Thread:Fossiliferous/@comment-27173043-20151107145519/@comment-24668482-20151109113832

Hi Julie,

First off, thanks for posting. And please don't feel like you ever have to ask permission to jump in and help out around here. Wikis are community run sites, that are editable by anyone. The more people that add to any one page, the stronger that page gets and the better the information available for everyone.

To be perfectly honest, I have all the images already. That isn't really what is holding me back on that project. The main thing is the organisational side of such an undertaking, as you noticed yourself.

The way I see it, there are three problems with doing it:

1. Organisation: for both sets (collections and pictures images) - getting them properly organised before and after uploading. Adding them to articles will be a piece of cake after the nightmare of getting them all on the site correctly in a way that will not cause huge problems down the line. This is the biggest hurdle for me personally, as the huge problems down the line will fall on me if the job is not done right in the first place. We are talking about just over 2,000 images for the collections and 1,500 images for the pictures (just taking the main items themselves and their silhouettes... as i planned to put them in a table for ease of identification... so not including pieces mode). That is 3,500 new images to add to the site, and so care needs to be taken in how it is executed.

All 3,500 need re-naming before uploading and a couple of hundred of the collections images also need a new clipping mask to change background colour, but other than that they are all separated, and mostly ready to go. Getting the naming system right is key, they need to be identifiable by their names. For all the images already uploaded of the collections (just the whole collection shown as one image or just the combining elements cropped) I have used the naming convention: Collection - collection ID number - Collection name - identifier

e.g. 'Collection_326_First_aid_kit_cropped' for the whole collection cropped from collection window in the game versus 'Collection_326_First_aid_kit_CE' for just the combining elements cropped.

For the Collection items themselves, the collection item's name needs to be included in the file name, as well as an indication of which collection it belongs to and also another identifier that signifies which item in the collection it is. The files names will get too big if that is directly used as the identifier

e.g. Collection_326_First_aid_kit_item03_adhesive_bandage.jpg will be a bit of a stretch of the character limits for file names. when uploaded, the name could be shortened automatically, which means it would need to be renamed, and replaced, and would then not fit the naming system used on images that did have short collection names and items names. Consistency is key, so I'd rather all images get the same naming convention, and that convention has all the information to identify the item but is succinct enough to ensure all files can use it.

So a system will have to be devised where even the longest item name from the longest collection name can be used. There are a few options I've been playing with:

(i) Collection_326_First_aid_kit_item03_adhesive_bandage.jpg

(ii) c326_First_aid_kit_i03_adhesive_bandage.jpg

(iii) c326_i03_adhesive_bandage.jpg my preference is for (ii) since (iii) doesn't give the collection name. And it would just about fit since the original name above (Collection_326_First_aid_kit_cropped.jpg) is 41 characters long, and option (ii) would be 45 characters long, so there is a good chance they would all fit. We can fit over 60 characters, but the names will just be unmanageable if go that big. Of course, these are just character limit considerations. The actual structure of the name would probably also need tweaking:

(iv) c326_First_aid_kit_i03_adhesive_bandage.jpg

(v) adhesive_bandage_c326_First_aid_kit_i03.jpg

(vi) adhesive_bandage_i03_c326_First_aid_kit.jpg

and again that doesn't matter, as long as one is chosen and all 2000+ files follow it.

Then it comes to uploading the images. There is a multiple file upload facility here but it can only do 20 files at a time, so for the collection items alone you are talking about 175 uploads, each of which will involve navigating to source folder and selecting images.

Once they are all here, the organisation does end. Each file would need to be properly categorised. And importantly, a description would have to be written and copyright information added. We can't leave 3500 new images floating about without an easier way of accessing them and identifying them if needed for other projects (and last thing you want is people uploading multiples of same image as can't find the original easily in a search here).

That is one of the current projects here - there are already 2,000 images on the wiki and I am only 20% of the way through in adding descriptions and the copyright template I created for that job (I have already categorised them all). I have been putting off this project until I got on top of the existing images here as adding 3,500 extra images to that job in one day is a bit daunting. But it is vital to the organisation here. Categorization is particularly important for organisation of the wiki (and faster to do than the descriptions/copyright), but the descriptions, along with appropriate file names, are very important for SEO as well. Which unfortunately, is also an important consideration when putting this much work into something. And of course the important of proper copyright tags probably doesn't need to be explained (they last thing we need here is to get into hot water with the copyright holders).

Compare, which hasn't has the decription/copyright template added and that has. The job can be done with a lot of copy-pasting from one page to another, but all 3,500 pages will need to be created and personalised (proper name of item and collection it belongs to an appropriate links added).

And all this is before they are ever added to single page on the wiki.....

2. implementation: just for the collections images - getting them into a page in such a way that it does not seriously impact page load times. People access this place in many different ways, and not everyone has access to fast internet speeds. A slow loading page will turn off a new user who may abort trying to open the page, and if coming directly from a web search may never find this site as a result. This had put me off doing that for a long time, as I want everything here to be accessible to everyone equally. I have kinda gotten over that mind block since so many people are asking for it anyway, and my solution will be to mirror the collection pages (List of Collection Items and List of Collection Item Locations). That is, have 2 versions of the page, one with the images and one without, so there everyone has access to the information even if their browser struggles to load 2000 images on one page (even if low res and small, that is a lot of requests to the server when page being populated and that alone is going to slow things down). The plan is to just try it out, and if it doesn't work then to come up with a better solution instead (but seeing point 1 above, you can see why feet might be dragging a little bit when it comes to all the work involved in getting the images uploaded when possibility the final page is mostly useless).

3. quality: just for the picture item images - these are really low quality. I am not doubting your photoshop skills or anything when I say I doubt you can improve them. The source image files are really small, they are pixelated and blurry, average 1-3kb in size, and there is not much that can be done about that. They look fine in the middle of a detailed picture, but when pulled out and then blown up to a size needed for such an undertaking, they look awful. I have played around with photoshopping screen grabs from different devices, pulling the images directly from the game files on various mobile platforms of the game, and last week even had a look at pulling the images directly from the flash used in the facebook version of the game. The result is always the same, as they are using the same small source images for each item. There are multiple versions of each item in the picture (to match their multiple hiding places, be it foreground or background of the picture) so the best version needs to be identified for each item. But even then, not guaranteed that it will look good.

Compare the garden item from Japanese House:

(i) taken from a screen grab of the picture during an investigation, when it was in the open in the foreground (actually in morphs mode as that turned out to be clearest version)



(ii) taken directly from the source files of the game (standalone version)



(iii) extracted from the flash



its obvious that the straight up photoshop job is the worst - there is too much compression of the source file before you ever get to it. but the others are not fantastic either (and these are best of about 10 options available for the picture). They will have to be used in such a way as to keep them very small on the page, as blowing them up too much just highlights the low quality of the image (never meant to be seen that big). So for all the picture items, the best approach will be a direct extraction from the game and then choosing the best of the available versions (and, if necessary, removing any residual background) before going through the naming, uploading and organisation above.

Basically, it is a lot of work, and I don't have that much time for the wiki at the moment.