MediaWiki - User contributions [en]

Zak Penn

2018-09-01T08:25:30Z

Xensyria: correcting birthday – see https://twitter.com/zakpenn/status/903678044417671168

'''Zak Penn''' (born [[March 23]], [[1968]]) is an American screenwriter, best known for his spec script that became ''The Last Action Hero''. He wrote unused screenplays for ''[[X-Men|X2]]'', ''The Incredible [[Hulk]]'' and ''The [[Avengers]]'', and co-wrote ''Elektra'', ''X-Men: The Last Stand'', ''Ready Player One'' and ''Suicide Squad 2''. He is among the writers assembled by [[Akiva Goldsman]] to develop spin-offs for the ''Transformers'' [[live-action film series]].

He and Werner Herzog were once attacked by the Loch Ness monster.

==External links==
*{{w|Zak Penn}} on Wikipedia
*[http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0672015/ Zak Penn] at the Internet Movie Database

{{DEFAULTSORT:Penn, Zak}}

[[Category:DreamWorks]]
[[Category:Writers]]

User:Xensyria

2017-05-25T11:49:10Z

Xensyria: updating link to Transformers Wiki talk:Community Portal/Archive55

{|
|-
|[[Image:Barcode Battler Megatron Card Front.jpg|400px]]
|[[Image:Barcode Battler Megatron Card Back.jpg|400px]]
|-
|colspan=2|"Megatron" card for Barcode Battler.
|-
|colspan=2|[[Transformers Wiki talk:Community Portal/Archive55#Megatron Barcode Battler Card]]
|-
|colspan=2|[[Talk:Trademark#Old example: "Megatron" Barcode Battler promo card]]
|}

User:Xensyria

2012-10-20T23:27:45Z

Xensyria: New page: {| |- |400px |400px |- |colspan=2|"Megatron" card for Barcode Battler. |- |colspan=2|[[Tr...

{|
|-
|[[Image:Barcode Battler Megatron Card Front.jpg|400px]]
|[[Image:Barcode Battler Megatron Card Back.jpg|400px]]
|-
|colspan=2|"Megatron" card for Barcode Battler.
|-
|colspan=2|[[Transformers Wiki talk:Community Portal#Megatron Barcode Battler Card]]
|-
|colspan=2|[[Talk:Trademark#Old example: "Megatron" Barcode Battler promo card]]
|}

Talk:Trademark

2012-10-20T02:05:19Z

Xensyria: /* Old example: "Megatron" Barcode Battler promo card */ five not two blank cards

It's a word with a strict dictionary definition, and it doesn't specifically refer to Transformers, nor is it a fan-coined term like "retool" or "neon." Why would it need an article? - [[User:Dark T Zeratul|Dark T Zeratul]] 05:12, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

: Because it's kind of important to Transformers, since it determines what things are NAMED? And the "CANT THEY JUST CALL HIM AUTOBOT HOT ROD" continuiously comes up, so having a page that explains why not we can just link to for the various explanations as to the name changes and etc would be quite the handy thing to have? --[[User:M Sipher|M Sipher]] 05:16, 17 October 2006 (UTC)
:: For the love of God, yes please. Then I wouldn't have to explain what trademarks mean in context to Transformers thirty million times a week, instead just linking a URL. That's something a dictionary definition certainly won't give. --[[User:ItsWalky|ItsWalky]] 05:22, 17 October 2006 (UTC)
:::If it's so incredibly important and you all seem to know exactly what such an article should contain, then why don't you actually make it? It's been on the Most Wanted page for a while. - [[User:Dark T Zeratul|Dark T Zeratul]] 07:03, 17 October 2006 (UTC)
::::We're hoping our trademark lawyer friend will write it. He's just been busy. --[[User:ItsWalky|ItsWalky]] 07:08, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

:::::Think this will get him unbusy? ;-) -[[User:Autobus Prime|Autobus Prime]] 12:24, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

::::::I work in trademarks now. I could have a whack at it if ye like. --[[User:Ratbat|Ratbat]] 10:04, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

This article is so rad.--[[User:OctopusPrime|Octopus Prime- King of the Road!]] 12:42, 17 October 2006 (UTC)
: Ronimus Prime, who is NOT trademarked, concurs.[[User:Ronimus Prime|Ronimus Prime]] 14:18, 27 August 2007 (UTC)

Just as a sidenote, whoever came up with Autobot Carblast gets the Awesome badge. [[User:Nutjob RT|Nutjob RT]] 14:38, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

==Cleanup tag==
Quite frankly, I've long felt that this article is one of the worst offenders here in terms of sacrificing useful information on the alter of dubious attempts at humor. --[[User:TVsGrady|TVsGrady]] 19:22, 2 November 2007 (UTC)

: Fucking Outback Steakhouse. --[[User:FFN|FFN]] 03:03, 15 November 2007 (UTC)
Well, poop. Always liked this one.--[[User:Chiasaur11|Chiasaur11]]
::The mighty Carblast is still there. --[[User:FFN|FFN]] 16:28, 15 November 2007 (UTC)
:::The new article is excellent. The old one was actually not a dubious attempt at humor. This is not because it was brilliant (although it of course was exceedingly brilliant, by the Usual Standards for Such Things) but because it was a dubious attempt at irritating the ever-busy legal types to the point that somebody would actually write a proper article. I can't find my d20. --[[User:Autobus Prime|Autobus Prime]] 17:09, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

=="Convert" not "Transform"==
Cite me, because that was precisely what I was told when doing the TF movie game guide. Fun Publications is also under this edict. --[[User:M Sipher|M Sipher]] 05:44, 15 November 2007 (UTC)
:Danke. I'm not up on all the wiki-coding stuff yet. --[[User:M Sipher|M Sipher]] 16:13, 15 November 2007 (UTC)

== Comic books ==

What's with comic book titles? I'm thinking of the Spotlights in particular. Even if one were to argue that IDW doesn't actually claim the trademark to "Hot Rod", "Drift" etc., and the actual title of all the Spotlight issues is simply ''Transformers: Spotlight'', as evidenced from the lag of ™ claims after the individual characters' names, IDW would still have to make sure they don't collide with other companies' trademarks, right? Because even when they don't consider the names trademarks from a to-be-defended standpoint, they'd still need to make sure another company doesn't either, since those flashy, artistic renditions of the names sure do ''look'' like something that might be considered a trademark. Thoughts?--[[User:Nevermore|Nevermore]] 06:39, 29 April 2009 (EDT)
:Book titles are a completely different animal. IDW doesn't need to worry about the name of the guy in a spotlight issue anymore than Marvel needed to worry about "End of the Road!" on every every single final issue he's written. --[[User:FortMax|FortMax]] 06:53, 29 April 2009 (EDT)
:Speaking just in tersm of books-books... there's been sixty-bazillion books called "The Ring." You sometimes get books with the same title published the same year. *shrug* -[[User:Derik|Derik]] 08:36, 29 April 2009 (EDT)

:Comics/books are an entirely different field of TMing than toys - two completely different companies can hold the same trademark in different fields. It's how you can get VW Polos and Polo mints which don't conflict with each other. - [[User:SanityOrMadness|SanityOrMadness]] 10:46, 29 April 2009 (EDT)
::Thank you for entirely missing the point and answering a question I didn't ask! Now, on to what Fort Max said... If I understand it right, it works like this: Since IDW doesn't own Transformers, but only publishes those comcis unser license from Hasbro, they see no need to trademark individual comic titles. That would be Hasbro's problem - and since Hasbro sees little purpose in actively defending names such as "Jazz" or "Hot Rod" in the comic book field, they don't bother either. So those names are not trademarks, they are just treated as "flashy graphics" or exclamations or whatever. All of this isn't a problem ''until'' one of those names ''happens'' to be ''actually'' trademarked by another company. So if DC were to have a theoretical superhero title named "Shockwave" on the market, IDW couldn't release "Transformers: Spotlight Shockwave", even when they wouldn't claim "Shockwave" as a trademark. Did I get that right?--[[User:Nevermore|Nevermore]] 06:22, 27 May 2009 (EDT)
:::I don't think so. The publishing title of the comic is "Transformers Spotlight." The publishing title of the DC book would be "Shockwave." If Superman puts in a guest appearance in "Shockwave" the title doesn't legally change to "Shockwave Guest Starring Superman", and the IDW book didn't become "Transformers Spotlight Shockwave" either. The character names on each issue of Spotlight are probably considered cover blurbs - "In this issue: Shockwave!" Even if DC ''had'' a dude named "Shockwave", unless he was bright purple and overly logical and had one eye, or was an outer-space robot villain, I don't think there'd be much actionable content there - both Marvel and DC have characters named "The Scarecrow" with virtually identical gimmicks (criminals who dress as scarecrows). Even then, I'm almost certain Hasbro/IDW could claim first usage, as Hasbro has been licensing comic books with a one-eyed robot named "Shockwave" for 25 years now. [[User:Hooper X|Hooper_X]] 10:50, 27 May 2009 (EDT)
::::Two words: "Captain Marvel".
::::Or, in longer form, DC can't put "Captain Marvel" on the cover of ANY book they publish, even though they have the first guy to be called that, because Marvel have the trademark. Even if they want to flag up a guest appearance, the blurb STILL has to be "Guest-starring The Power of Shazam!" or something along those lines. - [[User:SanityOrMadness|SanityOrMadness]] 12:15, 27 May 2009 (EDT)
::::Case in point: http://www.comics.org/coverview.lasso?id=246271&zoom=4 - [[User:SanityOrMadness|SanityOrMadness]] 12:19, 27 May 2009 (EDT) - [[User:SanityOrMadness|SanityOrMadness]] 12:19, 27 May 2009 (EDT)
::::I'm not talking about a theoretical DC Comics "Shockwave" character. I'm talking about an actual "Shockwave" comic from DC, released as "Shockwave". Captain Marvel is a perfect example: Both Marvel and DC have characters of that name, but Marvel has the trademark. So even though DC can call the character "Captain Marvel" in dialogue, they have to release comics starring their Captain Marvel under titles such as "The Power of Shazam!" They occasionally refer to the character as "Captain Marvel" on their comic covers, but unless I'm mistaken, they refrain from rendering the name as a flashy graphic, which could get mistaken for a trademark. As far as I recall, [http://media.comicvine.com/uploads/0/4/36312-5515-40555-1-power-of-shazam--th_super.jpg this here] is about as fancy as DC would ever go in terms of rendering the name "Captain Marvel" on a comic book cover. Aaaand SOM just beat me to the punch.--[[User:Nevermore|Nevermore]] 12:21, 27 May 2009 (EDT)

:::::[http://www.drunkduck.com/Bad_Guy_High/index.php?p=54962 The Power of Fawgsbm!] is kinda a special case, in term of how ''thoroughly'' he got legally buttraped.
:::::Basically what it comes down to is this vague idea of "Pre-eminent brand." Marvel is such a looming force in the comics marketplace, that ''any'' character with the "Marvel" in their name is ''automatically'' trading on their name. "Mom, buy me some Marvel Comics!" ''*2 hours later*'' "WTF is this crap? Talking tigers?" It's not so much about Trade'''mark''' per-se so much as it is about 'genuine opportunity for confusion.'
:::::[[Wikipedia:Mini (BMW)|MINI]] wouldn't be allowed to sell a car called the "Mitsubishi"-- even thought here is no ''car'' called "Mitsubishi", they'd clearly be creating confusion with the car ''company'' of the same name.
:::::Captain Marvel ''should'' rightly have fallen under a Grandfather Clause... but the problem is that CM's trademark was ''already'' weakened by the '66 [http://www.dialbforblog.com/archives/46/ The Power of Split/Xam!] series. D.C. ''failed'' to shut ''Split/Xam!'' for violating their trademark (to say nothing of copyright!) even though they ''did'' cease-and-desist MF Ent. from using a vaguely-Batmanlike villain called "The Bat." DC failed to defend their trademark-- and they could ''hardly'' claim ignorance of the violation since they sued over a separate character who ''appeared'' in that title. Undefended trademarks are ''weakened''.
:::::So by 1966, there was legal precedent for the idea "a comic named Captain Marvel is fair game for non-DC publishers." And ''lo and behold'' in 1967, guess who makes his first appearance? Mar-Vell.
:::::Marvel gives him his own title in 1968, then files papers saying-- "Yeah, we ''know'' it's traditionally been okay for anyone to publish a book called Captain Marvel-- but we've been around for 7 years now and don't seem to be going anywhere... and while ''as it stands'' we can both publish a comic called 'Captain Marvel', it really feels like the marvel name is becoming ''so prominent'' that this continued use threatens to dilute our Trademark, or possibly constitutes trading on our name."
:::::This seems like a silly argument, but remember '''both National and Atlas had renamed their companies after the name of one of their comics'''. (Detective Comics and the lesser-known Marvel Comics, where the Human torch first appeared.) Titles of comics and names of the companies that produced them had a significant inter-relationship at the time.
:::::*DC shafted Shazam with copyright
:::::*Marvel shafted Shazam with trademark
:::::*DC protested Mar-vell on copyright grounds
:::::*Marvelman was a DC copyright violation who got shafted by Marvel via trademark
:::::It's not ''that'' complicated. ;-) -[[User:Derik|Derik]] 17:36, 27 May 2009 (EDT)
::::::What Derik said. Captain Marvel is a completely unique and convoluted case - it's also worth noting that the word-marks being used for the various TF names aren't being trademarked, nor are they being used, to the best of my knowledge, anywhere else. (Unlike, say, the word-marks created for the 2007 movie cast, which appear on some of the toys and a fair bit of the ancillary printed merchandise; gift wrap, stickers, etc.) [[User:Hooper X|Hooper_X]] 17:43, 27 May 2009 (EDT)

== Copyright ==

Since this is the main place where those who understand IP law hang out...

Does anyone feel able to have a bash at a [[copyright]] article that answers the "who owns what?" questions (e.g. Circuit Breaker, Death's Head, the Neo Knights) and also why some issues are present in some tradepaperbacks but missing from others? And similarly whether or not a new licensee can use elements from a previous fiction? [[User:Timrollpickering|Timrollpickering]] 16:41, 30 June 2009 (EDT)

:I tried [[User:Nevermore/Sandbox/Copyright|this]].--[[User:Nevermore|Nevermore]] 11:30, 29 October 2011 (EDT)

== Genericized trademark watch ==

The Fisher Price [http://www.fisher-price.com/fp.aspx?st=7080&e=product&pid=49464 Dragonwagon] "transforms into a dragon." - [[User:Starfield|Starfield]] 23:16, 17 October 2009 (EDT)
: There's a fair bit of "Transforming" stuff on shelves right now - there's a Transforming Batmobile in the current Batman line, and those thumb skateboard figurines have a toy that's actually marked as "Vansformer" - it's a van that folds out into a playset. I don't know whether it's an aggressive attempt to fight over the trademark or if it's jsut trying to cash in on the current popularity, though. [[User:Hooper X|Hooper_X]] 09:47, 18 October 2009 (EDT)
:: [http://www.amazon.com/dp/B003F7V6AI LEGO Atlantis Undersea Explorer TRANSFORMS]--[[User:Nevermore|Nevermore]] 08:27, 13 December 2010 (EST)

== Old example: "Megatron" Barcode Battler promo card ==

Here's an early(ish) example of another company using a Transformers name on their product that lies outside of their trademark.
{|
|-
|[[Image:Barcode Battler Megatron Card Front.jpg|200px]]
|[[Image:Barcode Battler Megatron Card Back.jpg|200px]]
|}
Released as a promo in the U.K. around 1992 by Toys R Us for the Barcode Battler, it was given away with five [http://barcodebattler.co.uk/scans/UK/ToysRUsF.jpg blank] [http://barcodebattler.co.uk/scans/UK/ToysRUsB.jpg cards] (the bottom scan - the middle is from the Barcode Battler box) to add your own barcodes to, and a card wallet to store them in.

Note the lack of a picture of Megatron (the character on the front is taken from the Barcode Battler box), the implication that he is a "good guy" (perhaps to distance themselves from the Transformer) and the fact that Megatron hadn't been sold in the U.K. for [[Generation 1 (European toyline)#UK|about six years]]. No other promo cards (with Tranformers names or otherwise) are known to have been made.

The original discussion can be found [[Transformers Wiki talk:Community Portal#Megatron Barcode Battler Card|here]], and if anyone thinks it merits a place in the article then by all means add it. --[[User:Xensyria|xensyria]] 15:51, 19 October 2012 (EDT)

MediaWiki talk:Community Portal

2012-10-19T19:55:06Z

Xensyria: /* Megatron Barcode Battler Card */

__NEWSECTIONLINK__

This is the place for discussion of topics that affect the entire wiki. Some topics that would ordinarily be here have merited their own pages:

{{chapters|title=Specific Discussion Subjects|align=left|content=
<div class="list-header">'''Moving From Wikia:'''</div>
* [[Transformers Wiki talk:Community Portal/Arriving|Arriving]]
* [[Transformers Wiki talk:Community Portal/Leaving|Leaving]]
* [[Transformers Wiki:Community Portal/Complaints|Complaints]]
<br/><div class="list-header">'''New Ad Policy:'''</div>
* [[Transformers Wiki:Ads|Ads]]
<br/><div class="list-header">'''Bookworm Database-Crash:'''</div>
* [[Transformers Wiki talk:Community Portal/Damage Control Central|Damage Control Central]]
* [[Project:Bookworm Crash]]
* [[Transformers Wiki talk:Community Portal/Leaving2|Leaving Take 2]]
<br/><div class="list-header">'''Server Move:'''</div>
* [[Transformers Wiki talk:Community Portal/Arriving2|Arriving Take 2]]
<br/><div class="list-header">'''Relicensing:'''</div>
* [[Transformers Wiki talk:Community Portal/Relicensing|Relicensing]]
<br/><div class="list-header">'''Dealing With Vandalism:'''</div>
* [[Transformers Wiki talk:Community Portal/Vandalism|Vandalism]]
<br/><div class="list-header">'''GoBots Sister Wiki:'''</div>
* [[Transformers Wiki talk:Community Portal/GoBots|Discussion on the place of GoBots in this wiki]]
}}<br/>

{{:{{FULLPAGENAMEE}}/Archive}}


==Adding to the Armada cartoon article==

Hello! New guy around here! I would like to add information about Home Video releases of Transformers Armada to its article. As I have no authorization to add to it, here is the information I can provide:

- Home Video Release in Bulgaria:
In Bulgaria "IP Video" released the complete series, spread across 15 volumes, as well as a "Best of" DVD. The DVDs were also distributed with a weekly newspaper upon their intial release. Volumes 1-8 contain 3 episodes each, with volumes 9-15 and the "Best of" DVD containing 4 episodes each.

