Forum:Potential image policy change

I've been thinking for a while now about a way to change the image policy such that card names no longer have to have a bunch of different characters stripped (save for technical considerations, e.g. #), while keeping the current ability to automatically and with complete accuracy break the image names down into their separate parts/tags. This would have a number of benefits, not least of which is no longer requiring uploaders to remember a laundry list of characters that must be removed from card names when naming files, and not requiring the card's name to be specified in every single instance of templates designed to handle the image names. This would result in image names along the lines of e.g. Blue-Eyes White Dragon%LOB%EN%UR%UE.png (where the "%" is just being used as a standin for whatever separator ultimately gets used).

The biggest obstacle to this, however, has been finding a new separator which isn't used in any card name, and is highly unlikely to be used in any future card name - in any language, preferably - and, in addition, the separator needs to be relatively simple to type from most standard keyboard layouts. Needless to say, this is a pretty tall order, and has stymied me for several months. Thanks to this list, though, I was able to search through the entire (I think) list of English card names without fooling with SMW queries or the like, and come up with a potential list of suitable characters: ` @ $ ^ * \ Another possibility is doubling the currently-used hyphen-minus (-), which has the advantage of not being a huge departure from current practice. I personally favor the \, followed closely by -- and * (in no particular order), but want to hear others' thoughts.

Some things to keep in mind with the above suggestions:

Character	Sample filename	Notes
` (grave accent/backtick)	Blue-Eyes White Dragon`LOB`EN`UR`UE.png	easily confused with ' (asterisk); many non-US-QWERTY keyboards may not have facilities for easily typing the standalone character
@	Blue-Eyes White Dragon@LOB@EN@[email protected]	according to Oh F!sh!, it may appear in Greek card names (though that name is unofficial and we're probably not as worried about languages the OCG/TCG isn't released in); in addition, it really doesn't work well as a separator in general
$	Blue-Eyes White Dragon$LOB$EN$UR$UE.png	this seems too likely to end up in a card name at some point, besides which, like @, it really doesn't work for this purpose
^	Blue-Eyes White Dragon^LOB^EN^UR^UE.png	maybe a little weird for a separator, but other than that, can't see much to argue against its use
*	Blue-Eyes White Dragon*LOB*EN*UR*UE.png	a fairly-standard wikimarkup character, so there's at least a theoretical potential for difficulty handling it in templates, but besides that, it's also commonly used for plaintext bullet lists, indicating a footnote, adding emphasis, etc., so like @ and $, it's probably not a good fit for a separator
\	Blue-Eyes White Dragon\LOB\EN\UR\UE.png	potentially confusable with /, but other than that isn't widely used (to my knowledge, at least), so it doesn't have the same "baggage" that @, $, and * do
--	Blue-Eyes White Dragon--LOB--EN--UR--UE.png	may make the filename look too "spacey"; two-character separator might take more getting used to than just changing to a different character
@/-	Blue-Eyes White [email protected]	current preferred format; presents the smallest overall change

So, with all that in mind, I want to hear comments and alternate suggestions from others (particularly those that are familiar with non-US-QWERTY keyboards, and those that do a lot of image uploading/renaming work) for the character to use (and as always with these sorts of discussions, I'm also open to suggestions for changing/improving the image policy in general). This is the final major revision to image naming I want to do in the near-to-mid future (it should be usable for at least the next five-to-ten years with only minor tweaks), so the closer to ideal we can get it before setting it in stone and deploying, the better. 「ディノ奴千？！」^{? · ☎ Dinoguy1000} 10:40, September 26, 2012 (UTC)

I think we're not even a third of the way into changing from the previous update...

For the record, I think you could have used the list at Forum:Page Format Reference#Card images, instead of searching through that long list. I think I made that list by replacing every single character, so it shouldn't miss anything (except # since we don't use that in page names anyway)

As for a suggestion: Blue-Eyes White [email protected]

We're familiar with e-mail addresses right? and this doesn't stray away from the previous image policy by much so it should be easily remembered.

