that weren't the case, though, I probably wouldn't use the features you've mentioned. I prefer only displaying a small number of the most recent changes because it makes it easier to tell where the edits I've already seen end and where the new ones begin. Having hundreds of edits displayed at once can make it easy to lose track of things. As for the uploads: I'll admit that, when a bunch of files are uploaded at once, I only skim them. However, when only one or two files get uploaded, I do like to find out what they are. On a related note, I believe it's possible to filter out minor edits. The problem there is that different people have different opinions on what qualifies as a "minor" edit, so filtering them out may hide some actually noteworthy edits.


 * Now, I realize that most of this is just my personal preferences, and I'm the only one that has control over that. But you have to keep in mind what the "default" view is, as that's what people use by default (hence the name). The World&#39;s Hungriest Paperweight 11:11, 5 May 2011 (CDT)
 * Oh yeah, that doesn't apply to whoever's not logged in. Well, how do you get onto the site to begin with? If it involves a bookmark either in the bookmarks menu or on a bookmarks toolbar in the Firefox browser, first of all that bookmark can be defaulted to the Recent Changes menu through having that page as the URL of the bookmark. That's precisely what I do - my browser's bookmarks to the wiki are on RecentChanges, because I always look through Recent Changes every day too, and that save a lot of redundancy rather than defaulting to the main page every time I go on. Since I'm always logged in, my preferences of showing 120 edits always applies. With all this in mind, now, even those who aren't logged in can still see 100 changes as their default by having the URLs of their browser bookmarks to the Recent Changes page be what the url of RecentChanges would be once the 100-change option has been selected ("http://goldensunwiki.net/index.php?title=Special:RecentChanges&limit=100"). Incidentally, this works to make even my little File-filter concept possible to be a "default" too ("http://goldensunwiki.net/index.php?namespace=6&invert=1&limit=100&title=Special%3ARecentChanges"). Just another strategy I think you should keep in mind.


 * Okay now, here's where I start editorializing: The end result and goal of any of our editing is to improve the content and reader experience of the thousands of readers who only care about seeing completed and relevant content. I'd always act on that, regardless of how many edits that takes up. So, if there's another opportunity for an editing/uploading marathon such as this DD Psynergy Icon thing I just started, I would personally choose to do all of it quickly like I did with the Djinn icons, rather than try to accommodate other users' RecentChanges convenience preferences. Erik the Appreciator 12:19, 5 May 2011 (CDT)


 * Well, I never know what computer I'm going to use next these days, so the bookmark idea won't work for me, although other people might be able to take advantage of it. As for your second paragraph, I can't really argue with that. I probably wouldn't do the same, but you have a good point. Anyways, I'm glad you've only uploaded the icons for Venus Psynergy so far, because, when working on adding DD equipment icons to the equipment list pages, I and another editor (I can't recall who at the moment) agreed that the default size of DD icons create weird spacing issues and are a bit too big to be using them as substitue bullets. Not without shrinking them, anyways. We think 24 pixels is about small enough; any more, and they get too hard to make out.


 * As I said, I'm glad you've only done the Venus Psynergy so far. If you had done all four elements, we'd have to go back and change all of them. Since I caught you before then, we can incorporate these changes into future edits, reducing the overall amount of work everyone has to do. In short, another reason to not do everything at once is to give other users a chance to chime in and make suggestions.


 * And before you respond, I can already see a counter-argument: Since we can always come back and change things later, it would be better to get the basic stuff in first and make the necessary adjustments afterwards. I won't deny that it's true, but I think cooperation and collaboration, as well as keeping each other informed, is also important. So, if you stand by the counter-argument I've stated above, we'll probably just have to agree to disagree ;) The World&#39;s Hungriest Paperweight 16:15, 5 May 2011 (CDT)
 * I knew that specifically waiting for your response before doing the other three elements was a good idea XD
 * After all, I think just the same as your second paragraph - it takes less work for one to do a quarter of a big project, have discussion on that, and then do a more ideal job on the other three quarters, than to do the entire project and then fix the entire project all over again.
 * Psynergy page structure and presentation in general is something I'm going to be discussing a lot in the near future because I'm going to try to create an entirely new and consistent page structure on a couple Psynergy pages for the rest of the Psynergy pages to be revamped in the same style, just like how I - and you - had done that with some weapons, which is now causing other users to revamp all the other weapons in the same style. With that being the case, what we're really just doing here is getting the file uploading done and putting the icons in pages just to show users revamping the pages later that all the icons are in the pages and available to work with. Erik the Appreciator 16:45, 5 May 2011 (CDT)
 * Just a quick note... which you may have intended, and I just wanted to be sure, you can go ahead and upload all images as is, and just resize them on the page. That makes for much better wiki quality to begin with. Just saying ~ dkpat 16:47, 5 May 2011 (CDT)