Transformers: Armada vol.1 - First Encounter
Transformers: Armada vol.2 - Soldier
Transformers: Armada vol.3 - Palace
Transformers: Armada vol.4 - Ruins
Transformers: Armada vol.5 - Swoop
Transformers: Armada vol.6 - Conspiracy
Transformers: Armada vol.7 - Decisive Battle
Transformers: Armada vol.8 - Chase
Transformers: Armada vol.9 - Detection
Transformers: Armada vol.10 - Runaway
Transformers: Armada vol.11 - Rescue
Transformers: Armada vol.12 - Crisis
Transformers: Armada vol.13 - Uprising (The Unicron Battles - part 1)
Transformers: Armada vol.14 - Dash (The Unicron Battles - part 2)
Transformers: Armada vol.15 - Union (The Unicron Battles - part 3)

== TF:Prime jump-fight factoid ==

I've just started to watch Prime, and so far every episode I've seen has had someone do a dramatic jump slowed down jump before landing on someone they are fighting, (and sometimes the camera). It's quirky enough that it's stood out, and I was wondering if it's worth adding to the episode guides? I just wanted to know now because I'm going to be watching the whole of season one over the next few days, and it's easier if I know now than if it's added later. Failing that, is there anything else that people desperatly want added to the Prime episode guides that I should be looking out for? [[User:LiamK|LiamK]] 17:31, 23 January 2012 (EST)
:There is a certain level of ridiculous info you can get away with adding if you're a regular contributor doing serious and consistent work on the pages, and you handle it with sufficient comedic value. Ref: [[Enter the Nightbird|Brawn vs. Soundwave]], [[Countdown to Extinction (episode)|What Makes Starscream the Leader?]], etc. This could conceivably qualify as well, but approach with caution. -- [[User:Repowers|Repowers]] 21:22, 23 January 2012 (EST)
::Fair enough. It wasn't just going to be an adding silly jokes because oh ha ha I think I'm hilarious. I was going to add anything missing to the relevent pages as well. It's just that 5 episodes in, we've had at least 4 dramatic jumps into the camera, one dramatic jump away from the camera, and several semi-dramatic jumps off to the side. It's hilarious when characters like Bulkhead are apparently able to jump 500 feet into the air. If Springer ever shows up in this continuity family, he's gonna reach orbit.[[User:LiamK|LiamK]] 19:59, 25 January 2012 (EST)

== Expandible voice actor lists ==

There's been some noise about some of the voice actor lists getting too long and the need for a way to have them hidden unless the user expands them. I've done some test code which is [http://www.aldenbates.com/vatest.html currently hosted externally] but is easily converted into something that will work on the wiki. Currently tested on Firefox 9 and 10, Internet Explorer 6 and 8, Chrome 16, and Opera 11. Feedback, anyone? --[[User:Abates|abates]] 23:41, 31 January 2012 (EST)
:Although I was expecting a show/hide like how Wikipedia does its navigation templates, I don't mind this. Still needs a "hide" option, if that's possible. [[User:Interrobang|—Interrobang]] 23:46, 31 January 2012 (EST)
::I've added in a hide option. --[[User:Abates|abates]] 00:21, 1 February 2012 (EST)
:::If you set up a <nowiki>{{voiceactors}}</nowiki> template it'd be easy to hide the 'extended' cast names and have them show up automatically if you mouse over. '''<tt><nowiki>{{voiceactors|DEFAULT-TO-VISIBLE|DEFAULT-TO-INVISIBLE}}</nowiki></tt>'''
:::It wouldn't even require Javascript, it could be pure CSS. Simpler is better, IMO. -[[User:Derik|Derik]] 00:26, 1 February 2012 (EST)
::::I kinda dislike the idea of it opening on mouse-over, because it can have unexpected effects on the layout of the rest of the page if you're not paying attention to where you're moving your mouse pointer. --[[User:Abates|abates]] 18:32, 7 February 2012 (EST)
:::::I dislike mouse-over anything. Hide/show is a better interface. [[User:Interrobang|—Interrobang]] 18:48, 7 February 2012 (EST)
::::::Add a third dislike vote for mouse-over. If we do this which (if any) voice actors should be visible without clicking? Only the primary English performer? All English performers? All English and Japanese? None? I vote for none. --[[User:Khajidha|Khajidha]] 19:40, 7 February 2012 (EST)
:::::::I vote for whatever hides the German voice actors. I'd put the English and Japanese actors on a higher tier of importance, but I'm not opposed to hiding them. [[User:Interrobang|—Interrobang]] 19:48, 7 February 2012 (EST)
:::::::I think English and Japanese should always be shown, as they are the two biggest uh... markets? Whatever. Hide everything else, and DEFINITELY make the reveal a deliberate CLICK, not a mouseover. --[[User:M Sipher|M Sipher]] 19:56, 7 February 2012 (EST)
Can we have this template now? I think everybody agrees that the extraneous VAs should be hidden. If people want to hide English and Japanese VAs, then that can be further discussed. [[User:Interrobang|—Interrobang]] 10:48, 14 February 2012 (EST)

:[[Template:va]] (Should it be vas?)
:CSS entties which need to be added to the master file are as follows:
.tt1-voiceactorlist .tt1-extraneousFuckers{
display:none;
}
.tt1-voiceactorlist:hover .tt1-extraneousFuckers{
display:inline;
font-size:smaller;
}
.tt1-voiceactorlist.tt1-more:after{
content: "more";
padding-left:.5em;
font-size:smaller;
color:#999999;
}
.tt1-voiceactorlist:hover.tt1-more:after{
content: none;
}

:Styles are visible now if you've got [[User:Derik/kired tools|Kired Tools]] installed. Alternately you can paste the above into [[Special:Mypage/monacobook.css|your css file]] to get a look at it in action.

:If you want to make it Javascript that's beyond my remit, talk to one of the tech-guys. (Also I think it's a bad idea, but I'm against modifying the DOP for presentational purposes when there's already a markup language intended to control presentation: CSS. The wiki is currently Javascript 'light', I prefer to keep it that way.) -[[User:Derik|Derik]] 13:21, 14 February 2012 (EST)
::Why does it say "hiding the non English/Japanese voiceactors unless the user chooses to mouse over the list", I thought we had decided to make it use a click? --[[User:Khajidha|Khajidha]] 14:19, 14 February 2012 (EST)
::# I don't have the authority or access to implement that.
::# I think it's a terrible idea.
:::By all means, feel free to install the CSS styles (some CSS styles will be required regardless) and see what you think of this implementation.
:::The underlying HTML will be the same for a Javascript implementation anyway. -[[User:Derik|Derik]] 15:13, 14 February 2012 (EST)
So, er, did we come to a decision on either of these methods? I have to admit I kinda forgot about it until now. --[[User:Abates|abates]] 02:13, 5 March 2012 (EST)
:I think consensus is to use clicks, not mouse-over, despite Derik's protests. [[User:Interrobang|—Interrobang]] 04:13, 13 March 2012 (EDT)

== Facebook chat ==

Did the wiki have anyone at the TF Prime Facebook chat? -[[User:Derik|Derik]] 22:38, 6 February 2012 (EST)

==Moving (Prime)/(WFC)/(RB)/(FOC) to (Aligned)==
Considering that characters are part of the Aligned continuity family, like how [[Megatron (Animated)]] belong to the Animated continuity family and [[Megatron (G1)]] belongs to the Generation 1 continuity family.
:No, that's not how we do things. Disambiguations are made by franchise of origin, hence why it's [[Megatron (G1)]], but [[Terrorsaur (BW)]] rather than Terrorsaur (G1), or why it's [[Ironhide (Energon)]] rather than Ironhide (UT). This has been discussed ad infinitum but the consensus remains the same. The only exception has been that characters who debuted in WFC but also appear in Prime get (Prime) because of the slight iffyness of the Aligned family. --[[User:Detour|Detour]] 10:26, 8 April 2012 (EDT)
::(Edit conflict'd by Detour) I don't think we have an especially good, logical reason for why we do that with Aligned characters, other than that it simply feels very "wrong" to label a character with a prominent, regular fictional appearance in the ''Prime'' cartoon with a disambig based on their cameo appearance in a video game tie-in novel. Honestly, given that odd nature of the whole "Aligned" idea and the fact we're already breaking our standard with this continuity family's characters ''anyway'', I'm not entirely opposed to just using (Aligned) as a much handier, self-explanatory disambig, but I don't know if anyone would agree. It ''would'' feel odd, for instance, to label the Rescue Bots with that tag. And Bot Shots are a tremendous pain in the arse - it's so annoying when we have to create articles for Aligned Roadbuster and Topspin and whoever when the Bot Shots are just clearly the movieverse characters. The whole Aligned thing can sometimes be a real wiki-headache. - [[User:Chris McFeely|Chris McFeely]] 10:32, 8 April 2012 (EDT)
:::Why DON'T they just get inserted into the Movie characters sections, then? [This thing applies to a lot of Hasbro's "fuzzier" lines of late, really - stuff's matched up with what other characters in the line are part of rather than just including them in an existing article for the version they're designed after]. - [[User:Mammalian Verisimilitude|Mammalian Verisimilitude]] 10:41, 8 April 2012 (EDT)
::::I think treating Bot Shots as part of Aligned is somewhat dubious. Is there a reason it can't be viewed as using characters from multiple continuity families? --[[User:KilMichaelMcC|KilMichaelMcC]] 11:00, 8 April 2012 (EDT)
:::::We already discussed this [[Talk:Bot Shots|here]]. --[[User:Abates|abates]] 18:59, 8 April 2012 (EDT)
::::::We do that so we don't have to pick nits over where the characters belong. Bot Shots Optimus Prime could fit many of his various incarnations. I disagree with renaming them to (Aligned), somewhat because all of the (WFC) guys will eventually be moved to (Prime), anyway. [[User:Interrobang|—Interrobang]] 05:48, 10 April 2012 (EDT)
But should (Prime)/(WFC)/(RB)/(FOC) be renamed (Aligned) or not?--[[User:Finister2|Finister2]] 05:43, 10 April 2012 (EDT)
:No. --[[User:Detour|Detour]] 11:29, 10 April 2012 (EDT)
::Why?--[[User:Finister2|Finister2]] 13:55, 10 April 2012 (EDT)
:::It's already been explained why. --[[User:Detour|Detour]] 14:40, 10 April 2012 (EDT)

== Universal, properly-translated names of the Japanese Beast Wars/Beast Machines episodes ==

Okay, this has been bothering me for a while. On each page of the [[Beast Wars: Transformers (cartoon)#Episodes|Beast Wars]] and [[Beast Machines: Transformers (cartoon)#Episodes|Beast Machines]] episode, the Japanese title of each episode is given an English translation in each page's Foreign Localization section. And on the [[Geneon Universal Entertainment|Geneon]] page, under the sections of its Beast Wars, Beast Wars Metals, and Beast wars Returns releases, the Japanese episode titles are also translated into English. What's bothering me is that certain episodes are given slightly differently-translated English names when comparing those given on the actual episode pages to those given on the Geneon page. Here's a list of each differing episode title. The episode page names are on the left, and the Geneon page names are on the right:
:"The Solitary Warrior Tigatron" vs. "Lonely Warrior Tigatron"
:"Goodbye, Rattle!?" vs. "Goodbye Rattle!?"
:"The Falcon Warrior Airrazor" vs. "Falcon Warrior Airazor"
:"Floating Island Death Match Part 1" vs. "Floating Island Deathmatch Part 1"
:"Floating Island Death Match Part 2" vs. "Floating Island Deathmatch Part 2"
:"The Destrons' Dramatic Finish" vs. "The Destrons Make Drama"
:"Two Dinobots?" vs. "There are 2 Dinobots?"
:"The Ant Warrior from Hell, Inferno" vs. "Inferno, the Ant Warrior from Hell"
:"Revive, Beast Power!" vs. "Resurrected Beast Power"
:"The Immortal Starscream" vs. "Starscream's Invulnerability"
:"Fare Thee Well, Tigatron" vs. "Farewell Tigatron"
:"The Great King of Terror Arrives!" vs. "The King of Terror Arrives!"
:"You're Under Arrest, Meow" vs. "Meyow're Under Arrest"
:"Gro~w Bigger" vs. "Groooww Bigger"
:"I Am Resurrected, Dā" vs. "I am Resurrected!"
:"Blaze, Dragon" vs. "Blazing Dragon"
:"I Hath Returned" vs. "We Have Returned"
:"Resurrection of the Legend" vs. "Rebirth of the Legend"
:"The Dearly Wished Transformation" vs. "The Transformation of a Dear Wish"
:"The Memory of a Friend" vs. "Memory of a Friend"
:"Mission of the Stars" vs. "Message of the Stars"
:"The Moment of Truth" vs. "The End"
:"Captured Souls" vs. "Capture of the Spirits"
:"The Hellish All-out Attack" vs. "The General Offensive of Hell"
:"The Course of the Future" vs. "The Fate of the Future"
Could someone who's more adept at Japanese please clarify which titles should be universally used on this Wiki, and help in an attempt to create a greater sense of unity between the individual episode pages and the Geneon page (and with any other such pages on this Wiki as well)? --[[User:Sabrblade|Sabrblade]] 01:29, 10 April 2012 (EDT)
:The titles on the episode pages are more refined. Not to mention it would be easier to change the titles on a single page. [[User:Interrobang|—Interrobang]] 05:58, 10 April 2012 (EDT)
::"I Hath Returned"? That's incorrect English. "Hath" was third person singular, not first person ("he hath" not "I hath"). --[[User:Khajidha|Khajidha]] 08:10, 10 April 2012 (EDT)
:::[[User:Apcog|Apcog]] translated that. I recall the intention was to capture the old-timey connotation of the original Japanese. [[User:Interrobang|—Interrobang]] 08:21, 10 April 2012 (EDT)
:Something else that has me pondering are the specific choices made in spelling and grammar of a few of these titles. Like, the inclusion of a "The" where it may not need be (like in "The Solitary Warrior Tigatron" instead of just "Solitary Warrior Tigatron", or "The Falcon Warrior Airrazor" vs. "Falcon Warrior Airazor") or the use a comma (like in "Goodbye, Rattle!?" as opposed to "Goodbye Rattle!?") or a space between two words instead of making them a compound word ("Death Match" vs. "Deathmatch"), and the synonymous use of "Resurrect(ion)", "Rebirth", and "Revive". In these cases, are the titles on the episode pages truly the more precise titles, or could they also use some amending? --[[User:Sabrblade|Sabrblade]] 11:20, 10 April 2012 (EDT)
::Most of those details are up to the translator's discretion. But, like I said, it's easier to just edit the Genon page rather than across multiple articles. [[User:Interrobang|—Interrobang]] 11:33, 10 April 2012 (EDT)

== Category:Deceased ==
Sub-categories
*Category:Deceased (Generation 1 cartoon)
**Category:Deceased (Marvel comics)
**Category:Deceased (BW)
*Category:Deceased (Armada)
*Category:Deceased (Energon)
*Category:Deceased (Movie)
**Category:Deceased (ROTF)
**Category:Deceased (DOTM)
*Category:Deceased (SG)
*Category:Deceased (Animated)
*Category:Deceased (Aligned)

Why not?--[[User:Finister2|Finister2]] 05:52, 10 April 2012 (EDT)

:"Deceased" is a stupid idea on a wiki that focuses on fiction with multiple continuities, time periods, vague "deaths", and resurrections. All characters will inevitably die at one point. This is not a warranted category. [[User:Interrobang|—Interrobang]] 05:55, 10 April 2012 (EDT)

::Vote for "No".
::A character may get killed in a sub-continuity but alive in another. Not to mention if the character will be resurrected or not. (So, we don't need Category:Resurrected characters, either.) --'''[[User:TX55|<span style= "color:#00FA9A">TX55</span>]]'''<small><SUP>''[[User talk:TX55|<span style= "color:#0000CD">TALK</span>]]''</SUP></small> 10:11, 10 April 2012 (EDT)
:::It is an appealing idea, to have categories for characters that are deceased "now." If they are patched up, they get removed from the category. I would have changed the categories to "Deceased (Movieverse)" and "Deceased (UT cartoon)" since they are supposed to be all one continuity. The only problem I see is vague deaths and continuity inconsistencies. People would probably disagree with me that [[Brawn (G1)]] obviously survived that shot to the shoulder. So, unfortunately, I can't fully endorse the idea. - [[User:Starfield|Starﬁeld]] 11:08, 10 April 2012 (EDT)
::::If we go by continuity, we are going to have a ''lot'' of "Deceased" categories. And you could only do it by continuity, which goes against our current methods to have categories by franchise. --[[User:Abates|abates]] 16:46, 10 April 2012 (EDT)
::I agree with you guys in regards to characters. but, what about a category for ''real'' people who have been involved with the Transformers franchise (like voice actors, designers, writers, etc.) who are deceased? --[[User:Sabrblade|Sabrblade]] 11:11, 10 April 2012 (EDT)

== Scheduled downtime. ==

Our hoster is moving servers around tomorrow. One of ours is gonna be moved starting between "Thu Apr 12 23:00:00 UTC 2012 and Fri Apr 13 05:00:00 UTC 2012." So that'll happen. --[[User:ItsWalky|ItsWalky]] 21:52, 11 April 2012 (EDT)
:I presume all the necessary backups have been made? --[[User:Thylacine 2000|Thylacine 2000]] 22:37, 11 April 2012 (EDT)
::Regularly, like clockwork. --[[User:ItsWalky|ItsWalky]] 00:51, 12 April 2012 (EDT)

==Category: Cats==
Presumably we have some kind of unwritten "We don't categorise by altmode" rule in play here, so I apologise if my adding a bunch of characters to this category seemed heavy-handed but in my defence the distinction between ''Shattered Glass'' Steeljaw and G1 Ravage is, eh, pretty much non-existent, Cheetor himself says "I'm a cat", it's a subset of Characters by species and we have K-9 under Dogs, so it's hardly black and white. But my main reason for doing it was that in SEO terms, having the word "Cats" repeatedly linked a bunch of times throughout the wiki is really quite useful, as in the wider internet cats are kind of a big deal. Real effing kitten calendars and all that. Isn't that something to consider? --[[User:Emvee|Emvee]] 03:47, 26 April 2012 (EDT)
:Categorizing by alternate mode has been brought up several times, but nobody has bothered to hammer out the details and do it. I don't particularly care for it one way or another, but putting Transformers in plain categories like "Cats" and "Watercraft" based on alternate mode makes them useless to those who only want to know about actual cats or watercraft in ''Transformers''. That said, I completely fail to see the relevance of Internet memes to our categorization system. [[User:Interrobang|—Interrobang]] 03:59, 26 April 2012 (EDT)
::Well, just that keywords are good for search engines, keywords that link to relevant pages even better and lots of people search for cats on the internet. I know that my girlfriend does and at a time like this (when my birthday is coming up) it's not impossible that she might search for "Transformers cats". If that led her to, say, SG Ravage's page (which is quite accessible to an internet-savvy non-fan with its twitter references and Walky's cartoons) then she may well stick around to find out more, and maybe look for more Transformers cats through the category links at the bottom of the page. At the moment our first link in a Google search is Snow Cat, who's kinda cool but you'd probably have to be a GI Joe fan to really get it. I dunno, I'm just spitballing here, but part of my job is SEO so I hope I at least know something like what I'm talking about. Anyway, that was my line of thinking. If it's problematic then that's fine, but I'm not really convinced by the "people looking for actual cats or watercraft in ''Transformers''" argument either - on a TF wiki I think they'd assume Transformers that turn into either of those things would be included by default. They are robots in disguise, after all. --[[User:Emvee|Emvee]] 14:36, 26 April 2012 (EDT)