By the way, the other obvious one (if you must use all the same symbols) is "+". But I'm sure you don't need all the symbols to be the same considering what string functions are available. Blue-Eyes White Dragon+LOB+EN+UR+UE.png -Falzar FZ- (talk page|useful stuff) 13:27, September 26, 2012 (UTC)

I like Blue-Eyes White [email protected]

As said, it's not as different from our current method as the ones you suggested, Dinoguy. --Golden Key (talk • contribs) 13:39, September 26, 2012 (UTC)

*insert incessant bitching and snarky comments about the fact that we're changing it again here*

Of all the options, I guess I like the "^" the best, followed by "--" (though I think the latter will look weird in card names that do have dashes in them. Cheesedude (talk • contribs) 15:00, September 26, 2012 (UTC)

For the record, I did hint in the past that this was coming, Cheesedude (somewhere on my talk page). ;)

Falzar: ooh, I never thought of doing it that way... looks very clean; I think I have a new favorite. =D As for "+", I think there's too much of a chance of it having some special meaning in URLs (as a stand-in for a space); that's the same basic reason I didn't also suggest % as a possibility. 「ディノ奴千？！」^{? · ☎ Dinoguy1000} 18:34, September 26, 2012 (UTC)

I thought the reason why % wasn't suggested was that it is being used on a TCG name.

Another reason for using two symbols is that even if the first symbol (e.g @) was being used in the card name, you can use the #rpos: ("lastIndexOf") function and it'll still work.

-Falzar FZ- (talk page|useful stuff) 00:32, September 27, 2012 (UTC)

I remember you mentioning it and I already did by bitching and snark when you did. That's why I'm not doing it here. The more I look at Falzar's suggestion, the more I like it. Cheesedude (talk • contribs) 00:35, September 27, 2012 (UTC)

Falzar: thanks for pointing that out. I tried searching for it too, but my tab kept crashing for some reason (that's been happening randomly over the past few dev versions of Chrome...). I saw it being used in a card effect or something, though.

Cheesedude: I still haven't forgotten my promise to add support for anime/manga/VG cards to {{OCG-TCG card image}} to make up for it, either (I actually started on that, but never got around to finishing it; I'll poke it some more the next time I have a few hours). ;)

Personally, I'm not 100% sold on using "@" as the separator, but that's just me, and it works better than any of the other possibilities, I think. Other than that, using one character to separate the card name from the rest of the filename (which is broken into tags via another character) segues nicely with how the extension is already separated from the rest of the file name by a different character; I really do wish someone had thought of it months ago. ^^ 「ディノ奴千？！」^{? · ☎ Dinoguy1000} 23:35, September 27, 2012 (UTC)

I can move Files/Pages via bot now. Along with the file to card name thing I already have, it shouldn't be much of a problem now.

-Falzar FZ- (talk page|useful stuff) 03:02, October 1, 2012 (UTC)

Awesome Falzar, you can now potentially put Igor out of a job.

There may be some conflict for firefox users who use text-to-image if @ is used, but like I said before, it's still my favorite of the proposed options, with \ being the second. --Golden Key (talk • contribs) 04:37, October 1, 2012 (UTC)

So do you want to wait for me to update {{OCG-TCG card image}} with the new format, or do you intend to just start renaming files, Falzar?

More generally, are there any impediments or objections to the new format? If not, we'll go with Falzar's suggestion of one "@" separating the card name from the rest of the filename, which is then broken into tags with "-". 「ディノ奴千？！」^{? · ☎ Dinoguy1000} 04:59, October 1, 2012 (UTC)

I thought you would PM a few others (ones who have moved/uploaded many images) to comment and makes sure that we'll never need to change it again.

-Falzar FZ- (talk page|useful stuff) 05:06, October 1, 2012 (UTC)

Hmm... did I say that? Either way, it would be a good idea, I suppose. Would you care to bot-deliver the message? I can write it up for you if so. 「ディノ奴千？！」^{? · ☎ Dinoguy1000} 05:32, October 1, 2012 (UTC)

I don't think you said it, but it would be something that you (or was it Deltaneos) would do.

