Daizenshuu EX DB wiki...again

B · Post by B » Thu Jun 11, 2009 8:52 pm

With that last one, the Radar just looks like a Dragon Ball.

I vote for the one with the star in it.

The Time Traveller · Post by **The Time Traveller** » Thu Jun 11, 2009 8:54 pm

Having an actual Dragon Radar in the logo looks kinda iffy, like the colours are badly balanced. And then the one with the colours matching it looks wrong.

Tweaker · Post by **Tweaker** » Thu Jun 11, 2009 9:01 pm

Yeah, sorry--the radar in the logo looks bad. No thank you.

Wojak · Post by **Wojak** » Fri Jun 12, 2009 9:53 am

Hey, I'm only trying out ideas.
It's easy to say "it should look like this, it should look like that", but if there are no examples image-wise, it gets too abstract.
Photoshop is easy to use, so I give the advice to make some alterations on your own.
I too think that the Dragonball logo seems too flat in comparision to the wiki/4-star globe.

To make a 3d version out of it is way out of my knowledge, so if anyone can do a first draft it would be nice.

BUT, on another note, I liked the version with plain text underneath the most, as I don't think that a wiki should be too flashy, otherwise it looses it's function as a text-based information central and instead becomes too much centered on cool design and pictures.
So, a bit of the professional look disappears in this case.

Kuhan · Post by **Kuhan** » Wed Jun 17, 2009 11:00 am

Wojak wrote:

Maybe this one except with the glowing dots that represent Dragonballs?

Freeza Heika · Post by **Freeza Heika** » Wed Jun 17, 2009 11:26 am

Kuhan wrote:
Wojak wrote:
Maybe this one except with the glowing dots that represent Dragonballs?

It has way too much going on. It needs to be simplified in some places, specifically in the name part.

Post by **Herms** » Wed Jun 17, 2009 11:56 am

Heh, looking around the DB wikia for a little bit, I noticed it said Cell contained some Cells from Raditz. It's almost impressive how little effort it takes to find false information there.

Anyways, I was wondering of what format we'd use for character pages. I was thinking of combining the format of the Japanese Wikipedia pages for DB characters with the format for the character bios in Daizenshuu 7. Here's what I've come up with so far:

Name: at top of page

Brief character description: a sentence to a short paragraph

Basic data: I was thinking of this being like the personal data boxes in the SEG: Character Volume. So it’d have their species, birth year, first appearance (in manga chapter and anime episode), official height and weight, etc. This could probably be in a side-bar under the character’s picture, like in the current DB wikia.

Picture: speaking of character pictures, I was hoping we could use color manga pictures rather than anime screenshots whenever possible, but that’s just me. And if using anime screenshots, we could at least try to use good ones (I can’t get over how butt-ugly the picture of Kuririn is on his Wikipedia page)

History: a longer description of their role in the story. Basically a character bio.

Name origin/info: this would tell the character’s name pun, and discuss different romanizations and translations of the name, as well as any alternate names from various dubs.

Special Characteristics: what it sounds like. My idea is that History would detail, for instance, what Goku does throughout the course of the story, while Special Characteristics would detail stuff like Goku’s aversion to work or his keen sense of smell.

Anime and movies: describes significant things that character does in the anime filler, GT, or the movies and specials. Wouldn’t apply to anime-original characters.

These things I think might best be used as drop-down menus
Timeline: the major events of the character’s life by year, showing what age they were then.

Techniques: a list of their techniques

Battles: a list of the battles they’ve been in, with each one marked as a win, loss, or draw. Basically this would be taken from the Daizenshuu 2 battle list.

Battle Power: for any character with more than 2 official battle powers

Obviously each character won't have enough information for all those categories, but we can just use whichever are applicable. If there's just one official battle power for a character, it should just be listed in their special characteristics.

One thing I really don't want to have is character quotes on each page. I hate these as I find them pointless and ugly, especially when used multiple times throughout the page.

I'm kind of iffy on trivia sections. Wikipedia discourages then, and I think this is a good policy, as they can often grow to be extremely long, and long lists of random facts listed in no order isn't very useful.

So anyway, what are your thoughts?

Rod · Post by **Rod** » Wed Jun 17, 2009 12:16 pm

Herms wrote:
Picture: speaking of character pictures, I was hoping we could use color manga pictures rather than anime screenshots whenever possible, but that’s just me. And if using anime screenshots, we could at least try to use good ones (I can’t get over how butt-ugly the picture of Kuririn is on his Wikipedia page)

I agree 100% here, we could even use the character pages from the Jump Specail for the Special's characters (Were they drawn by Toriyama? I heard something like that but I'm not sure if it's real, if not images from the special itself)

I'm kind of iffy on trivia sections. Wikipedia discourages then, and I think this is a good policy, as they can often grow to be extremely long, and long lists of random facts listed in no order isn't very useful.