== Google + ==
I've made a Google + for the wiki. I just need someone to link it to the main page because I don't know how. This is the link: https://plus.google.com/106006102124340784739 -- [[User:Spydersix|Spydersix]] 19:00, 30 April 2012 (EDT)

== Alt-mode listings ==

I've seen several things here discussing listing alt-modes by ''category'', but I'm looking for something a bit less complicated. I would really appreciate having each character's page at least openly list their alt-mode in the beginning; as it stands, some pages do not make it clear what that character turns into, generally only mentioning it in passing or in screenshots. I think some kind of fill-in-the-blanks template would work well, the kind they use on Wikipedia for comic book superheroes that have sections for code names, secret identities, a brief list of abilities, etc. It doesn't even have to be that thorough, just a small piece under the page's main picture that has "name, alt-mode, faction" would be a nice change of pace. [[User:Deusoma|Deusoma]] 15:15, 2 May 2012 (EDT)
:Your idea is impractical because many characters have had numerous altmodes. Listing all of them would be ridiculously long while trying to generalize them down to a single listing would be useless. For example, [[Optimus Prime (G1)|Optimus Prime]]. The casual fan might assume that you could just list his altmode as "semi truck" and be done with it. But he has also been a bat, a Lambourghini Diablo and a shoe. And that doesn't even get into what kind of "semi truck" he is: cab over engine like the original or long nose like the Generation 2 version. And does it have a sleeper. With or without trailer. And you still haven't covered his non-Earth modes. None of the Cybertronian forms we have seen looks anything like any of the others. --[[User:Khajidha|Khajidha]] 15:29, 2 May 2012 (EDT)
::I don't care one way or the other, but we could hide the minor alternate modes, the same as we do with voice actors. [[User:Interrobang|—Interrobang]] 15:40, 2 May 2012 (EDT)
:While I agree that we should do our best to list alt-modes, at the beginning of the article doesn't seem like the most efficient place to do it. Rather, we should continue listing the alt-mode in the description of the various toys and work on filling in those that are lacking. - [[User:Shellspark|Shellspark]] 16:26, 2 May 2012 (EDT)
: Well, there are a lot of fiction-only altmodes going on. I could see this working as a Notes subsection, possibly as a gallery. --[[User:M Sipher|M Sipher]] 17:27, 2 May 2012 (EDT)
:: Yeah, that's why I always attempt to get an image of each altmode in the fiction section as they appear. --[[User:ItsWalky|ItsWalky]] 17:56, 2 May 2012 (EDT)

==Redundant foreign names==
According to Interrobang:
:"''So? It's been the standard for a long time and exactly how do you expect readers to know that Japan uses the same name without noting it?''"
1) No, it has NOT been "the standard for a long time". In fact, we didn't do this for YEARS. You're the one who seems to have decided, fairly recently, to pull this crap. Like with "mammoth".<br>
2) Well. Why don't we just list every country in the world that also uses that name? After all, how exactly are we to know if the Canadians don't not call her Airachnid, or the Germans, or the Zimbabweans (holy shit "Zimbabweans" is ''correct''?), or the other 190-odd nations across the globe? Oh wait, because we can use some incredibly base deductive reasoning and assume that unless a ''different'' name is listed for a country, ''it's the same name and we don't need to fucking list it there just so you can get a katakana-boner''. --[[User:M Sipher|M Sipher]] 06:45, 3 May 2012 (EDT)
:There is the argument to be made that not including a foreign name leaves the reader unable to know if the character either has the same name in that country, or if that information is just ''missing'' from the article. Not that I disagree that it ''really'' seems to have got out of control, to the point that the Japanese words for "doctor" or "scientist" or "coach" or "mammoth" are being added to nameless characters' articles. I enjoyed our older attitude that basically amounted to "fuck katanana unless necessary to explain something". - [[User:Chris McFeely|Chris McFeely]] 07:05, 3 May 2012 (EDT)
::The counter-argument was already made above. ''Transformers'' is a global brand now, and it's basically a waste of space to list every country where Optimus Prime is called "Optimus Prime" (or as close as they can get phonetically), and better to assume that it is "Optimus Prime" unless otherwise noted. The ''probability'' that the name is the same is pretty damn good nowadays, especially in Japan. --[[User:M Sipher|M Sipher]] 07:34, 3 May 2012 (EDT)
:::I'm sympathetic. If somebody actually does go through the trouble to track down what Airachnid is called in Zimbabwean and it ends up being "Airachnid" then if they put the information down, then nobody else will have to go through the trouble of looking it up. What if redundant foreign names are left <nowiki></nowiki> - [[User:Starfield|Starfield]] 10:04, 3 May 2012 (EDT)
::::I hate seeing redundant names, but I agree that a certain degree of "is this already known?" may exist in a vacuum. I'm not opposed to leaving them in the code but commented out to keep them out of the page itself. -[[User:LV|LV]] 00:00, 4 May 2012 (EDT)
:::::Would it be acceptable to have a template that displays the foreign names, but hides or combines entries if the names are not unique? The template might also be able to auto-categorize by "characters missing ''language'' names", too.[[Special:Contributions/192.249.47.177|192.249.47.177]] 18:49, 29 May 2012 (EDT)

==Toy Fair/Pre-Toy Fair Catalogues==
Collectively we went all out on getting hold of the 86 PTF catalogue when it popped up on eBay and have a nice page with full scans of it (I say "we" I completely missed that fund-raising drive). Going forward, is it a feasible aim for other Toy Fair and Pre-Toy Fair cats to be collected for the Wiki or is 86 known to be the only one of significant interest? I ask because I just stumbled upon an eBay seller with the 88 TF cat (which I'd hoped to procure for use on my Visionaries wiki) and some early 90s ones, all of which are beyond my means, but at relatively reasonable prices. Can't link to them on my phone, but I thought I'd mention it in case they are of significant interest like the 86 one was. [[User:Danja|Danja]] 03:45, 6 May 2012 (EDT)

== Google Chrome ==
Does anybody else experience a ''really'' slow connection to only this site while using Google Chrome? -- [[User:Spydersix|spyder]] 21:42, 17 May 2012 (EDT)

FYI: <nowiki>{{bigquote}}</nowiki> overlaps images in Google Chrome, like on [[Thaddeus Morocco|Morocco]]. I don't know when that started. - [[User:Starfield|Starfield]] 16:03, 22 May 2012 (EDT)

Now, the <nowiki>{{picsneeded}}</nowiki> tag overlaps the top of the episode template. It might just be my computer, but I don't know. -- [[User:Spydersix|spyder]] 18:28, 29 May 2012 (EDT)

:These layout problems are apparently an issue with the latest version of Chrome. I guess they'll get fixed in the next release or something. --[[User:Abates|abates]] 18:10, 31 May 2012 (EDT)
::There's been two new versions of Chrome since you said that, [[User:Abates|abates]], and it hasn't been fixed, so I'm reporting it to Google. Like that's gonna work. -- [[User:Spydersix|spyder]] 10:09, 19 June 2012 (EDT)
:::Is this problem still happening? --[[User:Abates|abates]] 05:22, 15 October 2012 (EDT)
::::Wow, completely forgot about this. And no, since I reported it to Google, it's been fixed. I'm surprised. -- [[User:Spydersix|spyder]][[User Talk:Spydersix|<sup>Use this!</sup>]] 06:26, 15 October 2012 (EDT)

== Transformers 4 ==
Does anyone mind if I take a stab at creating a page for it? I'm not some idiot who's gonna create a crappy page with no effort. Or is it ''way'' to early to do that? -- [[User:Spydersix|spyder]] 19:03, 6 June 2012 (EDT)
:I'd say wait until at least the first poster appears on the Internet, then you'll have some sort of image to put in. Really though it is a bit too early, if everything goes to plan TF4 won't be out for another two years, so the TF4 article would be sitting around with nothing on it for at least a year before we start getting concrete information. [[User:TurboFox|TurboFox]] 17:06, 24 August 2012 (EDT)

== Prime game ==
What do people think about putting [[Transformers: Prime - The Game|Transformers Prime: The Game]] in the nav bar? -- [[User:Spydersix|spyder]] 09:47, 10 June 2012 (EDT)
:Or we can replace the link to the Prime cartoon page with a link to the Prime franchise page, that way it avoids overcluttering the navbar. --[[User:Detour|Detour]] 14:15, 10 June 2012 (EDT)
::Yeah, that also might work. -- [[User:Spydersix|spyder]] 09:23, 11 June 2012 (EDT)
:::At least 95% of the people who click on that are likely to be looking for info on the cartoon, and I feel like if we have Rescue Bots and Dark of the Moon pointing to the cartoon/film rather than the franchises, we should aim to be consistent with our navigation. We'll presumably have to add [[Transformers Universe]] there eventually anyway. --[[User:Abates|abates]] 16:46, 11 June 2012 (EDT)
::::Yeah, I forgot about that. We probably can take Dark of the Moon to declutter it. -- [[User:Spydersix|spyder]] 16:50, 11 June 2012 (EDT)
:::::We could divide things up with subheaders or just by putting darker lines in to split up the links. Man, I wish there was a way to easily add in more links without cluttering up the menu too much. It feels like we should have links to current toylines as well, and maybe the current IDW comics. --[[User:Abates|abates]] 17:21, 11 June 2012 (EDT)
::::::Yeah probably, but what can you do, right? And I like that subheader idea. And on a different note, "Transformers Prime: The Game" is a mouthful. How can we abbreviate that? -- [[User:Spydersix|spyder]] 17:36, 11 June 2012 (EDT)
::::::: TF Prime: The Game??? [[User:Bumblebee2000|Bumblebee2000]] 08:19, 12 June 2012 (EDT)
::::::::Probably the best we can do. -- [[User:Spydersix|spyder]] 13:37, 12 June 2012 (EDT)
:::::::::On abbreviating the name, as everything on the wiki is Transformers, you can say "Prime: The Game" instead of "TF Prime: The Game". The "TF" is assumed. [[User:JohnnyMrNinja|JohnnyMrNinja]] 15:30, 13 June 2012 (EDT)
::::::::::So what are we going to do about this nav bar? -- [[User:Spydersix|spyder]] 18:17, 12 June 2012 (EDT)
:::::::::::Are we using the <nowiki>{{Primecap}}</nowiki> template for images from it? -- [[User:Spydersix|spyder]] 10:07, 13 June 2012 (EDT)

:::::::::::Be patient. This stuff never happens overnight. --[[User:Detour|Detour]] 18:50, 12 June 2012 (EDT)
::::::::::::Not exactly overnight anymore, two months later. As you might be able to tell, patience is not my strong suit. -- [[User:Spydersix|spyder]] 12:10, 30 August 2012 (EDT)
:::::::::::::Sorry, I meant to have a go at fiddling with the lines to break the menu up a bit but I forgot. I'll have a go at it this weekend. --[[User:Abates|abates]] 17:16, 30 August 2012 (EDT)
::::::::::::::Sweet! -- [[User:Spydersix|spyder]] 17:33, 30 August 2012 (EDT)
:::::::::::::::''Niiiiccceeee.'' -- [[User:Spydersix|spyder]] 22:10, 1 September 2012 (EDT)
I have added this and taken out Dark of the Moon, since that's been out for over a year. I was going to add [[Transformers Universe]], but I realised we still don't have a release date for that. I've also added darker lines under the "Main Page" and under the navigation links which are actual articles rather than Wiki things, which will hopefully make those links more grouped in function. You might have to force a refresh to see those. --[[User:Abates|abates]] 22:12, 1 September 2012 (EDT)
:I see them. Nice looking. And I'll let you know when we have a release date. I check every day. -- [[User:Spydersix|spyder]] 22:16, 1 September 2012 (EDT)

I think I'm leaning towards moving the ''[[Transformers: Prime - The Game|Prime: The Game]]'' page to ''Transformers Prime - The Game'', since that's how the official website writes it. So the Nav bar might have to get changed. Just a heads up. -- [[User:Spydersix|spyder]][[User Talk:Spydersix|<sup>Use this!</sup>]] 17:31, 10 October 2012 (EDT)

== Rare/Unkown vintage G1 Walkie Talkie toys? ==

Hi guys. I was just browsing ebay and came across 3 old G1 Walkie Talkies that don't appear to be mentioned on the wiki anywhere.
#1- [http://www.ebay.com/itm/Transformers-Walkie-Talkie-ROBOT-1987-Hasbro-Inc/270982316728/ This] one appears to be an Argentinian Transformer with the mold licensed from Commando Toys.
#2 [http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Transformers-G1-Walkie-Talkies-Boxed-/300654034838?pt=US_Action_Figures&hash=item4600607f96/ These] guys appear to be unnamed generics.
#3 [http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/REAL-VTG-80s-TRANSFORMERS-INTERCOM-TELEPHONE-SYSTEM-WIRED-WALKIE-TALKIE-NIB-MIB-/360458042129?pt=US_Action_Figures&hash=item53ecf93b11 This] one features two Optimus Primes as an "Electronic Intercom Telephone System" (which seems to basically be two walkie talkies connected via a wire). Box says made by Nasta in lager photos and check out that goofy looking transformation sequence.

I'm not entirely sure if any of these are legit as I've never seen them mentioned anywhere else before. Anyone else know more info about these? Should they be added to wiki? [[User:RavenG|RavenG]] 02:27, 16 June 2012 (EDT)
:I used to have a set of #2, but I've no idea where they are now. They were pretty common in the UK I think. --[[User:Emvee|Emvee]] 03:17, 19 July 2012 (EDT)

== Technical Contact (and passwords) ==

Hi, guys. It's Botch the Crab... though I can't sign in as my account. I lost my password. I don't know what email address is associated with the account, but whichever one it is, when I did the "forgot password" thing and was told a new password was emailed to me, I never received any emails.

So my first question is: who can help me re-claim my account?

My second question is: who are the technical administrators of the wiki, and is that information posted somewhere that I couldn't find? I tried contacting Chris McFeely and David Willis, but neither of them were able to help, nor did they know who
would. So! Suggestions?

:I tried emailing your username, but it didn't work... It said that I need to be logged in with a valid email set, but I had done both of those things. Can any other user successfully send an email to [[User:Botch the Crab]]? Because it might be the email module that isn't working and that's why you can't reset your password. I don't think the MediaWiki framework has been updated since 2008 (we're running [http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Release_notes/1.12#MediaWiki_1.12.0 MediWiki 1.12.0]), and if David Willis doesn't know who's running the tech (seeing as how [http://www.networksolutions.com/whois-search/tfwiki.net he registered this site), it makes me think that there are not any people doing that. I could be mistaken, but I think there are only admins that are affecting change within the MW software.
:As far as I know, once a password to a MW site is lost there is no recovery outside of email, at least that is the case for WP. [[User:JohnnyMrNinja|JohnnyMrNinja]] 17:49, 16 June 2012 (EDT)

::I just tried sending an email to Botch and it worked, though the copy I sent myself ended up in my gmail spam folder. --[[User:Abates|abates]] 18:48, 16 June 2012 (EDT)

:::You're right, I had to confirm my email address and now I can email, although emails from this site were marked as spam for me as well. Botch, I can only hope that you haven't checked your spam folder. [[User:JohnnyMrNinja|JohnnyMrNinja]] 00:54, 17 June 2012 (EDT)

:Thanks for all the help, guys. Unfortunately, I haven't received any of the "new password" emails. (Yes, I keep checking the spam folder.) The frustrating part is that without being able to sign in, I cannot confirm ''which'' email address these are being sent to. All my emails are forwarded to my gmail account, so I have no idea why I wouldn't receive them. It's a mystery. It's weird to think it's possible that none of the administrators have the access or ability to solve this.--[[User:Botch|Botch]] 23:18, 18 June 2012 (EDT)
::I thought Scout and/or McFly were doing our technical stuff. --[[User:Abates|abates]] 23:27, 18 June 2012 (EDT)
:::I'm pretty sure that Scout and I have been over this fairly often: We're pretty damned busy, so we're not monitoring the Community Portal pages. If someone's forgotten their password AND the associated email address, there's no real secure way to get them back in. Email addresses aren't exposed to us until we get down to the to SQL DB layer, barring some additional extensions that would expose everyone's information to a trusted few. I strongly suggest making a new account in the interim, while we discuss the repercussions of adding some more User Management extensions, and figuring out who we can trust. I'll tell you this much, though: If your password isn't basically a random scramble of characters and symbols, I wouldn't trust you with maintenance access. It's like giving a handgun to a chimp. (Not picking on anyone in particular, but let's keep this in mind as we start adding cooks to the kitchen.) --[[User:McFly|McFly]] 11:54, 1 August 2012 (EDT)

:Sad update: I managed to scrounge up the database password from some old notes, and I've got your email address: Same one listed on your website. If you can disable whatever's filtering out your spam, that might help, since your site mentions some sort of sender-response mechanism. Poor old Mediawiki is too stupid/honest to pretend that she's a human.--[[User:McFly|McFly]] 12:11, 1 August 2012 (EDT)

== Captions need to go ==

It seems I am not the only one who finds the caption "humor" annoying and irrelevant to the photo it is placed with. I see in huge bold letters 'THE FUNNY STAYS. -The Management' So it seems this is not the first time someone has brought this up.

It seems " The Management " are the few people who get their kicks from such while the rest of the users are stuck just rolling their eyes. I for one will no longer be visiting this wiki because of such.

The nail in the coffin for me was a caption that I looked up as I wondered why I didn't get the "joke" as I seen tons of Xformer related shows. Heaven forbid the joke had nothing to do with transformers, only the person who wrote the joke and a small selection of people probably will understand it.

Just a little FYI 90% of the captions are unfunny, I would dare say 30% or more have nothing to do with xformers.