I never actually tried something like that before, but I guess I could. -Falzar FZ- (talk page|useful stuff) 05:41, October 1, 2012 (UTC)

You should be able to get a list of editors from Special:ListUsers/mover; it may not hurt to also message the active admins that haven't commented here yet.

How's this look for a message?

Hello, there is currently a discussion about changing our image policy at Forum:Potential image policy change. Because such changes are accompanied by a huge amount of work (renaming thousands of files, and updating thousands of pages), we want to make as few of them as possible. Therefore, your input is requested on the proposed change, as well as any comments on other possible changes you have in mind. If you have any questions about the image policy, now is also a good time to ask. Thanks!
Delivered by FZ - Bot. You are receiving this bot-delivered message because you are a mover, an active administrator, or recently moved a large number of files affected by this discussion. To opt out of potential future bot-delivered messages, please let Falzar FZ know.

「ディノ奴千？！」^{? · ☎ Dinoguy1000} 06:24, October 1, 2012 (UTC)

I also intend to include users who have uploaded or moved quite a few image policy related images to the list in the past month or two. -Falzar FZ- (talk page|useful stuff) 06:36, October 1, 2012 (UTC)

That's fine; I've modified the message byline to reflect that. If you don't see any improvements or changes for the message, I'd say run with it. 「ディノ奴千？！」^{? · ☎ Dinoguy1000} 06:57, October 1, 2012 (UTC)

From the options presented, I'm most open to either [email protected] or Blue-EyesWhiteDragon+LOB-EN-UR-UE.png. I'm more inclined to use Blue-EyesWhiteDragon+LOB-EN-UR-UE.png, but that's just personal preference over how the + looks compared to the @.--TwoTailedFox (My Talk Page) 12:18, October 1, 2012 (UTC)

I've been monitoring this thread for a few days, but since I have no other better ideas and objections with Falzar's suggestion: "[email protected]", I haven't left my comment here. "@" is my top favorite and I see that there should be no problems for this to be applied in the new image policy. I'm fine with "\" or "+" though. Blackwings0605 (talk) 15:59, October 1, 2012 (UTC)

I'm fine with the '@' option. And I would avoid + just because its a special character in the url form submissions and there might be issues and the \ is a special character in Windows so that could be a problem, think this was already mentioned but just restating it. A question for Falzar, with your bot would you be able to update just the most recently renamed images or all of them? Also are you able to insert the removed symbols back into the names? Just asking because it took about a year for people to start using the current image policy T-T, and your help with that would cut down the work significantly. And a question for Dinoguy and Delta since this renaming will be a big change I was checking to see how the new card table was coming along? If it is ready to go I would say start to implement it along with the new image naming policy. Might as well get both going. ^_^ Look234 (talk • contribs) 16:23, October 1, 2012 (UTC)

My vote goes to "Blue-Eyes White [email protected]" - looks very tidy, not hard to remember, and not different enough to cause a headache.--YamiWheeler (talk • contribs) 20:57, October 1, 2012 (UTC)

"Blue-Eyes White [email protected]" is alright, I don't mind the change in the image policy. WinterNightmare (talk • contribs) 21:37, October 1, 2012 (UTC)

All of them, with a few exceptions (Card pages that don't appear on the SMW query)

Yes, see this. (Although I need to update it with newer cards, I have a better way of generating the list since then).

There is one problem with adding both updates at once. A bot needs to go around updating the card tables as well. (but I think Dinoguy mentioned something about going around fixing the order of the parameters on his bot, which can be done at the same time as updating the tables)

-Falzar FZ- (talk page|useful stuff) 23:12, October 1, 2012 (UTC)

Look234: As Falzar says, doing both updates at once would be problematic, though not for the same reason: the card table update will change enough that a bot conversion won't be possible, especially if e.g. the card search categories change (which is something we need to look at). More generally, the new templates are coming along a bit at a time; there's a lot of work left to do (and some of it is pretty complicated/hairy in places), but I think most of the basic groundwork is done, and most of what's left is just the different versions of {{Card article}}. ;)

More generally, for all commenters and readers, I again extend the offer to suggest additional changes to the image policy, or to ask for explanation/clarification on anything about it that doesn't make sense to you. I'm hardly the only one that wants this to be the last major (and minor, if we can help it) update we have to make for the forseeable future. =) 「ディノ奴千？！」^{? · ☎ Dinoguy1000} 02:49, October 2, 2012 (UTC)

We're going to be applying this to anime/manga and video game images as well right?