I would vote yes on Trivia sections, depending on the content, for example DBwikia has something on Broly being the tallest character (again not even mentioning if his canon) and that's just useless info, but the fact that SSJ's hair is yellow to make things easier for the editor is interesting, etc

JulieYBM · Post by **JulieYBM** » Wed Jun 17, 2009 12:18 pm

Very impressive, and I concur with the formatting choice although I know some of that information could be moved into the wee little box of information typically below the character's picture (which would beckon the question of how to decide which picture to use).

History could possibly be split into three sub sections, though. One for Manga/guide book details (where applicable), one for Anime differences, and one for films (in/excluding the live action ones?)

Battle powers could also be a nice little table of his official ones, where/when they come from and maybe some form of description/'commentary' (using commentary very carefully, however, for lack of a better term).

I love the idea of a history of battles but would it simply be a list without some form of discussion (the bane of every forum mod's existence, am I right Mike?) or a simple list of when, where, and possibly 'how'?

Also, a list of techniques and times used would be spectacular for reference.

Post by **VegettoEX** » Wed Jun 17, 2009 12:27 pm

RE: Trivia section... I think you nailed it. Really, if you go by the suggestions you've outlined above, that pretty much negates any "trivia" being necessary to include; that is to say, all the information that would otherwise be considered "trivia" would be included in the other sections, and therefore placed/included appropriately.

I also wanted to discuss a few things from the tech end.

Tweaker's been a good little friend a found a phpBB -> Wiki bridge that we'd be able to use. Awesome. I'm definitely all for the idea of using a central registration system that covers the forum and the wiki, rather than an entirely separate registration system. This is going to all be community-created and community-maintained, and it makes sense to leverage the existing DaizEX/Kanzentai community back-end.

We'll, of course, upgrade phpBB once we move over to godofchaos' server (I should prod Schuby on that, again). That'll allow us to use the bridge. Here are a couple questions, though:

Where are we going to actually HOST the wiki? I haven't done any research, so maybe godofchaos and/or Tweaker will have to pipe in on it, but could the bridge work across different servers? For example, if we hosted the forum (as we're going to do) over on daizex.db-destiny.net and we host the wiki directly on daizex.com, would it still bridge across OK? Or do we have to have them on the same server? I'm OK having godofchaos just host the whole damn thing so long as we can set up the domain on the wiki (properly sub-host it with its own domain name, DNS pointers, etc.).

Actually, godofchaos, could we cloak the forum's address with a sub-domain or something once it's ported over? I don't want it to be completely hidden (for example, ALWAYS showing ONLY "forum.daizex.com" in the address bar no matter what you click)... still showing the thread number, etc. Not a huge deal, but just putting it out there.

Anything come to mind for anyone else on the tech side of things? Probably wanna iron out a few of those so we can just install the damn thing and get it going and then play around with templates for pages. Maybe even put it in some kind of "hidden" or "in-progress" mode before it's debuted...?

Post by **Herms** » Wed Jun 17, 2009 12:33 pm

JulieYBM wrote:Battle powers could also be a nice little table of his official ones, where/when they come from and maybe some form of description/'commentary' (using commentary very carefully, however, for lack of a better term).

With the Japanese Wikipedia pages for DB character, it lists their official battle powers in chronological order, says where each is from (manga volume, guidebook, etc), and gives a sentence or so of context ("he powered up after reviving from the brink of death"). I think that would work best, and it wouldn't be too hard for me to just translate those sections from Japanese Wikipedia.

I love the idea of a history of battles but would it simply be a list without some form of discussion (the bane of every forum mod's existence, am I right Mike?) or a simple list of when, where, and possibly 'how'?

For descriptions, we could base them off of the ones from Daizenshuu 2's battle list, which I translated for Kanzentai. We could rewrite them to maybe focus more on the particular character (for instance, for Gohan's page, rewriting the description for "Goku and co. vs Vegeta" to emphasis Gohan's part in the battle), and also to make them flow better.

Also, a list of techniques and times used would be spectacular for reference.