(sorry if this is in the wrong place, sort of new to wiki's and I wish the first thing I could have posted here would have been positive. I believe this is really positive and will help the wiki more than any article I could have wrote.)
: Thank you for leaving. --[[User:ItsWalky|ItsWalky]] 02:11, 21 June 2012 (EDT)

:Eh, the majority of the time when I stumble on a discussion on wikis on other sites, people will cite TFWiki and Wookiepedia as the best, and are generally complimentary about the humour, so while we occasionally get complaints about it, it seems like the majority of people like it. --[[User:Abates|abates]] 03:29, 21 June 2012 (EDT)

: I also believe that anything else you would have contributed to the wiki would have been less useful than this. --[[User:M Sipher|M Sipher]] 06:58, 21 June 2012 (EDT)

:....xformers? Is spelling out Transformers properly now "2 kool for skool"? --[[User:Detour|Detour]] 07:32, 21 June 2012 (EDT)

:The Funny '''STAYS'''. --'''[[User:TX55|<span style= "color:#00FA9A">TX55</span>]]'''<small><SUP>''[[User talk:TX55|<span style= "color:#0000CD">TALK</span>]]''</SUP></small> 09:26, 22 June 2012 (EDT)

:I'd note that if you want a serious TF wiki, there's an abandoned Wikia wiki that nobody seems to have gotten the bright idea of turning into one yet instead of always trying to convert this one. --[[Special:Contributions/108.176.195.222|108.176.195.222]] 01:43, 22 June 2012 (EDT)

::Some people here have actually mentioned this idea to the wikia "community", but they seem hellbent on remaining a poor copy of this site. The fact that they have barely added any pages since this site began while we have doubled in size doesn't seem to register to some of the people over there. --[[User:Khajidha|Khajidha]] 02:37, 22 June 2012 (EDT)

: If you feel that bad about it then write some of your own on the Pics with out Captions. (hell knows that ultra magnus "I can deal with that" has been done to death)[[User:Phantom|Phantom]] 09:38, 22 June 2012 (EDT)
::To be fair, serious captions, unless vital to the understanding of the picture, tend to get rewritten here. --[[User:Abates|abates]] 18:42, 22 June 2012 (EDT)

== Spoiler titles ==

Something which came up last month, but I didn't want to bring it up at the time because it would only have compounded the problem.

The title for [[How Ratchet Got His Hands Back|IDW MtMtE #5]] was placed at the '''end''' of the issue, [http://www.comics.org/issue/26304/cover/4/ "The Night Gwen Stacy Died"]-style (rather than the typical beginning/first splash page), because it was ''itself'' a spoiler.

So, of course, every page which had a {{tl|spoiler}}-tag for the issue plastered it in the spoiler tag itself.

There's got to be a better way of doing this if a comic gets a spoiler-title again. -- [[User:Mammalian Verisimilitude|Mammalian Verisimilitude]] 20:19, 7 July 2012 (EDT)
:The spoiler tags could have linked to the "More than Meets the Eye issue 5" redirect instead (the issue was originally created there to avoid just that problem, but then it got moved to the actual title anyway) --[[User:Abates|abates]] 20:30, 7 July 2012 (EDT)

Speaking of SPOILERS, is there any way people could ''stop'' putting them up for comics before the issues actually come out? By sheer happenstance, I just came across some significant details on the Wiki about the DJD, their leader, and their membership that I honestly would have preferred to read for myself when it's published. It was posted by long time members, so I'm assuming it's legit and came from SDCC or somewhere, but there are no sources so I can't be sure. If an anon posted that stuff, I probably would have removed it as typical Wikipedia fanfic trying to creep in.

Regardless, it's getting tough to come onto the TFwiki because of this stuff. Whenever a new 5-page preview for RID or MTMTE comes out, people are immediately updating the crew on the ''Lost Light'' page, adding place-holder storylinks to pages for new characters showing up, and just generally revealing every detail they can extract from the previews ahead of time. I get that avoiding spoilers on the internet is a luxury nowadays, but these previews come out nearly a week in advance for each of IDW's two series. Its one thing to avoid SPOILERS-labeled topics in a message board...its another to avoid the entire TFwiki for a third of every month to dodge preview materials. --[[User:Xaaron|Xaaron]] 21:52, 20 July 2012 (EDT)
:This one I'll have to own, as 'twas me that did the deed. It was, as you speculated, another five page preview from IDW. I'd ''hoped'' the details I put in weren't too spoilery, as in the leader's case it was mostly putting a name to details we'd found out issues before. I can only apologize and try to be a bit more careful.--[[User:Rosicrucian|Rosicrucian]][[User Talk:Rosicrucian|<sup>Talk</sup>]] 22:11, 20 July 2012 (EDT)
::I'll also say that I was going to stick the group shot of them up on the wiki, but I can hold off if you think that would be best.--[[User:Rosicrucian|Rosicrucian]][[User Talk:Rosicrucian|<sup>Talk</sup>]] 22:40, 20 July 2012 (EDT)

== Autobot Communications officer in Headmasters ==

<nowiki>[[Image:Hm - autobot communications officer.jpg|thumb]]</nowiki>
Hey, this guy appeared in a single episode of Heamasters where he was the communications officer on-duty at Autobot City. ...does anyone know which episode? -[[User:Derik|Derik]]
:[[The Final Showdown on Earth (Part 1)]]. --[[User:Abates|abates]] 01:27, 18 July 2012 (EDT)
::Sir, you are a gentleman and a [[Transformerology|Transformerologist]]. -[[User:Derik|Derik]] 01:47, 18 July 2012 (EDT)

== Connection issues ==

Is it just me or are there problems with the wiki's server or in how many connections it can manage at a time? I've not been around for awhile and have noticed that if I spend a few hours reading or editing the wiki, it randomly stops working for periods between 5 minutes to half an hour, which is a problem if I've just made a large edit to something. In fact, in the few minutes that it took for me to write this, it twice stopped working (so I couldn't preview the edit), and that was after sitting around for perhaps 10 minutes waiting for the wiki to allow me to open the community portal page. --[[User:FFN|FFN]] 15:00, 2 August 2012 (EDT)
:I get this a lot, usually only for short periods but quite regularly. Either it just hangs or I get the "unable to serve page" error. Usually halfway through a big edit too, which is why I keep a text editor open to cut and paste stuff into. --[[User:Emvee|Emvee]] 04:41, 30 August 2012 (EDT)

== I ♥ you guys ==

Am I the only one who sees ♥'s everywhere in the RecentChanges page?

Did we screw up the CSS while adding an admin? -[[Special:Contributions/67.6.127.163|67.6.127.163]] 23:03, 29 August 2012 (EDT)
:You don't see them if you're logged in.--[[User:Rosicrucian|Rosicrucian]][[User Talk:Rosicrucian|<sup>Talk</sup>]] 19:10, 30 August 2012 (EDT)
::I think if you're logged in, you still see them if you have the enhanced Recent Changes turned off, because Derik only coded them for the simple version of RC. --[[User:Abates|abates]] 21:39, 1 September 2012 (EDT)

== G.I. Joe wiki - a little help? ==

Hello, all. I just wanted to add a request for some help for what should really by this wiki's sister site, Joepedia, the G.I. Joe Wiki. Now, I posted a similar request on some other sci-fi themed wiki, but the only answer I got was being told that the rules forbid a request from another wiki to be made. Well, I think that was kind of stupid, considering the communal attitude the whole wiki concept represents. BUT, ANYWAY, the Joepedia has been growing over the years, but it's mostly frequented by a small dedicated group of contributors. Since Transformers and G.I. Joe are so closely linked, I hoped some folks on here would like to help.

I will add that I have no authority over on that site, and I don't really contribute much, mostly because of the time spent my own website. I'm just a concerned geeky citizen drumming up some support. --[[User:JMM|JMM]] 10:26, 7 September 2012 (EDT)
:Well, I would, but I really don't know jack shit about G.I. Joe. And when I think about it, I'm not sure this post belongs here. -- [[User:Spydersix|spyder]] 17:36, 7 September 2012 (EDT)
::Just looking around for a little help. This seemed like the closest thing to a G.I. Joe wiki out there, and I figured it was worth a try. --[[User:JMM|JMM]] 13:23, 13 September 2012 (EDT)
::I don't see a problem with a polite request for assistance or notification that a Joe wiki exists, since there IS some crossover interest. I just don't know how much ''useful'' crossover interest for the Joe wiki there is from this end outside of what we've already done. I mean, we've got extensive coverage of the parts of Joe directly involving TFs... I'd say that's probably going to be the most useful thing we have for you. But, if others wanna try it out...<br>
::...unless you're on Wikia.... --[[User:M Sipher|M Sipher]] 13:27, 13 September 2012 (EDT)
:::Yeah, it was just a quick heads up so people who may be interested are aware. I know a number of people who are equally obsessed with TF and Joe. :) Oh, and yes, it is on Wikia! --[[User:JMM|JMM]] 14:22, 13 September 2012 (EDT)
::::We did at one point approach a partnership with Joepedia, and even had a template that cross-linked articles we shared. It was just a little premature at the time (which was years ago) as Joepedia was just starting out and often our articles were more complete than theirs, or theirs were just stubs. It looks like they've gotten off the ground a bit more now.--[[User:Rosicrucian|Rosicrucian]][[User Talk:Rosicrucian|<sup>Talk</sup>]] 15:30, 13 September 2012 (EDT)
:::::Yes, their wiki got started later than this one. They have a small group of dedicated contributers, but the site's yet to attract the kind of interest this one does. --[[User:JMM|JMM]] 16:34, 13 September 2012 (EDT)

== New stub template ==
Does anybody have any objections to a video game stub template? It would look something like this:
<br clear="all" />{{messagebox
|header=This article is still in beta stage.
|message_text=''This video game article is a [[:Category:Video game stubs|stub]] and is missing information. You can help '''{{SITENAME}}''' by [{{SERVER}}{{localurl:{{NAMESPACE}}:{{PAGENAME}}|action=edit}} expanding it].''
|image_name=ProwlTFU.JPG
|image_width=40px
|width = 90%
}}<includeonly>[[Category:Video game stubs]]</includeonly>
If anybody knows of a better picture that would go well with this, please upload it so it can be put in. Thanks! -- [[User:Spydersix|spyder]][[User Talk:Spydersix|<sup>Use this!</sup>]] 15:52, 2 October 2012 (EDT)

:How about a pic from the story where Prime dies in a video game? Heh if only Beta had ever been in a game, that'd be perfect. --[[Special:Contributions/76.28.76.206|76.28.76.206]] 16:03, 2 October 2012 (EDT)
::What story was that? And yeah, that woulda been great. -- [[User:Spydersix|spyder]][[User Talk:Spydersix|<sup>Use this!</sup>]] 19:53, 2 October 2012 (EDT)
:::That would be [[Afterdeath!]]. --[[User:Detour|Detour]] 21:56, 2 October 2012 (EDT)
::::Well if people really want a picture from that, someone else will have to upload it, as I don't have access to it. -- [[User:Spydersix|spyder]][[User Talk:Spydersix|<sup>Use this!</sup>]] 21:59, 2 October 2012 (EDT)
:::::[[:Image:Afterdeath-gameoverman.jpg|Right here, dude.]]--[[User:Detour|Detour]] 22:34, 2 October 2012 (EDT)
::::::Thanks, man. It's on the ''[[Transformers: Prime - The Game|Prime: The Game]]'' page if you want to see it. -- [[User:Spydersix|spyder]][[User Talk:Spydersix|<sup>Use this!</sup>]] 22:50, 2 October 2012 (EDT)

In addition to the video game stub, I'd like to suggest adding several templates, such as "section stub" and "fiction stub". Right now, we only have "characer stub fiction" for pages only missing fiction section, but no templates for non-character page missing fiction appearance. While "section stub" can use for articles only missing one or two sections. --'''[[User:TX55|<span style= "color:#00FA9A">TX55</span>]]'''<small><SUP>''[[User talk:TX55|<span style= "color:#0000CD">TALK</span>]]''</SUP></small> 22:05, 2 October 2012 (EDT)
:Ok, so I'm gonna go ahead and make the video game one, and TX, if I get around to it later, maybe the others. If not, well, someone else will. Oh, and if I miss an article that the video game one should go on, put it here. -- [[User:Spydersix|spyder]][[User Talk:Spydersix|<sup>Use this!</sup>]] 22:31, 2 October 2012 (EDT)

== Megatron Barcode Battler Card ==

Hi, I was wondering if anyone here had come across this Megatron card for the Barcode Battler, or knows where in the Wiki it should go:
{|
|-
|[[Image:Barcode Battler Megatron Card Front.jpg|200px]]
|[[Image:Barcode Battler Megatron Card Back.jpg|200px]]
|}
It seems to have been released by Toys R Us in 1992 as a promo for the Barcode Battler (which they were trying to sell in store), and was (as far as is known) the only such Transformers card, probably given away with two [http://barcodebattler.co.uk/scans/UK/ToysRUsF.jpg blank] [http://barcodebattler.co.uk/scans/UK/ToysRUsB.jpg cards] (the bottom scan - the middle is from the Barcode Battler box) to add your own barcodes to, and a card wallet.

The text ("Clad in steel, armed to the teeth, nobody toys with us good guys when this moody cool deadly-dudey is around.") is probably enough to make you want to forget this was ever made (is it really calling Megatron a good guy?), but it's cropped up in enough eBay sales (occasionally found in Barcode Battler lots with the seller unaware that they've got something rare) to make it likely to be genuine.

So does anyone else have any information on it, and whereabouts should this go? [[User:Xensyria|xensyria]] 12:26, 16 October 2012 (EDT) <small>EDIT: 13:10, 16 October 2012 (EDT)</small>
:I definitely don't know anything about it, besides that it's awesome, but if it's from 1992, then the only Megatron it could be is Megatron (G1), and so it should probably be on his toys/merchandise page.
:It's also plausible that someone who knows something about Barcode Battlers should make a short article on them for the wiki, since we have a lot of those "this broader thing had a TF thing released under it" pages. -[[User:LV|LV]] 12:31, 16 October 2012 (EDT)
::Or...this isn't anything to do with a licensed Transformers thing? I sort of blindly assumed Hasbro was the entity selling the Barcode Battler in the UK, but the packaging doesn't seem to support that. It's hard to believe it's not intended to be TF Megatron, but I'm also not sure it's an official product. Especially since this Megatron guy seems to be the boxfront "main character" for the UK Barcode Battler release. -[[User:LV|LV]] 12:37, 16 October 2012 (EDT)
:::Ah, that's a possibility, but Barcode Battler was being distributed in most of Europe by Tomy, so they probably gave Toys R Us rights to use Megatron. Perhaps they couldn't get the rights to use his picture though (as you say, it's Tomy's Barcode Battler cover on the card, so anyone who used the card probably wouldn't think it was supposed to be Megatron). I should also say that 1992 is more of an educated guess than fact, but it's bound to be somewhere around that.
:::If it's offical I don't mind making a Barcode Battler article (though I'll have to check out some of the other examples you mention first). [[User:Xensyria|xensyria]] 13:02, 16 October 2012 (EDT)
::::Wait, I just re-read Wikipedia, and Tomy was rivals with Takara who owned Transformers at the time. Still, I wonder if such big companies would risk a lawsuit over using Megatron, when they had all sorts of other franchises they could use instead; more likely Toys R Us arranged the deal with Hasbro, who they no doubt were one of the biggest retailers for at the time. [[User:Xensyria|xensyria]] 13:04, 16 October 2012 (EDT) <small>EDIT: 13:12, 16 October 2012 (EDT)</small>
:::::Unlikely to be a Hasbro/TF related thing. In 1992 TFs weren't even being made in the US and the UK line didn't have a Megatron, the Decepticons were led by Skyquake at that time. --[[User:Khajidha|Khajidha]] 13:14, 16 October 2012 (EDT)
:::::Well, this is sort of like with Yu-Gi-Oh's Space Megatron, Hasbro's trademark just didn't apply to things like gaming cards, so Tomy, just like Konami later, was in a safe zone. --[[User:Detour|Detour]] 14:20, 16 October 2012 (EDT)
::::::Ah, that would explain the "good guys" text as well. It seems to be a U.K. only thing, and though there may not have been Megatron toys there (is there a reference to them not being released in the U.K. on this on the wiki?) the name would have been familiar from the the film. Is there anywhere for similarly unofficial merchandice here, or should it be cast back into the purgatory of its makers' device? [[User:Xensyria|xensyria]] 15:11, 16 October 2012 (EDT)
:::::::While I never played it, I distinctively remember Barcode Battlers as well, so it's not a UK-only thing. --[[User:Detour|Detour]] 15:15, 16 October 2012 (EDT)
::::::::My bad, I mean the Megatron card, which uses the Tomy box art (the U.S. version was by Irwin, and Japan by the developer, Epoch). [[User:Xensyria|xensyria]] 15:22, 16 October 2012 (EDT)
:::::::::See [[The Transformers (toyline)]] and [[Generation 1 (European toyline)]] for lists of what was released in the US and Europe each year of the original toyline. --[[User:Khajidha|Khajidha]] 15:37, 16 October 2012 (EDT)
::::::::::Also, in answer to your question about unofficial merchandise, we only cover official products from Hasbro, Takara and their license holders. About the only place that this could really go on this site is the [[trademark]] page, in a similar use as the "Space Megatron" card from Yu-Gi-Oh! --[[User:Khajidha|Khajidha]] 07:53, 18 October 2012 (EDT)
:::::::::::Thanks to all of you for the info. I've added it to the [[Talk:Trademark#Old example: .22Megatron.22 Barcode Battler promo card|trademark talk page]], but will leave it up to you whether it's a notable enough example to be added to the article or not. [[User:Xensyria|xensyria]] 15:55, 19 October 2012 (EDT)

==Recent spamming==
Granted, I haven't been here all that often, but the recent spamming has me wondering if the perpetrator(s) are using some form of IP hopping. It's feeling rather hydra-ish at the moment. --[[User:Lonegamer78|Lonegamer78]] 07:22, 18 October 2012 (EDT)
:I still suggest you add a recaptcha for edits that add external links, at least for new accounts.[[Special:Contributions/192.249.47.177|192.249.47.177]] 14:09, 18 October 2012 (EDT)
::If that's possible, I like that idea. -- [[User:Spydersix|spyder]][[User Talk:Spydersix|<sup>Use this!</sup>]] 18:34, 18 October 2012 (EDT)

== Universe/UT Micromaster combiners ==

There isn't any general page for these, so I'm putting this here.