Konami's card database has different abbreviations for some of the rarities, should we follow them and change it as we do this change as well?

Is there a list containing every set ID on this wikia floating around? (especially) including things like E, B1 and V1.

-Falzar FZ- (talk page|useful stuff) 11:55, October 2, 2012 (UTC)

I like the Blue-Eyes White [email protected], but are there any other decent alternatives to the "@"? I find something discomforting about its resemblance to an email address and the use of "@" in any name.

• Blue-Eyes White Dragon^LOB-EN-UR-UE.png; "^" is a dead key on certain German, Portuguese, South Slavic Latin, Spanish, Swedish, Turkish and US-International keyboards. Users of those keyboards may have to hit the spacebar after the "^" if the set prefix begins with a vowel, "y" or number.
• Blue-Eyes White Dragon*LOB-EN-UR-UE.png
• Blue-Eyes White Dragon--LOB-EN-UR-UE.png
• Blue-Eyes White Dragon LOB-EN-UR-UE.png; split by the last index of a space character.
• Blue-Eyes White Dragon (LOB-EN-UR-UE).png; split by the last index of an opening bracket, so there's no problem with "Double Attack (Attack Union)".

-- Deltaneos (talk) 19:31, October 2, 2012 (UTC)

If we can just go by Blue-Eyes White Dragon LOB-EN-UR-UE.png, that seems incredibly easy. I also like Blue-Eyes White Dragon (LOB-EN-UR-UE).png more than @. --Golden Key (talk • contribs) 19:38, October 2, 2012 (UTC)

I would say we should apply the new naming format to every image that uses that naming pattern, OCG/TCG, Bandai, Toei, Anime, Manga, Video Games, etc. Just to keep everything uniform, and in case we feel like another policy update in the future. At least on my computer I can't save images with * in the name so I would say nay to that one. I would say either the ^ or () the if we don't like the @ another suggestion is ~, I'm not sure how universal that character is though.

Very nice on the names Falzar! ^_^ Glad that we can move most by bot, is it too much trouble to do it in to separate actions? And here are the two lists that we have for OCG and TCG set prefixes, they are missing a few so I'll update them to the best of my knowledge.

And to Dinoguy just checking to see how close we are to implementing the new card table. I thought there would be some trouble though, it is a fairly substantial update. -.- But yeah just let me know when we officially adopt the new naming policy and I'll get started. Keep it up! ^_^ Look234 (talk • contribs) 19:52, October 2, 2012 (UTC)

Falzar: As Look implies, consistency is the name of the game here. The less uploaders have to think about how a particular variant's name is supposed to be formatted, the better. ;) As for rarities, I have a list of them at User:Dinoguy1000/rarities; others should look that over and check for errors. I know Delt wanted to look at switching to the DB rarity abbreviations, and I'm inclined to agree, but that has some consequences for how we handle rarities elsewhere that are probably beyond the scope of this discussion (so a new forum thread should be started about that). As for set prefixes, all of the in-house ones (I think; there may be one or two that haven't been added yet) should be documented on the image policy already, and Look pointed out where to look (lol) for most of the official abbreviations.

