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.  (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:

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, 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:
 * 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.  -Falzar FZ- (talk page|useful stuff) 13:27, September 26, 2012 (UTC)


 * I like
 * 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)