Given our treatment of the ROTF/Universe (2008) Bruticus Maximus and Superion sets, I wonder if the Universe (2003) Micromaster combiners whose European releases were branded as Energon ([[Defensor (Universe)|Defensor]], [[Constructicon Devastator (Micromaster)|Constructicon Devastator]]) or Cybertron ([[Superion (Universe)|Superion]], [[Rail Racer (Universe)|Rail Racer]]) should be considered Unicron Trilogy characters. It's the same basic situation, except that the nature of Universe (2003) means that just because the European versions are Energon/Cybertron doesn't mean they're different guys. --[[User:Andrusi|Andrusi]] 11:00, 18 October 2012 (EDT)
:Aren't they already listed that way? Defensor and Constructicon Devastator have "Energon Autobot" and "Energon Decepticon" categories and Superion and Rail Racer are in the category "Cybertron Autobots". I haven't checked the individual team members yet. --[[User:Khajidha|Khajidha]] 12:59, 18 October 2012 (EDT)
:Just checked the team members and found only one that was not categorized as Energon or Cybertron characters (Long Haul), I added the appropriate category. --[[User:Khajidha|Khajidha]] 13:04, 18 October 2012 (EDT)
::I guess he's talking about the continuity identifier at the top? [[Special:Contributions/24.211.29.87|24.211.29.87]] 13:24, 18 October 2012 (EDT)
:::Ah, that makes sense. I could see something like the one used for [[King Atlas]]. --[[User:Khajidha|Khajidha]] 13:49, 18 October 2012 (EDT)
::::Yeah, I meant the continuity identifiers (and in the case of some components, like [[Red Alert (Universe)|Red Alert]], the "relation unknown" bio notes). The categories honestly never occurred to me. --[[User:Andrusi|Andrusi]] 12:36, 19 October 2012 (EDT)

Talk:Trademark

2012-10-19T19:51:06Z

Xensyria: /* Old example: "Megatron" Barcode Battler promo card */ new section

It's a word with a strict dictionary definition, and it doesn't specifically refer to Transformers, nor is it a fan-coined term like "retool" or "neon." Why would it need an article? - [[User:Dark T Zeratul|Dark T Zeratul]] 05:12, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

: Because it's kind of important to Transformers, since it determines what things are NAMED? And the "CANT THEY JUST CALL HIM AUTOBOT HOT ROD" continuiously comes up, so having a page that explains why not we can just link to for the various explanations as to the name changes and etc would be quite the handy thing to have? --[[User:M Sipher|M Sipher]] 05:16, 17 October 2006 (UTC)
:: For the love of God, yes please. Then I wouldn't have to explain what trademarks mean in context to Transformers thirty million times a week, instead just linking a URL. That's something a dictionary definition certainly won't give. --[[User:ItsWalky|ItsWalky]] 05:22, 17 October 2006 (UTC)
:::If it's so incredibly important and you all seem to know exactly what such an article should contain, then why don't you actually make it? It's been on the Most Wanted page for a while. - [[User:Dark T Zeratul|Dark T Zeratul]] 07:03, 17 October 2006 (UTC)
::::We're hoping our trademark lawyer friend will write it. He's just been busy. --[[User:ItsWalky|ItsWalky]] 07:08, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

:::::Think this will get him unbusy? ;-) -[[User:Autobus Prime|Autobus Prime]] 12:24, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

::::::I work in trademarks now. I could have a whack at it if ye like. --[[User:Ratbat|Ratbat]] 10:04, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

This article is so rad.--[[User:OctopusPrime|Octopus Prime- King of the Road!]] 12:42, 17 October 2006 (UTC)
: Ronimus Prime, who is NOT trademarked, concurs.[[User:Ronimus Prime|Ronimus Prime]] 14:18, 27 August 2007 (UTC)

Just as a sidenote, whoever came up with Autobot Carblast gets the Awesome badge. [[User:Nutjob RT|Nutjob RT]] 14:38, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

==Cleanup tag==
Quite frankly, I've long felt that this article is one of the worst offenders here in terms of sacrificing useful information on the alter of dubious attempts at humor. --[[User:TVsGrady|TVsGrady]] 19:22, 2 November 2007 (UTC)

: Fucking Outback Steakhouse. --[[User:FFN|FFN]] 03:03, 15 November 2007 (UTC)
Well, poop. Always liked this one.--[[User:Chiasaur11|Chiasaur11]]
::The mighty Carblast is still there. --[[User:FFN|FFN]] 16:28, 15 November 2007 (UTC)
:::The new article is excellent. The old one was actually not a dubious attempt at humor. This is not because it was brilliant (although it of course was exceedingly brilliant, by the Usual Standards for Such Things) but because it was a dubious attempt at irritating the ever-busy legal types to the point that somebody would actually write a proper article. I can't find my d20. --[[User:Autobus Prime|Autobus Prime]] 17:09, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

=="Convert" not "Transform"==
Cite me, because that was precisely what I was told when doing the TF movie game guide. Fun Publications is also under this edict. --[[User:M Sipher|M Sipher]] 05:44, 15 November 2007 (UTC)
:Danke. I'm not up on all the wiki-coding stuff yet. --[[User:M Sipher|M Sipher]] 16:13, 15 November 2007 (UTC)

== Comic books ==

What's with comic book titles? I'm thinking of the Spotlights in particular. Even if one were to argue that IDW doesn't actually claim the trademark to "Hot Rod", "Drift" etc., and the actual title of all the Spotlight issues is simply ''Transformers: Spotlight'', as evidenced from the lag of ™ claims after the individual characters' names, IDW would still have to make sure they don't collide with other companies' trademarks, right? Because even when they don't consider the names trademarks from a to-be-defended standpoint, they'd still need to make sure another company doesn't either, since those flashy, artistic renditions of the names sure do ''look'' like something that might be considered a trademark. Thoughts?--[[User:Nevermore|Nevermore]] 06:39, 29 April 2009 (EDT)
:Book titles are a completely different animal. IDW doesn't need to worry about the name of the guy in a spotlight issue anymore than Marvel needed to worry about "End of the Road!" on every every single final issue he's written. --[[User:FortMax|FortMax]] 06:53, 29 April 2009 (EDT)
:Speaking just in tersm of books-books... there's been sixty-bazillion books called "The Ring." You sometimes get books with the same title published the same year. *shrug* -[[User:Derik|Derik]] 08:36, 29 April 2009 (EDT)

:Comics/books are an entirely different field of TMing than toys - two completely different companies can hold the same trademark in different fields. It's how you can get VW Polos and Polo mints which don't conflict with each other. - [[User:SanityOrMadness|SanityOrMadness]] 10:46, 29 April 2009 (EDT)
::Thank you for entirely missing the point and answering a question I didn't ask! Now, on to what Fort Max said... If I understand it right, it works like this: Since IDW doesn't own Transformers, but only publishes those comcis unser license from Hasbro, they see no need to trademark individual comic titles. That would be Hasbro's problem - and since Hasbro sees little purpose in actively defending names such as "Jazz" or "Hot Rod" in the comic book field, they don't bother either. So those names are not trademarks, they are just treated as "flashy graphics" or exclamations or whatever. All of this isn't a problem ''until'' one of those names ''happens'' to be ''actually'' trademarked by another company. So if DC were to have a theoretical superhero title named "Shockwave" on the market, IDW couldn't release "Transformers: Spotlight Shockwave", even when they wouldn't claim "Shockwave" as a trademark. Did I get that right?--[[User:Nevermore|Nevermore]] 06:22, 27 May 2009 (EDT)
:::I don't think so. The publishing title of the comic is "Transformers Spotlight." The publishing title of the DC book would be "Shockwave." If Superman puts in a guest appearance in "Shockwave" the title doesn't legally change to "Shockwave Guest Starring Superman", and the IDW book didn't become "Transformers Spotlight Shockwave" either. The character names on each issue of Spotlight are probably considered cover blurbs - "In this issue: Shockwave!" Even if DC ''had'' a dude named "Shockwave", unless he was bright purple and overly logical and had one eye, or was an outer-space robot villain, I don't think there'd be much actionable content there - both Marvel and DC have characters named "The Scarecrow" with virtually identical gimmicks (criminals who dress as scarecrows). Even then, I'm almost certain Hasbro/IDW could claim first usage, as Hasbro has been licensing comic books with a one-eyed robot named "Shockwave" for 25 years now. [[User:Hooper X|Hooper_X]] 10:50, 27 May 2009 (EDT)
::::Two words: "Captain Marvel".
::::Or, in longer form, DC can't put "Captain Marvel" on the cover of ANY book they publish, even though they have the first guy to be called that, because Marvel have the trademark. Even if they want to flag up a guest appearance, the blurb STILL has to be "Guest-starring The Power of Shazam!" or something along those lines. - [[User:SanityOrMadness|SanityOrMadness]] 12:15, 27 May 2009 (EDT)
::::Case in point: http://www.comics.org/coverview.lasso?id=246271&zoom=4 - [[User:SanityOrMadness|SanityOrMadness]] 12:19, 27 May 2009 (EDT) - [[User:SanityOrMadness|SanityOrMadness]] 12:19, 27 May 2009 (EDT)
::::I'm not talking about a theoretical DC Comics "Shockwave" character. I'm talking about an actual "Shockwave" comic from DC, released as "Shockwave". Captain Marvel is a perfect example: Both Marvel and DC have characters of that name, but Marvel has the trademark. So even though DC can call the character "Captain Marvel" in dialogue, they have to release comics starring their Captain Marvel under titles such as "The Power of Shazam!" They occasionally refer to the character as "Captain Marvel" on their comic covers, but unless I'm mistaken, they refrain from rendering the name as a flashy graphic, which could get mistaken for a trademark. As far as I recall, [http://media.comicvine.com/uploads/0/4/36312-5515-40555-1-power-of-shazam--th_super.jpg this here] is about as fancy as DC would ever go in terms of rendering the name "Captain Marvel" on a comic book cover. Aaaand SOM just beat me to the punch.--[[User:Nevermore|Nevermore]] 12:21, 27 May 2009 (EDT)

:::::[http://www.drunkduck.com/Bad_Guy_High/index.php?p=54962 The Power of Fawgsbm!] is kinda a special case, in term of how ''thoroughly'' he got legally buttraped.
:::::Basically what it comes down to is this vague idea of "Pre-eminent brand." Marvel is such a looming force in the comics marketplace, that ''any'' character with the "Marvel" in their name is ''automatically'' trading on their name. "Mom, buy me some Marvel Comics!" ''*2 hours later*'' "WTF is this crap? Talking tigers?" It's not so much about Trade'''mark''' per-se so much as it is about 'genuine opportunity for confusion.'
:::::[[Wikipedia:Mini (BMW)|MINI]] wouldn't be allowed to sell a car called the "Mitsubishi"-- even thought here is no ''car'' called "Mitsubishi", they'd clearly be creating confusion with the car ''company'' of the same name.
:::::Captain Marvel ''should'' rightly have fallen under a Grandfather Clause... but the problem is that CM's trademark was ''already'' weakened by the '66 [http://www.dialbforblog.com/archives/46/ The Power of Split/Xam!] series. D.C. ''failed'' to shut ''Split/Xam!'' for violating their trademark (to say nothing of copyright!) even though they ''did'' cease-and-desist MF Ent. from using a vaguely-Batmanlike villain called "The Bat." DC failed to defend their trademark-- and they could ''hardly'' claim ignorance of the violation since they sued over a separate character who ''appeared'' in that title. Undefended trademarks are ''weakened''.
:::::So by 1966, there was legal precedent for the idea "a comic named Captain Marvel is fair game for non-DC publishers." And ''lo and behold'' in 1967, guess who makes his first appearance? Mar-Vell.
:::::Marvel gives him his own title in 1968, then files papers saying-- "Yeah, we ''know'' it's traditionally been okay for anyone to publish a book called Captain Marvel-- but we've been around for 7 years now and don't seem to be going anywhere... and while ''as it stands'' we can both publish a comic called 'Captain Marvel', it really feels like the marvel name is becoming ''so prominent'' that this continued use threatens to dilute our Trademark, or possibly constitutes trading on our name."
:::::This seems like a silly argument, but remember '''both National and Atlas had renamed their companies after the name of one of their comics'''. (Detective Comics and the lesser-known Marvel Comics, where the Human torch first appeared.) Titles of comics and names of the companies that produced them had a significant inter-relationship at the time.
:::::*DC shafted Shazam with copyright
:::::*Marvel shafted Shazam with trademark
:::::*DC protested Mar-vell on copyright grounds
:::::*Marvelman was a DC copyright violation who got shafted by Marvel via trademark
:::::It's not ''that'' complicated. ;-) -[[User:Derik|Derik]] 17:36, 27 May 2009 (EDT)
::::::What Derik said. Captain Marvel is a completely unique and convoluted case - it's also worth noting that the word-marks being used for the various TF names aren't being trademarked, nor are they being used, to the best of my knowledge, anywhere else. (Unlike, say, the word-marks created for the 2007 movie cast, which appear on some of the toys and a fair bit of the ancillary printed merchandise; gift wrap, stickers, etc.) [[User:Hooper X|Hooper_X]] 17:43, 27 May 2009 (EDT)

== Copyright ==

Since this is the main place where those who understand IP law hang out...

Does anyone feel able to have a bash at a [[copyright]] article that answers the "who owns what?" questions (e.g. Circuit Breaker, Death's Head, the Neo Knights) and also why some issues are present in some tradepaperbacks but missing from others? And similarly whether or not a new licensee can use elements from a previous fiction? [[User:Timrollpickering|Timrollpickering]] 16:41, 30 June 2009 (EDT)

:I tried [[User:Nevermore/Sandbox/Copyright|this]].--[[User:Nevermore|Nevermore]] 11:30, 29 October 2011 (EDT)

== Genericized trademark watch ==

The Fisher Price [http://www.fisher-price.com/fp.aspx?st=7080&e=product&pid=49464 Dragonwagon] "transforms into a dragon." - [[User:Starfield|Starfield]] 23:16, 17 October 2009 (EDT)
: There's a fair bit of "Transforming" stuff on shelves right now - there's a Transforming Batmobile in the current Batman line, and those thumb skateboard figurines have a toy that's actually marked as "Vansformer" - it's a van that folds out into a playset. I don't know whether it's an aggressive attempt to fight over the trademark or if it's jsut trying to cash in on the current popularity, though. [[User:Hooper X|Hooper_X]] 09:47, 18 October 2009 (EDT)
:: [http://www.amazon.com/dp/B003F7V6AI LEGO Atlantis Undersea Explorer TRANSFORMS]--[[User:Nevermore|Nevermore]] 08:27, 13 December 2010 (EST)

== Old example: "Megatron" Barcode Battler promo card ==

Here's an early(ish) example of another company using a Transformers name on their product that lies outside of their trademark.
{|
|-
|[[Image:Barcode Battler Megatron Card Front.jpg|200px]]
|[[Image:Barcode Battler Megatron Card Back.jpg|200px]]
|}
Released as a promo in the U.K. around 1992 by Toys R Us for the Barcode Battler, it was given away with two [http://barcodebattler.co.uk/scans/UK/ToysRUsF.jpg blank] [http://barcodebattler.co.uk/scans/UK/ToysRUsB.jpg cards] (the bottom scan - the middle is from the Barcode Battler box) to add your own barcodes to, and a card wallet to store them in.

Note the lack of a picture of Megatron (the character on the front is taken from the Barcode Battler box), the implication that he is a "good guy" (perhaps to distance themselves from the Transformer) and the fact that Megatron hadn't been sold in the U.K. for [[Generation 1 (European toyline)#UK|about six years]]. No other promo cards (with Tranformers names or otherwise) are known to have been made.

The original discussion can be found [[Transformers Wiki talk:Community Portal#Megatron Barcode Battler Card|here]], and if anyone thinks it merits a place in the article then by all means add it. --[[User:Xensyria|xensyria]] 15:51, 19 October 2012 (EDT)

MediaWiki talk:Community Portal

2012-10-16T19:22:58Z

Xensyria: /* Megatron Barcode Battler Card */

MediaWiki talk:Community Portal

2012-10-16T19:11:32Z

Xensyria: /* Megatron Barcode Battler Card */

MediaWiki talk:Community Portal

2012-10-16T17:13:28Z

Xensyria: /* Megatron Barcode Battler Card */

MediaWiki talk:Community Portal

2012-10-16T17:12:08Z

Xensyria: /* Megatron Barcode Battler Card */

__NEWSECTIONLINK__

This is the place for discussion of topics that affect the entire wiki. Some topics that would ordinarily be here have merited their own pages:

{{chapters|title=Specific Discussion Subjects|align=left|content=
<div class="list-header">'''Moving From Wikia:'''</div>
* [[Transformers Wiki talk:Community Portal/Arriving|Arriving]]
* [[Transformers Wiki talk:Community Portal/Leaving|Leaving]]
* [[Transformers Wiki:Community Portal/Complaints|Complaints]]
<br/><div class="list-header">'''New Ad Policy:'''</div>
* [[Transformers Wiki:Ads|Ads]]
<br/><div class="list-header">'''Bookworm Database-Crash:'''</div>
* [[Transformers Wiki talk:Community Portal/Damage Control Central|Damage Control Central]]
* [[Project:Bookworm Crash]]
* [[Transformers Wiki talk:Community Portal/Leaving2|Leaving Take 2]]
<br/><div class="list-header">'''Server Move:'''</div>
* [[Transformers Wiki talk:Community Portal/Arriving2|Arriving Take 2]]
<br/><div class="list-header">'''Relicensing:'''</div>
* [[Transformers Wiki talk:Community Portal/Relicensing|Relicensing]]
<br/><div class="list-header">'''Dealing With Vandalism:'''</div>
* [[Transformers Wiki talk:Community Portal/Vandalism|Vandalism]]
<br/><div class="list-header">'''GoBots Sister Wiki:'''</div>
* [[Transformers Wiki talk:Community Portal/GoBots|Discussion on the place of GoBots in this wiki]]
}}<br/>

{{:{{FULLPAGENAMEE}}/Archive}}


==Adding to the Armada cartoon article==

Hello! New guy around here! I would like to add information about Home Video releases of Transformers Armada to its article. As I have no authorization to add to it, here is the information I can provide:

- Home Video Release in Bulgaria:
In Bulgaria "IP Video" released the complete series, spread across 15 volumes, as well as a "Best of" DVD. The DVDs were also distributed with a weekly newspaper upon their intial release. Volumes 1-8 contain 3 episodes each, with volumes 9-15 and the "Best of" DVD containing 4 episodes each.