Deltaneos: this is why I generally don't make decisions by myself; I'm too fickle. =D For anyone else thinking about suggesting alternates, since we are going to use one character to separate the card's name from the rest of the filename and a different character to break that remainder down further, this means we can use almost any character we want ("almost" because we have to make sure it's different from the second separator) for the first separator. Like Golden Key, I personally like the last two of Delt's suggestions, leaning towards the non-parentheses version (since that's fewer characters to handle/strip), but if someone thinks they have a better suggestion, I'm all ears. =)

Look: it's probably a good idea to avoid characters used as diacritic marks (specifically among the suggestions here, the tilde (~), grave accent (`), and caret (^)), since as Delt pointed out, language/region-specific and international keyboards may treat these keys as dead keys, requiring an extra keystroke to type the character without resulting in a modified character. As for the update progress, I think the major obstacle left for {{Card article}} specifically is getting the SMW properties added, complicated a bit by Delt and me wanting to straighten up the system in places (e.g. replacing the Class 1, Class 2, and Class 3 properties with something more intuitive and consistent, and overhauling the card search category system); however, we'll really need to have all the "Card article" variants reasonably close to "done" before we can start deploying, unless no one has a problem with multiple edits to fully update a bunch of articles (personally, I'd rather get it all done at once ;) ). Rest assured, though, we'll be making a rather big deal of it when it's all ready to go. =D 「ディノ奴千？！」^{? · ☎ Dinoguy1000} 20:29, October 2, 2012 (UTC)

I guess I've misread a bit. I don't like all the spaces. I don't see why we're suddenly putting spaces between the words. I dislike having a space separate the card name from the rest too. I don't know, I just hate spaces in image names, period. Even non-card images I upload don't use spaces or underscores. It just looks wrong to me. I find that the more spaces are in an image name, the worse it ends up looking. Granted, someone who's not editing won't ever see any of that, so it's ultimately irrelevant. Cheesedude (talk • contribs) 00:28, October 3, 2012 (UTC)

I don't mind which symbol we use to separate the name, as long as it's not:

A wikimarkup character, one used in regular expression (even though it can be escaped it makes things slightly more complicated, one used in card names (I'd like to avoid rpos since it makes things complicated on some things that don't have access to rpos; this means --, parenthesis and space).

-- because of Chaos End Ruler -Ruler of the Beginning and the End-

@Look234: Thanks, note that the 1 and 2 character set IDs are problems, so mainly focus on those. What exactly do you mean by separate actions? I planned to move them in alphabetical order. -Falzar FZ- (talk page|useful stuff) 00:58, October 3, 2012 (UTC)

Cheesedude: do you mean you don't understand why we're suddenly going to start using e.g. "Blue-Eyes White Dragon" instead of "Blue-EyesWhiteDragon" in image names? If so, aside from no longer requiring uploaders to strip an arbitrary set of characters from card names when naming their images (other than what they have to strip just for MediaWiki to accept the name as valid in the first place), this will allow us to ditch the "name" parameter in most cases in {{OCG-TCG card image}} (in fact, I think I'm going to take this update as initiative to just switch the template to just using the extracted info from the filename, instead of requiring it to be manually specified; the parameters will remain for the purposes of renaming misnamed files, though). If, on the other hand, your objection is to using a space to separate the card's name from the rest of the image name, there's not really much I can say about it.

Falzar: what things are you referring to that don't have access to rpos? On-wiki or off? If it's on-wiki, I don't generally use #pos; I personally prefer using #explode and telling it to grab pieces from the right when necessary. For example, if we go with a space as the separator, to grab the tags and extension from a filename I'd just have to do {{ #explode: *filename* || -1 }} (e.g. {{ #explode: Blue-Eyes White Dragon LOB-EN-UR-UE.png || -1 }} results in LOB-EN-UR-UE.png). This same technique would work even for CER -RotBatE- if we went with "--". 「ディノ奴千？！」^{? · ☎ Dinoguy1000} 05:51, October 3, 2012 (UTC)

Off-wiki.

I used exploded before, but I forgot that it has an inbuilt reverse position as well.

Using Blue-Eyes White Dragon--LOB-EN-UR-UE.png format we get {{ #explode: CER -RotBatE---LOB-EN-UR-UE.png | -- | -1 }} results in -LOB-EN-UR-UE.png

-Falzar FZ- (talk page|useful stuff) 09:21, October 3, 2012 (UTC)

That is fantastically counter-intuitive (not to mention completely undocumented). =/ Okay, consider the -- option shot down, then. 「ディノ奴千？！」^{? · ☎ Dinoguy1000} 09:32, October 3, 2012 (UTC)

Actually, from the way it is documented, it literally means it breaks the thing up as normal, then takes the last piece, which it does. It doesn't break it in reverse. I guess reverse position as I described is inaccurate.