 * This conversation seems to be steering more towards image size, which is perfectly fine, but since it doesn't have much to do with Erik specifically (ignoring the fact that he's the one uploading them), perhaps this conversation should be continued on a forum? The World&#39;s Hungriest Paperweight 17:00, 5 May 2011 (CDT)

Thought you should be aware
RyuKenshin just lost his brother in a motorcycle accident. ToK is pretty shaken up over it. Tanooki1432 00:38, 30 May 2011 (CDT)
 * Oh man... I had permanently left the TOK over a half year ago, and yet in spite of that I'm quite grateful that you took the time to bring it up to me here. I would absolutely give every heartfelt condolence I could imagine, and the dread feeling I have in my chest right now really can't compare to how he must be feeling. I wish him the best. Erik the Appreciator 01:18, 30 May 2011 (CDT)

Should we seek Affiliation?
Do you think we should seek out affiliations with some Golden Sun websites? In the long run, IT is likely to improve our content, though I'm sure most of the community knows about us anyways, plus it would help move those who know us from wikia to here I think. ~ dkpat 11:02, 4 June 2011 (CDT)
 * I'm actually not so sure if certain of these sites would even appreciate that. Several years ago when I was much less wise, I had made several guest posts on Golden Sun Realm pretty much advertising the wiki and encouraging people to come and work on it to while Golden Sun 3 was just some far-off dream. The webmaster told me off for basically trying to steal some of the fansite's much-needed traffic, implying that the wiki has always been competing against the other, separately owned fansites. I think this wiki is really much more like the one close affiliate to the Temple of Kraden, almost like it's an "extension" of that, one reason being how many of the wiki's users come from there.
 * Of course, my answer is based on an issue that was around four years ago, so I'm not sure how much these perspectives hold up today... Erik the Appreciator 12:21, 4 June 2011 (CDT)
 * Oh my, that seems like their webmaster was a bit of a .. well not friendly person. I fail to understand how we are possibly taking traffic away from any site that can truly claim to be a fan site. Only sites we could take away from is a site dedicated only to information, just as we are. If it has a community I don't see it as a information based site. Sadly, it seems there really isn't many sites in our fandom; Golden Sun Realm, Golden Sun Syndicate (which appear to be the same thing...) Adept's Refuge. ok, more than I originally thought. I don't see any harm in asking though, and if they are mean about how they say no, then I wouldn't want to be an affiliate anyways. I could start contacting a few and see what happens. ~ dkpat 12:41, 4 June 2011 (CDT)
 * Erm, I for one sorta thought they had a point at the time, since that was when the wiki was much less of a wiki; the webmaster had therefore thought that the wiki was "my" site. I wasn't exactly doing the best conduct at the time either with the way I was posting URLs to it repeatedly. Erik the Appreciator 14:34, 4 June 2011 (CDT)
 * Ahh... well I guess it is more understandable then. But still, I do not see harm in emailing various sites and asking if they would be interested. If they aren't, oh well nothing is really lost. But if they are, we might gain more traffic, they might gain more traffic, and hopefully we would get more exposure in the community. Why would they get mad from making a simple offer, and even if they do get mad, what harm does that do us? ~ dkpat 14:52, 4 June 2011 (CDT)
 * Right, like I said, that was four years ago. Perspectives are much different nowadays, so I agree it would be worth bringing it up. Erik the Appreciator 14:55, 4 June 2011 (CDT)
 * lol, Ok then. Do you have specific sites in mind that you think we should ask, Or should I just try those I see fit to? lol ~ dkpat 15:11, 4 June 2011 (CDT)
 * Just ask the ones you see fit to, yeah. Erik the Appreciator 15:22, 4 June 2011 (CDT)