Transformers: Armada vol.1 - First Encounter
Transformers: Armada vol.2 - Soldier
Transformers: Armada vol.3 - Palace
Transformers: Armada vol.4 - Ruins
Transformers: Armada vol.5 - Swoop
Transformers: Armada vol.6 - Conspiracy
Transformers: Armada vol.7 - Decisive Battle
Transformers: Armada vol.8 - Chase
Transformers: Armada vol.9 - Detection
Transformers: Armada vol.10 - Runaway
Transformers: Armada vol.11 - Rescue
Transformers: Armada vol.12 - Crisis
Transformers: Armada vol.13 - Uprising (The Unicron Battles - part 1)
Transformers: Armada vol.14 - Dash (The Unicron Battles - part 2)
Transformers: Armada vol.15 - Union (The Unicron Battles - part 3)

== TF:Prime jump-fight factoid ==

I've just started to watch Prime, and so far every episode I've seen has had someone do a dramatic jump slowed down jump before landing on someone they are fighting, (and sometimes the camera). It's quirky enough that it's stood out, and I was wondering if it's worth adding to the episode guides? I just wanted to know now because I'm going to be watching the whole of season one over the next few days, and it's easier if I know now than if it's added later. Failing that, is there anything else that people desperatly want added to the Prime episode guides that I should be looking out for? [[User:LiamK|LiamK]] 17:31, 23 January 2012 (EST)
:There is a certain level of ridiculous info you can get away with adding if you're a regular contributor doing serious and consistent work on the pages, and you handle it with sufficient comedic value. Ref: [[Enter the Nightbird|Brawn vs. Soundwave]], [[Countdown to Extinction (episode)|What Makes Starscream the Leader?]], etc. This could conceivably qualify as well, but approach with caution. -- [[User:Repowers|Repowers]] 21:22, 23 January 2012 (EST)
::Fair enough. It wasn't just going to be an adding silly jokes because oh ha ha I think I'm hilarious. I was going to add anything missing to the relevent pages as well. It's just that 5 episodes in, we've had at least 4 dramatic jumps into the camera, one dramatic jump away from the camera, and several semi-dramatic jumps off to the side. It's hilarious when characters like Bulkhead are apparently able to jump 500 feet into the air. If Springer ever shows up in this continuity family, he's gonna reach orbit.[[User:LiamK|LiamK]] 19:59, 25 January 2012 (EST)

== Expandible voice actor lists ==

There's been some noise about some of the voice actor lists getting too long and the need for a way to have them hidden unless the user expands them. I've done some test code which is [http://www.aldenbates.com/vatest.html currently hosted externally] but is easily converted into something that will work on the wiki. Currently tested on Firefox 9 and 10, Internet Explorer 6 and 8, Chrome 16, and Opera 11. Feedback, anyone? --[[User:Abates|abates]] 23:41, 31 January 2012 (EST)
:Although I was expecting a show/hide like how Wikipedia does its navigation templates, I don't mind this. Still needs a "hide" option, if that's possible. [[User:Interrobang|—Interrobang]] 23:46, 31 January 2012 (EST)
::I've added in a hide option. --[[User:Abates|abates]] 00:21, 1 February 2012 (EST)
:::If you set up a <nowiki>{{voiceactors}}</nowiki> template it'd be easy to hide the 'extended' cast names and have them show up automatically if you mouse over. '''<tt><nowiki>{{voiceactors|DEFAULT-TO-VISIBLE|DEFAULT-TO-INVISIBLE}}</nowiki></tt>'''
:::It wouldn't even require Javascript, it could be pure CSS. Simpler is better, IMO. -[[User:Derik|Derik]] 00:26, 1 February 2012 (EST)
::::I kinda dislike the idea of it opening on mouse-over, because it can have unexpected effects on the layout of the rest of the page if you're not paying attention to where you're moving your mouse pointer. --[[User:Abates|abates]] 18:32, 7 February 2012 (EST)
:::::I dislike mouse-over anything. Hide/show is a better interface. [[User:Interrobang|—Interrobang]] 18:48, 7 February 2012 (EST)
::::::Add a third dislike vote for mouse-over. If we do this which (if any) voice actors should be visible without clicking? Only the primary English performer? All English performers? All English and Japanese? None? I vote for none. --[[User:Khajidha|Khajidha]] 19:40, 7 February 2012 (EST)
:::::::I vote for whatever hides the German voice actors. I'd put the English and Japanese actors on a higher tier of importance, but I'm not opposed to hiding them. [[User:Interrobang|—Interrobang]] 19:48, 7 February 2012 (EST)
:::::::I think English and Japanese should always be shown, as they are the two biggest uh... markets? Whatever. Hide everything else, and DEFINITELY make the reveal a deliberate CLICK, not a mouseover. --[[User:M Sipher|M Sipher]] 19:56, 7 February 2012 (EST)
Can we have this template now? I think everybody agrees that the extraneous VAs should be hidden. If people want to hide English and Japanese VAs, then that can be further discussed. [[User:Interrobang|—Interrobang]] 10:48, 14 February 2012 (EST)

:[[Template:va]] (Should it be vas?)
:CSS entties which need to be added to the master file are as follows:
.tt1-voiceactorlist .tt1-extraneousFuckers{
display:none;
}
.tt1-voiceactorlist:hover .tt1-extraneousFuckers{
display:inline;
font-size:smaller;
}
.tt1-voiceactorlist.tt1-more:after{
content: "more";
padding-left:.5em;
font-size:smaller;
color:#999999;
}
.tt1-voiceactorlist:hover.tt1-more:after{
content: none;
}

:Styles are visible now if you've got [[User:Derik/kired tools|Kired Tools]] installed. Alternately you can paste the above into [[Special:Mypage/monacobook.css|your css file]] to get a look at it in action.

:If you want to make it Javascript that's beyond my remit, talk to one of the tech-guys. (Also I think it's a bad idea, but I'm against modifying the DOP for presentational purposes when there's already a markup language intended to control presentation: CSS. The wiki is currently Javascript 'light', I prefer to keep it that way.) -[[User:Derik|Derik]] 13:21, 14 February 2012 (EST)
::Why does it say "hiding the non English/Japanese voiceactors unless the user chooses to mouse over the list", I thought we had decided to make it use a click? --[[User:Khajidha|Khajidha]] 14:19, 14 February 2012 (EST)
::# I don't have the authority or access to implement that.
::# I think it's a terrible idea.
:::By all means, feel free to install the CSS styles (some CSS styles will be required regardless) and see what you think of this implementation.
:::The underlying HTML will be the same for a Javascript implementation anyway. -[[User:Derik|Derik]] 15:13, 14 February 2012 (EST)
So, er, did we come to a decision on either of these methods? I have to admit I kinda forgot about it until now. --[[User:Abates|abates]] 02:13, 5 March 2012 (EST)
:I think consensus is to use clicks, not mouse-over, despite Derik's protests. [[User:Interrobang|—Interrobang]] 04:13, 13 March 2012 (EDT)

== Facebook chat ==

Did the wiki have anyone at the TF Prime Facebook chat? -[[User:Derik|Derik]] 22:38, 6 February 2012 (EST)

==Moving (Prime)/(WFC)/(RB)/(FOC) to (Aligned)==
Considering that characters are part of the Aligned continuity family, like how [[Megatron (Animated)]] belong to the Animated continuity family and [[Megatron (G1)]] belongs to the Generation 1 continuity family.
:No, that's not how we do things. Disambiguations are made by franchise of origin, hence why it's [[Megatron (G1)]], but [[Terrorsaur (BW)]] rather than Terrorsaur (G1), or why it's [[Ironhide (Energon)]] rather than Ironhide (UT). This has been discussed ad infinitum but the consensus remains the same. The only exception has been that characters who debuted in WFC but also appear in Prime get (Prime) because of the slight iffyness of the Aligned family. --[[User:Detour|Detour]] 10:26, 8 April 2012 (EDT)
::(Edit conflict'd by Detour) I don't think we have an especially good, logical reason for why we do that with Aligned characters, other than that it simply feels very "wrong" to label a character with a prominent, regular fictional appearance in the ''Prime'' cartoon with a disambig based on their cameo appearance in a video game tie-in novel. Honestly, given that odd nature of the whole "Aligned" idea and the fact we're already breaking our standard with this continuity family's characters ''anyway'', I'm not entirely opposed to just using (Aligned) as a much handier, self-explanatory disambig, but I don't know if anyone would agree. It ''would'' feel odd, for instance, to label the Rescue Bots with that tag. And Bot Shots are a tremendous pain in the arse - it's so annoying when we have to create articles for Aligned Roadbuster and Topspin and whoever when the Bot Shots are just clearly the movieverse characters. The whole Aligned thing can sometimes be a real wiki-headache. - [[User:Chris McFeely|Chris McFeely]] 10:32, 8 April 2012 (EDT)
:::Why DON'T they just get inserted into the Movie characters sections, then? [This thing applies to a lot of Hasbro's "fuzzier" lines of late, really - stuff's matched up with what other characters in the line are part of rather than just including them in an existing article for the version they're designed after]. - [[User:Mammalian Verisimilitude|Mammalian Verisimilitude]] 10:41, 8 April 2012 (EDT)
::::I think treating Bot Shots as part of Aligned is somewhat dubious. Is there a reason it can't be viewed as using characters from multiple continuity families? --[[User:KilMichaelMcC|KilMichaelMcC]] 11:00, 8 April 2012 (EDT)
:::::We already discussed this [[Talk:Bot Shots|here]]. --[[User:Abates|abates]] 18:59, 8 April 2012 (EDT)
::::::We do that so we don't have to pick nits over where the characters belong. Bot Shots Optimus Prime could fit many of his various incarnations. I disagree with renaming them to (Aligned), somewhat because all of the (WFC) guys will eventually be moved to (Prime), anyway. [[User:Interrobang|—Interrobang]] 05:48, 10 April 2012 (EDT)
But should (Prime)/(WFC)/(RB)/(FOC) be renamed (Aligned) or not?--[[User:Finister2|Finister2]] 05:43, 10 April 2012 (EDT)
:No. --[[User:Detour|Detour]] 11:29, 10 April 2012 (EDT)
::Why?--[[User:Finister2|Finister2]] 13:55, 10 April 2012 (EDT)
:::It's already been explained why. --[[User:Detour|Detour]] 14:40, 10 April 2012 (EDT)

== Universal, properly-translated names of the Japanese Beast Wars/Beast Machines episodes ==

Okay, this has been bothering me for a while. On each page of the [[Beast Wars: Transformers (cartoon)#Episodes|Beast Wars]] and [[Beast Machines: Transformers (cartoon)#Episodes|Beast Machines]] episode, the Japanese title of each episode is given an English translation in each page's Foreign Localization section. And on the [[Geneon Universal Entertainment|Geneon]] page, under the sections of its Beast Wars, Beast Wars Metals, and Beast wars Returns releases, the Japanese episode titles are also translated into English. What's bothering me is that certain episodes are given slightly differently-translated English names when comparing those given on the actual episode pages to those given on the Geneon page. Here's a list of each differing episode title. The episode page names are on the left, and the Geneon page names are on the right:
:"The Solitary Warrior Tigatron" vs. "Lonely Warrior Tigatron"
:"Goodbye, Rattle!?" vs. "Goodbye Rattle!?"
:"The Falcon Warrior Airrazor" vs. "Falcon Warrior Airazor"
:"Floating Island Death Match Part 1" vs. "Floating Island Deathmatch Part 1"
:"Floating Island Death Match Part 2" vs. "Floating Island Deathmatch Part 2"
:"The Destrons' Dramatic Finish" vs. "The Destrons Make Drama"
:"Two Dinobots?" vs. "There are 2 Dinobots?"
:"The Ant Warrior from Hell, Inferno" vs. "Inferno, the Ant Warrior from Hell"
:"Revive, Beast Power!" vs. "Resurrected Beast Power"
:"The Immortal Starscream" vs. "Starscream's Invulnerability"
:"Fare Thee Well, Tigatron" vs. "Farewell Tigatron"
:"The Great King of Terror Arrives!" vs. "The King of Terror Arrives!"
:"You're Under Arrest, Meow" vs. "Meyow're Under Arrest"
:"Gro~w Bigger" vs. "Groooww Bigger"
:"I Am Resurrected, Dā" vs. "I am Resurrected!"
:"Blaze, Dragon" vs. "Blazing Dragon"
:"I Hath Returned" vs. "We Have Returned"
:"Resurrection of the Legend" vs. "Rebirth of the Legend"
:"The Dearly Wished Transformation" vs. "The Transformation of a Dear Wish"
:"The Memory of a Friend" vs. "Memory of a Friend"
:"Mission of the Stars" vs. "Message of the Stars"
:"The Moment of Truth" vs. "The End"
:"Captured Souls" vs. "Capture of the Spirits"
:"The Hellish All-out Attack" vs. "The General Offensive of Hell"
:"The Course of the Future" vs. "The Fate of the Future"
Could someone who's more adept at Japanese please clarify which titles should be universally used on this Wiki, and help in an attempt to create a greater sense of unity between the individual episode pages and the Geneon page (and with any other such pages on this Wiki as well)? --[[User:Sabrblade|Sabrblade]] 01:29, 10 April 2012 (EDT)
:The titles on the episode pages are more refined. Not to mention it would be easier to change the titles on a single page. [[User:Interrobang|—Interrobang]] 05:58, 10 April 2012 (EDT)
::"I Hath Returned"? That's incorrect English. "Hath" was third person singular, not first person ("he hath" not "I hath"). --[[User:Khajidha|Khajidha]] 08:10, 10 April 2012 (EDT)
:::[[User:Apcog|Apcog]] translated that. I recall the intention was to capture the old-timey connotation of the original Japanese. [[User:Interrobang|—Interrobang]] 08:21, 10 April 2012 (EDT)
:Something else that has me pondering are the specific choices made in spelling and grammar of a few of these titles. Like, the inclusion of a "The" where it may not need be (like in "The Solitary Warrior Tigatron" instead of just "Solitary Warrior Tigatron", or "The Falcon Warrior Airrazor" vs. "Falcon Warrior Airazor") or the use a comma (like in "Goodbye, Rattle!?" as opposed to "Goodbye Rattle!?") or a space between two words instead of making them a compound word ("Death Match" vs. "Deathmatch"), and the synonymous use of "Resurrect(ion)", "Rebirth", and "Revive". In these cases, are the titles on the episode pages truly the more precise titles, or could they also use some amending? --[[User:Sabrblade|Sabrblade]] 11:20, 10 April 2012 (EDT)
::Most of those details are up to the translator's discretion. But, like I said, it's easier to just edit the Genon page rather than across multiple articles. [[User:Interrobang|—Interrobang]] 11:33, 10 April 2012 (EDT)

== Category:Deceased ==
Sub-categories
*Category:Deceased (Generation 1 cartoon)
**Category:Deceased (Marvel comics)
**Category:Deceased (BW)
*Category:Deceased (Armada)
*Category:Deceased (Energon)
*Category:Deceased (Movie)
**Category:Deceased (ROTF)
**Category:Deceased (DOTM)
*Category:Deceased (SG)
*Category:Deceased (Animated)
*Category:Deceased (Aligned)

Why not?--[[User:Finister2|Finister2]] 05:52, 10 April 2012 (EDT)

:"Deceased" is a stupid idea on a wiki that focuses on fiction with multiple continuities, time periods, vague "deaths", and resurrections. All characters will inevitably die at one point. This is not a warranted category. [[User:Interrobang|—Interrobang]] 05:55, 10 April 2012 (EDT)

::Vote for "No".
::A character may get killed in a sub-continuity but alive in another. Not to mention if the character will be resurrected or not. (So, we don't need Category:Resurrected characters, either.) --'''[[User:TX55|<span style= "color:#00FA9A">TX55</span>]]'''<small><SUP>''[[User talk:TX55|<span style= "color:#0000CD">TALK</span>]]''</SUP></small> 10:11, 10 April 2012 (EDT)
:::It is an appealing idea, to have categories for characters that are deceased "now." If they are patched up, they get removed from the category. I would have changed the categories to "Deceased (Movieverse)" and "Deceased (UT cartoon)" since they are supposed to be all one continuity. The only problem I see is vague deaths and continuity inconsistencies. People would probably disagree with me that [[Brawn (G1)]] obviously survived that shot to the shoulder. So, unfortunately, I can't fully endorse the idea. - [[User:Starfield|Starﬁeld]] 11:08, 10 April 2012 (EDT)
::::If we go by continuity, we are going to have a ''lot'' of "Deceased" categories. And you could only do it by continuity, which goes against our current methods to have categories by franchise. --[[User:Abates|abates]] 16:46, 10 April 2012 (EDT)
::I agree with you guys in regards to characters. but, what about a category for ''real'' people who have been involved with the Transformers franchise (like voice actors, designers, writers, etc.) who are deceased? --[[User:Sabrblade|Sabrblade]] 11:11, 10 April 2012 (EDT)

== Scheduled downtime. ==

Our hoster is moving servers around tomorrow. One of ours is gonna be moved starting between "Thu Apr 12 23:00:00 UTC 2012 and Fri Apr 13 05:00:00 UTC 2012." So that'll happen. --[[User:ItsWalky|ItsWalky]] 21:52, 11 April 2012 (EDT)
:I presume all the necessary backups have been made? --[[User:Thylacine 2000|Thylacine 2000]] 22:37, 11 April 2012 (EDT)
::Regularly, like clockwork. --[[User:ItsWalky|ItsWalky]] 00:51, 12 April 2012 (EDT)

==Category: Cats==
Presumably we have some kind of unwritten "We don't categorise by altmode" rule in play here, so I apologise if my adding a bunch of characters to this category seemed heavy-handed but in my defence the distinction between ''Shattered Glass'' Steeljaw and G1 Ravage is, eh, pretty much non-existent, Cheetor himself says "I'm a cat", it's a subset of Characters by species and we have K-9 under Dogs, so it's hardly black and white. But my main reason for doing it was that in SEO terms, having the word "Cats" repeatedly linked a bunch of times throughout the wiki is really quite useful, as in the wider internet cats are kind of a big deal. Real effing kitten calendars and all that. Isn't that something to consider? --[[User:Emvee|Emvee]] 03:47, 26 April 2012 (EDT)
:Categorizing by alternate mode has been brought up several times, but nobody has bothered to hammer out the details and do it. I don't particularly care for it one way or another, but putting Transformers in plain categories like "Cats" and "Watercraft" based on alternate mode makes them useless to those who only want to know about actual cats or watercraft in ''Transformers''. That said, I completely fail to see the relevance of Internet memes to our categorization system. [[User:Interrobang|—Interrobang]] 03:59, 26 April 2012 (EDT)
::Well, just that keywords are good for search engines, keywords that link to relevant pages even better and lots of people search for cats on the internet. I know that my girlfriend does and at a time like this (when my birthday is coming up) it's not impossible that she might search for "Transformers cats". If that led her to, say, SG Ravage's page (which is quite accessible to an internet-savvy non-fan with its twitter references and Walky's cartoons) then she may well stick around to find out more, and maybe look for more Transformers cats through the category links at the bottom of the page. At the moment our first link in a Google search is Snow Cat, who's kinda cool but you'd probably have to be a GI Joe fan to really get it. I dunno, I'm just spitballing here, but part of my job is SEO so I hope I at least know something like what I'm talking about. Anyway, that was my line of thinking. If it's problematic then that's fine, but I'm not really convinced by the "people looking for actual cats or watercraft in ''Transformers''" argument either - on a TF wiki I think they'd assume Transformers that turn into either of those things would be included by default. They are robots in disguise, after all. --[[User:Emvee|Emvee]] 14:36, 26 April 2012 (EDT)

== Google + ==
I've made a Google + for the wiki. I just need someone to link it to the main page because I don't know how. This is the link: https://plus.google.com/106006102124340784739 -- [[User:Spydersix|Spydersix]] 19:00, 30 April 2012 (EDT)