-Falzar FZ- (talk page|useful stuff) 09:45, October 3, 2012 (UTC)

Both. Though I did specify that it was ultimately a cosmetic, asinine objection. Though Falzar's next comment seems to indicate it wasn't as asinine as I thought. Cheesedude (talk • contribs) 11:58, October 3, 2012 (UTC)

Falzar's comment has consequences specifically in cases where we choose a separator that can occur at the end of a card name; if we go with a space, the problem won't crop up for two main reasons: MediaWiki doesn't allow multiple consecutive spaces in page names (they get condensed to a single space), and even in the event that a card name were to officially have a trailing space, that space would be impossible to represent where we display the name and would have no significance for the name's meaning anyways. ;) 「ディノ奴千？！」^{? · ☎ Dinoguy1000} 19:05, October 3, 2012 (UTC)

A note to everyone: Deltaneos just gave me a very good reason to make this The Last Image Policy Update™ - the German wiki is able to use our images directly, so every time we rename an image, we run the risk of breaking usage there (and frankly, I'm surprised we haven't already had Dunkles Magiermädchen yelling at us for apparently arbitrary image breakage there =D ). On that note, I've invited Dunkles here to offer any input he might have - particularly from the perspective of a different-language wiki that might have needs we haven't previously considered - and I again extend an invitation to everyone else to also raise any issues, suggestions, questions, etc. that they might have with the current policy, regardless of how minor, insignificant, or inconsequential you might think those thoughts are. 「ディノ奴千？！」^{? · ☎ Dinoguy1000} 21:40, October 3, 2012 (UTC)

I don't think that'll such a big deal for us. Since we don't have articles for every single card anyways and we haven't even started adapting to the previous updates (at least I haven't noticed someone doing anything about that). If I remember correctly mainly some really old galleries and most GAOV cards use images from here.

I like Blue-Eyes White Dragon LOB-EN-UR-UE.png a lot because it is not too different from the old version and it looks nice as well. Dunkles Magiermädchen (talk • contribs) 17:58, October 4, 2012 (UTC)

That's certainly a relief to hear. =D Have you personally used our images there enough to find yourself thinking "I wish they'd named them like this instead"? I'm interested in hearing any such thoughts you might have. =) 「ディノ奴千？！」^{? · ☎ Dinoguy1000} 18:44, October 4, 2012 (UTC)

I do have used them very often, but I can't think of anything special right now. The only thing I could complain about would be the searchbar. Dunkles Magiermädchen (talk • contribs) 13:24, October 5, 2012 (UTC)

If you mean how the searchbar doesn't take you straight to pages when you type in their full names, that can be changed. In Special:Preferences, in the "Under the Hood" (Fǔr Porfis) tab, there's an option "Enable Go-Search" (Gehe bei einer direkten Übereinstimmung einer Suchanfrage mit einem Seitentitel direkt zur Seite und nicht zuerst zu den Suchergebnissen). That will make search work the old way for yourself. Unfortunately, we're not allowed to set it to work that way for everyone. -- Deltaneos (talk) 13:58, October 5, 2012 (UTC)

Cool, glad to hear it! I don't suppose there's anyone else on the German wiki who might be interested in this discussion as well, or have input for it? Feel free to invite anyone you feel might be interested. ;) 「ディノ奴千？！」^{? · ☎ Dinoguy1000} 20:58, October 5, 2012 (UTC)

Thanks a lot, Delta. ^_^

DinoGuy: I can't remember anyone, sorry. :( Dunkles Magiermädchen (talk • contribs) 14:55, October 7, 2012 (UTC)

That's fine, don't sweat it. =) 「ディノ奴千？！」^{? · ☎ Dinoguy1000} 15:47, October 7, 2012 (UTC)

So, which one and when are we changing?

