Wikipedia talk:Department of Fun/Word Association/Word before last

Marking which words link with each other.
When I began this game in February 2007, I didn't expect it to be as popular as it has proved. By the end of the year, the final two games will eventually come to an end, at which point I will open a new game if someone doesn't beat me to it.

In Edit mode, there are &lt;!--a--&gt; and &lt;!--b--&gt; signs to remind players which words associate with each other, but when viewing the project page there is no such distinction, just a continuous list of blue links. This setup has the advantage of requiring only minimal knowledge of Wiki code, allowing a beginner to join in.

I had the idea of making every second word a different colour (One, Two, Three,  Four ) but that requires the rather unwieldy command &lt;font color="green"&gt;&#91;&#91;Link&#93;&#93;&lt;/font&gt;.

Do the game players find the current layout satisfactory or can any Wikipedians suggest an easy way of distinguishing on the project page which words link together?

Originally posted: Knaw 23:19, 7 July 2007 (UTC)

This edit: Knaw (talk) 21:03, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

Proposal: Discontinue play, fully protect, and mark as historical
Per the discussion at Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Wikipedia:Department of Fun/Word Association there has been a great sprawl of word association games in the Department of fun. I'm going around to each of the individual games and making a proposal to discontinue the play on those that have significantly difficult rule sets or ones that have not been exceptionally active.

There have been 13 plays in the past year with 7 unique players. The rule set is quite esoteric and requires a significant explanation on how to play. I note that these high thresholds to entry limit the amount of players this game could have. Therefore I propose the following:

Pending strenuous objection, Department of Fun/Word Association/Word before last shall be marked and fully protected after May 20th.

This gives a little over 2 months for editors who only occasionally play time to consider and respond to this proposal. Thank you for your time. Hasteur (talk) 21:20, 20 March 2013 (UTC)
 * How, exactly, are the rules esoteric? They're really quite easy to understand. Whoop whoop pull up Bitching Betty 21:27, 20 March 2013 (UTC)
 * Considering the level of rules difficulty as compared to the more mainstream ones, I think it's reasonable to call it esoteric. Hasteur (talk) 21:31, 20 March 2013 (UTC)


 * Maybe we should encourage people to play. Simply south...... catching SNOWballs for just 6 years 10:06, 22 March 2013 (UTC)
 * I strenuously object to the idea of fully protecting and marking historical any word association game. If they are causing problems then they should be deleted, if there is no problem sufficient to warrant deletion then there is no problem leaving them idle. I can't remember which discussion it was now, but there was consensus to delete all the archives of old games we used to keep. Thryduulf (talk) 14:38, 22 March 2013 (UTC)