== Alt-mode listings ==

I've seen several things here discussing listing alt-modes by ''category'', but I'm looking for something a bit less complicated. I would really appreciate having each character's page at least openly list their alt-mode in the beginning; as it stands, some pages do not make it clear what that character turns into, generally only mentioning it in passing or in screenshots. I think some kind of fill-in-the-blanks template would work well, the kind they use on Wikipedia for comic book superheroes that have sections for code names, secret identities, a brief list of abilities, etc. It doesn't even have to be that thorough, just a small piece under the page's main picture that has "name, alt-mode, faction" would be a nice change of pace. [[User:Deusoma|Deusoma]] 15:15, 2 May 2012 (EDT)
:Your idea is impractical because many characters have had numerous altmodes. Listing all of them would be ridiculously long while trying to generalize them down to a single listing would be useless. For example, [[Optimus Prime (G1)|Optimus Prime]]. The casual fan might assume that you could just list his altmode as "semi truck" and be done with it. But he has also been a bat, a Lambourghini Diablo and a shoe. And that doesn't even get into what kind of "semi truck" he is: cab over engine like the original or long nose like the Generation 2 version. And does it have a sleeper. With or without trailer. And you still haven't covered his non-Earth modes. None of the Cybertronian forms we have seen looks anything like any of the others. --[[User:Khajidha|Khajidha]] 15:29, 2 May 2012 (EDT)
::I don't care one way or the other, but we could hide the minor alternate modes, the same as we do with voice actors. [[User:Interrobang|—Interrobang]] 15:40, 2 May 2012 (EDT)
:While I agree that we should do our best to list alt-modes, at the beginning of the article doesn't seem like the most efficient place to do it. Rather, we should continue listing the alt-mode in the description of the various toys and work on filling in those that are lacking. - [[User:Shellspark|Shellspark]] 16:26, 2 May 2012 (EDT)
: Well, there are a lot of fiction-only altmodes going on. I could see this working as a Notes subsection, possibly as a gallery. --[[User:M Sipher|M Sipher]] 17:27, 2 May 2012 (EDT)
:: Yeah, that's why I always attempt to get an image of each altmode in the fiction section as they appear. --[[User:ItsWalky|ItsWalky]] 17:56, 2 May 2012 (EDT)

==Redundant foreign names==
According to Interrobang:
:"''So? It's been the standard for a long time and exactly how do you expect readers to know that Japan uses the same name without noting it?''"
1) No, it has NOT been "the standard for a long time". In fact, we didn't do this for YEARS. You're the one who seems to have decided, fairly recently, to pull this crap. Like with "mammoth".<br>
2) Well. Why don't we just list every country in the world that also uses that name? After all, how exactly are we to know if the Canadians don't not call her Airachnid, or the Germans, or the Zimbabweans (holy shit "Zimbabweans" is ''correct''?), or the other 190-odd nations across the globe? Oh wait, because we can use some incredibly base deductive reasoning and assume that unless a ''different'' name is listed for a country, ''it's the same name and we don't need to fucking list it there just so you can get a katakana-boner''. --[[User:M Sipher|M Sipher]] 06:45, 3 May 2012 (EDT)
:There is the argument to be made that not including a foreign name leaves the reader unable to know if the character either has the same name in that country, or if that information is just ''missing'' from the article. Not that I disagree that it ''really'' seems to have got out of control, to the point that the Japanese words for "doctor" or "scientist" or "coach" or "mammoth" are being added to nameless characters' articles. I enjoyed our older attitude that basically amounted to "fuck katanana unless necessary to explain something". - [[User:Chris McFeely|Chris McFeely]] 07:05, 3 May 2012 (EDT)
::The counter-argument was already made above. ''Transformers'' is a global brand now, and it's basically a waste of space to list every country where Optimus Prime is called "Optimus Prime" (or as close as they can get phonetically), and better to assume that it is "Optimus Prime" unless otherwise noted. The ''probability'' that the name is the same is pretty damn good nowadays, especially in Japan. --[[User:M Sipher|M Sipher]] 07:34, 3 May 2012 (EDT)
:::I'm sympathetic. If somebody actually does go through the trouble to track down what Airachnid is called in Zimbabwean and it ends up being "Airachnid" then if they put the information down, then nobody else will have to go through the trouble of looking it up. What if redundant foreign names are left <nowiki></nowiki> - [[User:Starfield|Starfield]] 10:04, 3 May 2012 (EDT)
::::I hate seeing redundant names, but I agree that a certain degree of "is this already known?" may exist in a vacuum. I'm not opposed to leaving them in the code but commented out to keep them out of the page itself. -[[User:LV|LV]] 00:00, 4 May 2012 (EDT)
:::::Would it be acceptable to have a template that displays the foreign names, but hides or combines entries if the names are not unique? The template might also be able to auto-categorize by "characters missing ''language'' names", too.[[Special:Contributions/192.249.47.177|192.249.47.177]] 18:49, 29 May 2012 (EDT)

==Toy Fair/Pre-Toy Fair Catalogues==
Collectively we went all out on getting hold of the 86 PTF catalogue when it popped up on eBay and have a nice page with full scans of it (I say "we" I completely missed that fund-raising drive). Going forward, is it a feasible aim for other Toy Fair and Pre-Toy Fair cats to be collected for the Wiki or is 86 known to be the only one of significant interest? I ask because I just stumbled upon an eBay seller with the 88 TF cat (which I'd hoped to procure for use on my Visionaries wiki) and some early 90s ones, all of which are beyond my means, but at relatively reasonable prices. Can't link to them on my phone, but I thought I'd mention it in case they are of significant interest like the 86 one was. [[User:Danja|Danja]] 03:45, 6 May 2012 (EDT)

== Google Chrome ==
Does anybody else experience a ''really'' slow connection to only this site while using Google Chrome? -- [[User:Spydersix|spyder]] 21:42, 17 May 2012 (EDT)

FYI: <nowiki>{{bigquote}}</nowiki> overlaps images in Google Chrome, like on [[Thaddeus Morocco|Morocco]]. I don't know when that started. - [[User:Starfield|Starfield]] 16:03, 22 May 2012 (EDT)

Now, the <nowiki>{{picsneeded}}</nowiki> tag overlaps the top of the episode template. It might just be my computer, but I don't know. -- [[User:Spydersix|spyder]] 18:28, 29 May 2012 (EDT)

:These layout problems are apparently an issue with the latest version of Chrome. I guess they'll get fixed in the next release or something. --[[User:Abates|abates]] 18:10, 31 May 2012 (EDT)
::There's been two new versions of Chrome since you said that, [[User:Abates|abates]], and it hasn't been fixed, so I'm reporting it to Google. Like that's gonna work. -- [[User:Spydersix|spyder]] 10:09, 19 June 2012 (EDT)
:::Is this problem still happening? --[[User:Abates|abates]] 05:22, 15 October 2012 (EDT)
::::Wow, completely forgot about this. And no, since I reported it to Google, it's been fixed. I'm surprised. -- [[User:Spydersix|spyder]][[User Talk:Spydersix|<sup>Use this!</sup>]] 06:26, 15 October 2012 (EDT)

== Transformers 4 ==
Does anyone mind if I take a stab at creating a page for it? I'm not some idiot who's gonna create a crappy page with no effort. Or is it ''way'' to early to do that? -- [[User:Spydersix|spyder]] 19:03, 6 June 2012 (EDT)
:I'd say wait until at least the first poster appears on the Internet, then you'll have some sort of image to put in. Really though it is a bit too early, if everything goes to plan TF4 won't be out for another two years, so the TF4 article would be sitting around with nothing on it for at least a year before we start getting concrete information. [[User:TurboFox|TurboFox]] 17:06, 24 August 2012 (EDT)

== Prime game ==
What do people think about putting [[Transformers: Prime - The Game|Transformers Prime: The Game]] in the nav bar? -- [[User:Spydersix|spyder]] 09:47, 10 June 2012 (EDT)
:Or we can replace the link to the Prime cartoon page with a link to the Prime franchise page, that way it avoids overcluttering the navbar. --[[User:Detour|Detour]] 14:15, 10 June 2012 (EDT)
::Yeah, that also might work. -- [[User:Spydersix|spyder]] 09:23, 11 June 2012 (EDT)
:::At least 95% of the people who click on that are likely to be looking for info on the cartoon, and I feel like if we have Rescue Bots and Dark of the Moon pointing to the cartoon/film rather than the franchises, we should aim to be consistent with our navigation. We'll presumably have to add [[Transformers Universe]] there eventually anyway. --[[User:Abates|abates]] 16:46, 11 June 2012 (EDT)
::::Yeah, I forgot about that. We probably can take Dark of the Moon to declutter it. -- [[User:Spydersix|spyder]] 16:50, 11 June 2012 (EDT)
:::::We could divide things up with subheaders or just by putting darker lines in to split up the links. Man, I wish there was a way to easily add in more links without cluttering up the menu too much. It feels like we should have links to current toylines as well, and maybe the current IDW comics. --[[User:Abates|abates]] 17:21, 11 June 2012 (EDT)
::::::Yeah probably, but what can you do, right? And I like that subheader idea. And on a different note, "Transformers Prime: The Game" is a mouthful. How can we abbreviate that? -- [[User:Spydersix|spyder]] 17:36, 11 June 2012 (EDT)
::::::: TF Prime: The Game??? [[User:Bumblebee2000|Bumblebee2000]] 08:19, 12 June 2012 (EDT)
::::::::Probably the best we can do. -- [[User:Spydersix|spyder]] 13:37, 12 June 2012 (EDT)
:::::::::On abbreviating the name, as everything on the wiki is Transformers, you can say "Prime: The Game" instead of "TF Prime: The Game". The "TF" is assumed. [[User:JohnnyMrNinja|JohnnyMrNinja]] 15:30, 13 June 2012 (EDT)
::::::::::So what are we going to do about this nav bar? -- [[User:Spydersix|spyder]] 18:17, 12 June 2012 (EDT)
:::::::::::Are we using the <nowiki>{{Primecap}}</nowiki> template for images from it? -- [[User:Spydersix|spyder]] 10:07, 13 June 2012 (EDT)

:::::::::::Be patient. This stuff never happens overnight. --[[User:Detour|Detour]] 18:50, 12 June 2012 (EDT)
::::::::::::Not exactly overnight anymore, two months later. As you might be able to tell, patience is not my strong suit. -- [[User:Spydersix|spyder]] 12:10, 30 August 2012 (EDT)
:::::::::::::Sorry, I meant to have a go at fiddling with the lines to break the menu up a bit but I forgot. I'll have a go at it this weekend. --[[User:Abates|abates]] 17:16, 30 August 2012 (EDT)
::::::::::::::Sweet! -- [[User:Spydersix|spyder]] 17:33, 30 August 2012 (EDT)
:::::::::::::::''Niiiiccceeee.'' -- [[User:Spydersix|spyder]] 22:10, 1 September 2012 (EDT)
I have added this and taken out Dark of the Moon, since that's been out for over a year. I was going to add [[Transformers Universe]], but I realised we still don't have a release date for that. I've also added darker lines under the "Main Page" and under the navigation links which are actual articles rather than Wiki things, which will hopefully make those links more grouped in function. You might have to force a refresh to see those. --[[User:Abates|abates]] 22:12, 1 September 2012 (EDT)
:I see them. Nice looking. And I'll let you know when we have a release date. I check every day. -- [[User:Spydersix|spyder]] 22:16, 1 September 2012 (EDT)

I think I'm leaning towards moving the ''[[Transformers: Prime - The Game|Prime: The Game]]'' page to ''Transformers Prime - The Game'', since that's how the official website writes it. So the Nav bar might have to get changed. Just a heads up. -- [[User:Spydersix|spyder]][[User Talk:Spydersix|<sup>Use this!</sup>]] 17:31, 10 October 2012 (EDT)

== Rare/Unkown vintage G1 Walkie Talkie toys? ==

Hi guys. I was just browsing ebay and came across 3 old G1 Walkie Talkies that don't appear to be mentioned on the wiki anywhere.
#1- [http://www.ebay.com/itm/Transformers-Walkie-Talkie-ROBOT-1987-Hasbro-Inc/270982316728/ This] one appears to be an Argentinian Transformer with the mold licensed from Commando Toys.
#2 [http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Transformers-G1-Walkie-Talkies-Boxed-/300654034838?pt=US_Action_Figures&hash=item4600607f96/ These] guys appear to be unnamed generics.
#3 [http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/REAL-VTG-80s-TRANSFORMERS-INTERCOM-TELEPHONE-SYSTEM-WIRED-WALKIE-TALKIE-NIB-MIB-/360458042129?pt=US_Action_Figures&hash=item53ecf93b11 This] one features two Optimus Primes as an "Electronic Intercom Telephone System" (which seems to basically be two walkie talkies connected via a wire). Box says made by Nasta in lager photos and check out that goofy looking transformation sequence.

I'm not entirely sure if any of these are legit as I've never seen them mentioned anywhere else before. Anyone else know more info about these? Should they be added to wiki? [[User:RavenG|RavenG]] 02:27, 16 June 2012 (EDT)
:I used to have a set of #2, but I've no idea where they are now. They were pretty common in the UK I think. --[[User:Emvee|Emvee]] 03:17, 19 July 2012 (EDT)

== Technical Contact (and passwords) ==

Hi, guys. It's Botch the Crab... though I can't sign in as my account. I lost my password. I don't know what email address is associated with the account, but whichever one it is, when I did the "forgot password" thing and was told a new password was emailed to me, I never received any emails.

So my first question is: who can help me re-claim my account?

My second question is: who are the technical administrators of the wiki, and is that information posted somewhere that I couldn't find? I tried contacting Chris McFeely and David Willis, but neither of them were able to help, nor did they know who
would. So! Suggestions?

:I tried emailing your username, but it didn't work... It said that I need to be logged in with a valid email set, but I had done both of those things. Can any other user successfully send an email to [[User:Botch the Crab]]? Because it might be the email module that isn't working and that's why you can't reset your password. I don't think the MediaWiki framework has been updated since 2008 (we're running [http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Release_notes/1.12#MediaWiki_1.12.0 MediWiki 1.12.0]), and if David Willis doesn't know who's running the tech (seeing as how [http://www.networksolutions.com/whois-search/tfwiki.net he registered this site), it makes me think that there are not any people doing that. I could be mistaken, but I think there are only admins that are affecting change within the MW software.
:As far as I know, once a password to a MW site is lost there is no recovery outside of email, at least that is the case for WP. [[User:JohnnyMrNinja|JohnnyMrNinja]] 17:49, 16 June 2012 (EDT)

::I just tried sending an email to Botch and it worked, though the copy I sent myself ended up in my gmail spam folder. --[[User:Abates|abates]] 18:48, 16 June 2012 (EDT)

:::You're right, I had to confirm my email address and now I can email, although emails from this site were marked as spam for me as well. Botch, I can only hope that you haven't checked your spam folder. [[User:JohnnyMrNinja|JohnnyMrNinja]] 00:54, 17 June 2012 (EDT)

:Thanks for all the help, guys. Unfortunately, I haven't received any of the "new password" emails. (Yes, I keep checking the spam folder.) The frustrating part is that without being able to sign in, I cannot confirm ''which'' email address these are being sent to. All my emails are forwarded to my gmail account, so I have no idea why I wouldn't receive them. It's a mystery. It's weird to think it's possible that none of the administrators have the access or ability to solve this.--[[User:Botch|Botch]] 23:18, 18 June 2012 (EDT)
::I thought Scout and/or McFly were doing our technical stuff. --[[User:Abates|abates]] 23:27, 18 June 2012 (EDT)
:::I'm pretty sure that Scout and I have been over this fairly often: We're pretty damned busy, so we're not monitoring the Community Portal pages. If someone's forgotten their password AND the associated email address, there's no real secure way to get them back in. Email addresses aren't exposed to us until we get down to the to SQL DB layer, barring some additional extensions that would expose everyone's information to a trusted few. I strongly suggest making a new account in the interim, while we discuss the repercussions of adding some more User Management extensions, and figuring out who we can trust. I'll tell you this much, though: If your password isn't basically a random scramble of characters and symbols, I wouldn't trust you with maintenance access. It's like giving a handgun to a chimp. (Not picking on anyone in particular, but let's keep this in mind as we start adding cooks to the kitchen.) --[[User:McFly|McFly]] 11:54, 1 August 2012 (EDT)

:Sad update: I managed to scrounge up the database password from some old notes, and I've got your email address: Same one listed on your website. If you can disable whatever's filtering out your spam, that might help, since your site mentions some sort of sender-response mechanism. Poor old Mediawiki is too stupid/honest to pretend that she's a human.--[[User:McFly|McFly]] 12:11, 1 August 2012 (EDT)

== Captions need to go ==

It seems I am not the only one who finds the caption "humor" annoying and irrelevant to the photo it is placed with. I see in huge bold letters 'THE FUNNY STAYS. -The Management' So it seems this is not the first time someone has brought this up.

It seems " The Management " are the few people who get their kicks from such while the rest of the users are stuck just rolling their eyes. I for one will no longer be visiting this wiki because of such.

The nail in the coffin for me was a caption that I looked up as I wondered why I didn't get the "joke" as I seen tons of Xformer related shows. Heaven forbid the joke had nothing to do with transformers, only the person who wrote the joke and a small selection of people probably will understand it.

Just a little FYI 90% of the captions are unfunny, I would dare say 30% or more have nothing to do with xformers.

(sorry if this is in the wrong place, sort of new to wiki's and I wish the first thing I could have posted here would have been positive. I believe this is really positive and will help the wiki more than any article I could have wrote.)
: Thank you for leaving. --[[User:ItsWalky|ItsWalky]] 02:11, 21 June 2012 (EDT)

:Eh, the majority of the time when I stumble on a discussion on wikis on other sites, people will cite TFWiki and Wookiepedia as the best, and are generally complimentary about the humour, so while we occasionally get complaints about it, it seems like the majority of people like it. --[[User:Abates|abates]] 03:29, 21 June 2012 (EDT)

: I also believe that anything else you would have contributed to the wiki would have been less useful than this. --[[User:M Sipher|M Sipher]] 06:58, 21 June 2012 (EDT)

:....xformers? Is spelling out Transformers properly now "2 kool for skool"? --[[User:Detour|Detour]] 07:32, 21 June 2012 (EDT)

:The Funny '''STAYS'''. --'''[[User:TX55|<span style= "color:#00FA9A">TX55</span>]]'''<small><SUP>''[[User talk:TX55|<span style= "color:#0000CD">TALK</span>]]''</SUP></small> 09:26, 22 June 2012 (EDT)

:I'd note that if you want a serious TF wiki, there's an abandoned Wikia wiki that nobody seems to have gotten the bright idea of turning into one yet instead of always trying to convert this one. --[[Special:Contributions/108.176.195.222|108.176.195.222]] 01:43, 22 June 2012 (EDT)

::Some people here have actually mentioned this idea to the wikia "community", but they seem hellbent on remaining a poor copy of this site. The fact that they have barely added any pages since this site began while we have doubled in size doesn't seem to register to some of the people over there. --[[User:Khajidha|Khajidha]] 02:37, 22 June 2012 (EDT)

: If you feel that bad about it then write some of your own on the Pics with out Captions. (hell knows that ultra magnus "I can deal with that" has been done to death)[[User:Phantom|Phantom]] 09:38, 22 June 2012 (EDT)
::To be fair, serious captions, unless vital to the understanding of the picture, tend to get rewritten here. --[[User:Abates|abates]] 18:42, 22 June 2012 (EDT)

== Spoiler titles ==

Something which came up last month, but I didn't want to bring it up at the time because it would only have compounded the problem.