Shouldn't I be able to change the pages on that wikia as well? since I'll already have the list of images which are moved and to where, it'll only be changing the site address (and maybe filtering for only -DE images to simplify things).

-Falzar FZ- (talk page|useful stuff) 04:57, November 5, 2012 (UTC)

Which one what? Image name format? I think we're going with the space+hyphen format. As for when... well, I've been pretty distracted by RL happenings as of late (far more than usual), as anyone stalking my contribs may be able to guess; as a result, I haven't done any work on several template-related projects I've been planning (including this one). I'll try to get in some work on it later this week, but no promises. =/

In the meantime, Delt and I have decided that we should look at changing up the tagging of anime images some: the original motivation behind tagging anime card images with an abbreviation of the series the image is from was to account for different card layouts for cards from the Japanese dub, which at the time was believed to differ between series, unless I'm mistaken. Any more than a cursory examination will, however, show that this is actually determined by the card's most recent real-life Japanese release; there are examples of cards shown in 5D's using the series 1 layout, since that is the most recent real-life Japanese release of said cards. As a result, we were discussing changing the tagging to instead distinguish between the layout used (while maintaining the distinction between cards from the Toei animation and the later series); while this would be a lot of work, it would be tedious more than inherently difficult (though distinguishing between the series 3, 7, and 8 layout can be difficult if you don't know what to look for/how to look). Any thoughts on this?

You should, though it would be advisable to ask the local community to make sure there's no objections, and if you're intending to use your bot for the work, you'll have to request a bot flag for that wiki.

「ディノ奴千？！」^{? · ☎ Dinoguy1000} 07:59, November 5, 2012 (UTC)

Am I right that this would mean that if a card used the same layout and appeared in GX, 5D's and ZEXAL, we would only retain one of the images? If so, I have a problem with that. In the case of cards that were not played, but did appear in the episodes, I've always viewed having the images as being "proof" that the card appeared when we said that it did. Many episode appearances of cards are only a split-second, to the point that if you're watching the episode on TV and can't rewind, you will not identify much at all. There are even cards that have appeared in multiple series and still never been actually played, like "Nobleman of Crossout". If that's not so, you can ignore this entire part of the post.

For differing layouts, we've been using "1" and "2" and such to denote those changes (and also been using that for when a card's written Japanese animelore changes). That could use some fine-tuning. Cheesedude (talk • contribs) 13:18, November 5, 2012 (UTC)

Yes, that was my original thinking, but you raise a very good point (yay discussion!). We already have Episode Card Gallery pages (though not nearly enough); would there be any merit in going to the opposite extreme and allowing only images from a given episode on that episode's card gallery page? If so, I think we would add an extra tag for series/episode number, and then choose a single "representative" image from all available images of a given card with a given layout/lore to be used on that card's gallery page for that layout/lore (I hope that made sense =/ ).

The tag system for the layout changes would just be something like "Toei"/"S1"/"S3"/etc., unless someone has a better suggestion. ;) I've been thinking about the different lores problem for a while now, but can't come up with much... maybe "Errata1", etc.? 「ディノ奴千？！」^{? · ☎ Dinoguy1000} 20:27, November 5, 2012 (UTC)

I really don't like that idea. I feel that that part of the image policy is not "broken", so we shouldn't be trying to "fix" it. However, appending a tag for card galleries is a good idea. When looking for "proof", I think the first places a user would check are the episode article itself. If they assume the article may be lying, they'd check the card galleries for their "proof". It would encourage the creation of more episode card galleries, but I still really don't like that idea. Cheesedude (talk • contribs) 21:24, November 5, 2012 (UTC)

Reading over this again, I have another comment. I think it would be a good idea to restrict each episode card gallery to how the card appeared in the episode. However, I think it would be a gigantic pain-in-the-ass to do it that way too. I still don't really like the idea of excluding them from card galleries based on layout, but as long as we retained the actual images in some form, I think it would be fine overall. Cheesedude (talk • contribs) 05:11, November 16, 2012 (UTC)