The DB wikia does a surprisingly good job of listing each character's techniques, though of course I think we could do better (since I'm arrogant and evil). The individual character timelines is another thing I could basically just lift from the Japanese Wikipedia DB pages.

edit

Rod wrote:I would vote yes on Trivia sections, depending on the content, for example DBwikia has something on Broly being the tallest character (again not even mentioning if his canon) and that's just useless info, but the fact that SSJ's hair is yellow to make things easier for the editor is interesting, etc

That reminds me: should there be a specific section for "behind the scenes"-type information like Toriyama's reasons for the Super Saiyan design, the Journey to the West connection, etc? Or should that stuff be sprinkled throughout?

Tweaker · Post by **Tweaker** » Wed Jun 17, 2009 4:41 pm

In response to the server query, the main thing to keep in mind is that both the forum and the wiki need to be able to read and edit each others' SQL databases. This may be possible to achieve across multiple servers, but it would ultimately be the easiest and most straightforward to host everything on the same server. In addition to the ease in setting it up, this will also make site navigation a tad bit easier (radar.daizex.com, forums.daizex.com, etc).

Actually, godofchaos, could we cloak the forum's address with a sub-domain or something once it's ported over? I don't want it to be completely hidden (for example, ALWAYS showing ONLY "forum.daizex.com" in the address bar no matter what you click)... still showing the thread number, etc. Not a huge deal, but just putting it out there.

This is possible too. All you have to do is, if the forum isn't on the same server, have the "forum" subdomain point to a particular IP address or set of nameservers. I remember that we did this for a test board on Sonic Retro once--we were able to access it through both s2b.sonic-cult.org and forums.sonicretro.org. Both URLs correctly updated including the topic id and such.

Bura · Post by **Bura** » Thu Jun 18, 2009 7:44 pm

Just wanted to say, great logo you guys made!
I can't wait to see how the wiki will turn out.

Bussani · Post by **Bussani** » Thu Jun 18, 2009 8:35 pm

Herms wrote:That reminds me: should there be a specific section for "behind the scenes"-type information like Toriyama's reasons for the Super Saiyan design, the Journey to the West connection, etc? Or should that stuff be sprinkled throughout?

That sounds like a good idea, but I get the feeling that it could be a very brief section even when it's applicable. Maybe that's the sort of thing a 'trivia' section should be restricted to?

Or the behind the scenes section could be there instead of trivia, but keep the bulleted list type layout?

Sprinkling throughout is good too, but would take longer for someone to find a piece of trivia they were looking for, you know?

JulieYBM · Post by **JulieYBM** » Thu Jun 18, 2009 8:53 pm

It just occured to me...how will honorfics be used, espicially in the names of articles. Will we use [Great King] Enma/Cold or 'Kami/Kaiô/Kaiôshin-sama' or what?

Innagadadavida · Post by **Innagadadavida** » Thu Jun 18, 2009 8:56 pm

Just keep 'em like they are in the manga and subs.

SSj_Rambo · Post by **SSj_Rambo** » Thu Jun 18, 2009 10:26 pm

JulieYBM wrote:It just occured to me...how will honorfics be used, espicially in the names of articles. Will we use [Great King] Enma/Cold or 'Kami/Kaiô/Kaiôshin-sama' or what?

Probably what ever is used in the main site. This will merely be an extension of the site, and should constructed the same way.

Post by **Herms** » Fri Jun 19, 2009 6:58 am

Innagadadavida wrote:Just keep 'em like they are in the manga and subs.

Well, the Viz manga isn't really consistant when it comes to that stuff.

On vaguely the same general topic, could this Wiki possibly have a name filter like the forums? I think that would be extremely useful, not so much to keep stuff like "Hercule" out, but to ensure a consistent naming scheme even with various different posters writing content. With characters like, say Baata, there's multiple spellings for his name, and I wouldn't really say there's a single correct one, but of course we still need to go with a single one for the Wiki to be consistent. And with the number of characters that there are in DragonBall, it would be extremely tough for each member to keep track of all the approved spellings, so a filter would really help. It might make things tricky when writing about the different name spellings a character has of course, but when needed we could just circumvent the filter the same way we do here.

Rod · Post by **Rod** » Fri Jun 19, 2009 9:13 am

That would be agreat idea, in the DBWikia, there's hundreds of Hercules and Mr. Satans. And even Gokules, even though their supposed to be using Mr. Satan as a standard

The Time Traveller · Post by **The Time Traveller** » Fri Jun 19, 2009 12:27 pm

Innagadadavida wrote:Just keep 'em like they are in the manga and subs.

We might not go for some things in the manga, heh...heh...

On Kanzentai they seem to be using Majin Buu over Majin Boo in English, and Boo seems like it should be his name, just like Oob.