The title for [[How Ratchet Got His Hands Back|IDW MtMtE #5]] was placed at the '''end''' of the issue, [http://www.comics.org/issue/26304/cover/4/ "The Night Gwen Stacy Died"]-style (rather than the typical beginning/first splash page), because it was ''itself'' a spoiler.

So, of course, every page which had a {{tl|spoiler}}-tag for the issue plastered it in the spoiler tag itself.

There's got to be a better way of doing this if a comic gets a spoiler-title again. -- [[User:Mammalian Verisimilitude|Mammalian Verisimilitude]] 20:19, 7 July 2012 (EDT)
:The spoiler tags could have linked to the "More than Meets the Eye issue 5" redirect instead (the issue was originally created there to avoid just that problem, but then it got moved to the actual title anyway) --[[User:Abates|abates]] 20:30, 7 July 2012 (EDT)

Speaking of SPOILERS, is there any way people could ''stop'' putting them up for comics before the issues actually come out? By sheer happenstance, I just came across some significant details on the Wiki about the DJD, their leader, and their membership that I honestly would have preferred to read for myself when it's published. It was posted by long time members, so I'm assuming it's legit and came from SDCC or somewhere, but there are no sources so I can't be sure. If an anon posted that stuff, I probably would have removed it as typical Wikipedia fanfic trying to creep in.

Regardless, it's getting tough to come onto the TFwiki because of this stuff. Whenever a new 5-page preview for RID or MTMTE comes out, people are immediately updating the crew on the ''Lost Light'' page, adding place-holder storylinks to pages for new characters showing up, and just generally revealing every detail they can extract from the previews ahead of time. I get that avoiding spoilers on the internet is a luxury nowadays, but these previews come out nearly a week in advance for each of IDW's two series. Its one thing to avoid SPOILERS-labeled topics in a message board...its another to avoid the entire TFwiki for a third of every month to dodge preview materials. --[[User:Xaaron|Xaaron]] 21:52, 20 July 2012 (EDT)
:This one I'll have to own, as 'twas me that did the deed. It was, as you speculated, another five page preview from IDW. I'd ''hoped'' the details I put in weren't too spoilery, as in the leader's case it was mostly putting a name to details we'd found out issues before. I can only apologize and try to be a bit more careful.--[[User:Rosicrucian|Rosicrucian]][[User Talk:Rosicrucian|<sup>Talk</sup>]] 22:11, 20 July 2012 (EDT)
::I'll also say that I was going to stick the group shot of them up on the wiki, but I can hold off if you think that would be best.--[[User:Rosicrucian|Rosicrucian]][[User Talk:Rosicrucian|<sup>Talk</sup>]] 22:40, 20 July 2012 (EDT)

== Autobot Communications officer in Headmasters ==

<nowiki>[[Image:Hm - autobot communications officer.jpg|thumb]]</nowiki>
Hey, this guy appeared in a single episode of Heamasters where he was the communications officer on-duty at Autobot City. ...does anyone know which episode? -[[User:Derik|Derik]]
:[[The Final Showdown on Earth (Part 1)]]. --[[User:Abates|abates]] 01:27, 18 July 2012 (EDT)
::Sir, you are a gentleman and a [[Transformerology|Transformerologist]]. -[[User:Derik|Derik]] 01:47, 18 July 2012 (EDT)

== Connection issues ==

Is it just me or are there problems with the wiki's server or in how many connections it can manage at a time? I've not been around for awhile and have noticed that if I spend a few hours reading or editing the wiki, it randomly stops working for periods between 5 minutes to half an hour, which is a problem if I've just made a large edit to something. In fact, in the few minutes that it took for me to write this, it twice stopped working (so I couldn't preview the edit), and that was after sitting around for perhaps 10 minutes waiting for the wiki to allow me to open the community portal page. --[[User:FFN|FFN]] 15:00, 2 August 2012 (EDT)
:I get this a lot, usually only for short periods but quite regularly. Either it just hangs or I get the "unable to serve page" error. Usually halfway through a big edit too, which is why I keep a text editor open to cut and paste stuff into. --[[User:Emvee|Emvee]] 04:41, 30 August 2012 (EDT)

== I ♥ you guys ==

Am I the only one who sees ♥'s everywhere in the RecentChanges page?

Did we screw up the CSS while adding an admin? -[[Special:Contributions/67.6.127.163|67.6.127.163]] 23:03, 29 August 2012 (EDT)
:You don't see them if you're logged in.--[[User:Rosicrucian|Rosicrucian]][[User Talk:Rosicrucian|<sup>Talk</sup>]] 19:10, 30 August 2012 (EDT)
::I think if you're logged in, you still see them if you have the enhanced Recent Changes turned off, because Derik only coded them for the simple version of RC. --[[User:Abates|abates]] 21:39, 1 September 2012 (EDT)

== G.I. Joe wiki - a little help? ==

Hello, all. I just wanted to add a request for some help for what should really by this wiki's sister site, Joepedia, the G.I. Joe Wiki. Now, I posted a similar request on some other sci-fi themed wiki, but the only answer I got was being told that the rules forbid a request from another wiki to be made. Well, I think that was kind of stupid, considering the communal attitude the whole wiki concept represents. BUT, ANYWAY, the Joepedia has been growing over the years, but it's mostly frequented by a small dedicated group of contributors. Since Transformers and G.I. Joe are so closely linked, I hoped some folks on here would like to help.

I will add that I have no authority over on that site, and I don't really contribute much, mostly because of the time spent my own website. I'm just a concerned geeky citizen drumming up some support. --[[User:JMM|JMM]] 10:26, 7 September 2012 (EDT)
:Well, I would, but I really don't know jack shit about G.I. Joe. And when I think about it, I'm not sure this post belongs here. -- [[User:Spydersix|spyder]] 17:36, 7 September 2012 (EDT)
::Just looking around for a little help. This seemed like the closest thing to a G.I. Joe wiki out there, and I figured it was worth a try. --[[User:JMM|JMM]] 13:23, 13 September 2012 (EDT)
::I don't see a problem with a polite request for assistance or notification that a Joe wiki exists, since there IS some crossover interest. I just don't know how much ''useful'' crossover interest for the Joe wiki there is from this end outside of what we've already done. I mean, we've got extensive coverage of the parts of Joe directly involving TFs... I'd say that's probably going to be the most useful thing we have for you. But, if others wanna try it out...<br>
::...unless you're on Wikia.... --[[User:M Sipher|M Sipher]] 13:27, 13 September 2012 (EDT)
:::Yeah, it was just a quick heads up so people who may be interested are aware. I know a number of people who are equally obsessed with TF and Joe. :) Oh, and yes, it is on Wikia! --[[User:JMM|JMM]] 14:22, 13 September 2012 (EDT)
::::We did at one point approach a partnership with Joepedia, and even had a template that cross-linked articles we shared. It was just a little premature at the time (which was years ago) as Joepedia was just starting out and often our articles were more complete than theirs, or theirs were just stubs. It looks like they've gotten off the ground a bit more now.--[[User:Rosicrucian|Rosicrucian]][[User Talk:Rosicrucian|<sup>Talk</sup>]] 15:30, 13 September 2012 (EDT)
:::::Yes, their wiki got started later than this one. They have a small group of dedicated contributers, but the site's yet to attract the kind of interest this one does. --[[User:JMM|JMM]] 16:34, 13 September 2012 (EDT)

== New stub template ==
Does anybody have any objections to a video game stub template? It would look something like this:
<br clear="all" />{{messagebox
|header=This article is still in beta stage.
|message_text=''This video game article is a [[:Category:Video game stubs|stub]] and is missing information. You can help '''{{SITENAME}}''' by [{{SERVER}}{{localurl:{{NAMESPACE}}:{{PAGENAME}}|action=edit}} expanding it].''
|image_name=ProwlTFU.JPG
|image_width=40px
|width = 90%
}}<includeonly>[[Category:Video game stubs]]</includeonly>
If anybody knows of a better picture that would go well with this, please upload it so it can be put in. Thanks! -- [[User:Spydersix|spyder]][[User Talk:Spydersix|<sup>Use this!</sup>]] 15:52, 2 October 2012 (EDT)

:How about a pic from the story where Prime dies in a video game? Heh if only Beta had ever been in a game, that'd be perfect. --[[Special:Contributions/76.28.76.206|76.28.76.206]] 16:03, 2 October 2012 (EDT)
::What story was that? And yeah, that woulda been great. -- [[User:Spydersix|spyder]][[User Talk:Spydersix|<sup>Use this!</sup>]] 19:53, 2 October 2012 (EDT)
:::That would be [[Afterdeath!]]. --[[User:Detour|Detour]] 21:56, 2 October 2012 (EDT)
::::Well if people really want a picture from that, someone else will have to upload it, as I don't have access to it. -- [[User:Spydersix|spyder]][[User Talk:Spydersix|<sup>Use this!</sup>]] 21:59, 2 October 2012 (EDT)
:::::[[:Image:Afterdeath-gameoverman.jpg|Right here, dude.]]--[[User:Detour|Detour]] 22:34, 2 October 2012 (EDT)
::::::Thanks, man. It's on the ''[[Transformers: Prime - The Game|Prime: The Game]]'' page if you want to see it. -- [[User:Spydersix|spyder]][[User Talk:Spydersix|<sup>Use this!</sup>]] 22:50, 2 October 2012 (EDT)

In addition to the video game stub, I'd like to suggest adding several templates, such as "section stub" and "fiction stub". Right now, we only have "characer stub fiction" for pages only missing fiction section, but no templates for non-character page missing fiction appearance. While "section stub" can use for articles only missing one or two sections. --'''[[User:TX55|<span style= "color:#00FA9A">TX55</span>]]'''<small><SUP>''[[User talk:TX55|<span style= "color:#0000CD">TALK</span>]]''</SUP></small> 22:05, 2 October 2012 (EDT)
:Ok, so I'm gonna go ahead and make the video game one, and TX, if I get around to it later, maybe the others. If not, well, someone else will. Oh, and if I miss an article that the video game one should go on, put it here. -- [[User:Spydersix|spyder]][[User Talk:Spydersix|<sup>Use this!</sup>]] 22:31, 2 October 2012 (EDT)

== Megatron Barcode Battler Card ==

Hi, I was wondering if anyone here had come across this Megatron card for the Barcode Battler, or knows where in the Wiki it should go:
{|
|-
|[[Image:Barcode Battler Megatron Card Front.jpg|200px]]
|[[Image:Barcode Battler Megatron Card Back.jpg|200px]]
|}
It seems to have been released by Toys R Us in 1992 as a promo for the Barcode Battler (which they were trying to sell in store), and was (as far as is known) the only such Transformers card, probably given away with two [http://barcodebattler.co.uk/scans/UK/ToysRUsF.jpg blank] [http://barcodebattler.co.uk/scans/UK/ToysRUsB.jpg cards] (the bottom scan - the middle is from the Barcode Battler box) to add your own barcodes to, and a card wallet.

The text ("Clad in steel, armed to the teeth, nobody toys with us good guys when this moody cool deadly-dudey is around.") is probably enough to make you want to forget this was ever made (is it really calling Megatron a good guy?), but it's cropped up in enough eBay sales (occasionally found in Barcode Battler lots with the seller unaware that they've got something rare) to make it likely to be genuine.

So does anyone else have any information on it, and whereabouts should this go? [[User:Xensyria|xensyria]] 12:26, 16 October 2012 (EDT) <small>EDIT: 13:10, 16 October 2012 (EDT)</small>
:I definitely don't know anything about it, besides that it's awesome, but if it's from 1992, then the only Megatron it could be is Megatron (G1), and so it should probably be on his toys/merchandise page.
:It's also plausible that someone who knows something about Barcode Battlers should make a short article on them for the wiki, since we have a lot of those "this broader thing had a TF thing released under it" pages. -[[User:LV|LV]] 12:31, 16 October 2012 (EDT)
::Or...this isn't anything to do with a licensed Transformers thing? I sort of blindly assumed Hasbro was the entity selling the Barcode Battler in the UK, but the packaging doesn't seem to support that. It's hard to believe it's not intended to be TF Megatron, but I'm also not sure it's an official product. Especially since this Megatron guy seems to be the boxfront "main character" for the UK Barcode Battler release. -[[User:LV|LV]] 12:37, 16 October 2012 (EDT)
:::Ah, that's a possibility, but Barcode Battler was being distributed in most of Europe by Tomy, so they probably gave Toys R Us rights to use Megatron. Perhaps they couldn't get the rights to use his picture though (as you say, it's Tomy's Barcode Battler cover on the card, so anyone who used the card probably wouldn't think it was supposed to be Megatron). I should also say that 1992 is more of an educated guess than fact, but it's bound to be somewhere around that.
:::If it's offical I don't mind making a Barcode Battler article (though I'll have to check out some of the other examples you mention first). [[User:Xensyria|xensyria]] 13:02, 16 October 2012 (EDT)
::::Wait, I just re-read Wikipedia, and Tomy was rivals with Takara who owned Transformers at the time. Still, I wonder if such big companies would risk a lawsuit over using Megatron, when had all sorts of other franchises they could use instead; more likely Toys R Us arranged the deal with Hasbro, who they no doubt were one of the biggest retailers for at the time. [[User:Xensyria|xensyria]] 13:04, 16 October 2012 (EDT) <small>EDIT: 13:12, 16 October 2012 (EDT)</small>

MediaWiki talk:Community Portal

2012-10-16T17:10:24Z

Xensyria: /* Megatron Barcode Battler Card */

__NEWSECTIONLINK__

This is the place for discussion of topics that affect the entire wiki. Some topics that would ordinarily be here have merited their own pages:

{{chapters|title=Specific Discussion Subjects|align=left|content=
<div class="list-header">'''Moving From Wikia:'''</div>
* [[Transformers Wiki talk:Community Portal/Arriving|Arriving]]
* [[Transformers Wiki talk:Community Portal/Leaving|Leaving]]
* [[Transformers Wiki:Community Portal/Complaints|Complaints]]
<br/><div class="list-header">'''New Ad Policy:'''</div>
* [[Transformers Wiki:Ads|Ads]]
<br/><div class="list-header">'''Bookworm Database-Crash:'''</div>
* [[Transformers Wiki talk:Community Portal/Damage Control Central|Damage Control Central]]
* [[Project:Bookworm Crash]]
* [[Transformers Wiki talk:Community Portal/Leaving2|Leaving Take 2]]
<br/><div class="list-header">'''Server Move:'''</div>
* [[Transformers Wiki talk:Community Portal/Arriving2|Arriving Take 2]]
<br/><div class="list-header">'''Relicensing:'''</div>
* [[Transformers Wiki talk:Community Portal/Relicensing|Relicensing]]
<br/><div class="list-header">'''Dealing With Vandalism:'''</div>
* [[Transformers Wiki talk:Community Portal/Vandalism|Vandalism]]
<br/><div class="list-header">'''GoBots Sister Wiki:'''</div>
* [[Transformers Wiki talk:Community Portal/GoBots|Discussion on the place of GoBots in this wiki]]
}}<br/>

{{:{{FULLPAGENAMEE}}/Archive}}


==Adding to the Armada cartoon article==

Hello! New guy around here! I would like to add information about Home Video releases of Transformers Armada to its article. As I have no authorization to add to it, here is the information I can provide:

- Home Video Release in Bulgaria:
In Bulgaria "IP Video" released the complete series, spread across 15 volumes, as well as a "Best of" DVD. The DVDs were also distributed with a weekly newspaper upon their intial release. Volumes 1-8 contain 3 episodes each, with volumes 9-15 and the "Best of" DVD containing 4 episodes each.

Transformers: Armada vol.1 - First Encounter
Transformers: Armada vol.2 - Soldier
Transformers: Armada vol.3 - Palace
Transformers: Armada vol.4 - Ruins
Transformers: Armada vol.5 - Swoop
Transformers: Armada vol.6 - Conspiracy
Transformers: Armada vol.7 - Decisive Battle
Transformers: Armada vol.8 - Chase
Transformers: Armada vol.9 - Detection
Transformers: Armada vol.10 - Runaway
Transformers: Armada vol.11 - Rescue
Transformers: Armada vol.12 - Crisis
Transformers: Armada vol.13 - Uprising (The Unicron Battles - part 1)
Transformers: Armada vol.14 - Dash (The Unicron Battles - part 2)
Transformers: Armada vol.15 - Union (The Unicron Battles - part 3)

== TF:Prime jump-fight factoid ==

I've just started to watch Prime, and so far every episode I've seen has had someone do a dramatic jump slowed down jump before landing on someone they are fighting, (and sometimes the camera). It's quirky enough that it's stood out, and I was wondering if it's worth adding to the episode guides? I just wanted to know now because I'm going to be watching the whole of season one over the next few days, and it's easier if I know now than if it's added later. Failing that, is there anything else that people desperatly want added to the Prime episode guides that I should be looking out for? [[User:LiamK|LiamK]] 17:31, 23 January 2012 (EST)
:There is a certain level of ridiculous info you can get away with adding if you're a regular contributor doing serious and consistent work on the pages, and you handle it with sufficient comedic value. Ref: [[Enter the Nightbird|Brawn vs. Soundwave]], [[Countdown to Extinction (episode)|What Makes Starscream the Leader?]], etc. This could conceivably qualify as well, but approach with caution. -- [[User:Repowers|Repowers]] 21:22, 23 January 2012 (EST)
::Fair enough. It wasn't just going to be an adding silly jokes because oh ha ha I think I'm hilarious. I was going to add anything missing to the relevent pages as well. It's just that 5 episodes in, we've had at least 4 dramatic jumps into the camera, one dramatic jump away from the camera, and several semi-dramatic jumps off to the side. It's hilarious when characters like Bulkhead are apparently able to jump 500 feet into the air. If Springer ever shows up in this continuity family, he's gonna reach orbit.[[User:LiamK|LiamK]] 19:59, 25 January 2012 (EST)

== Expandible voice actor lists ==

There's been some noise about some of the voice actor lists getting too long and the need for a way to have them hidden unless the user expands them. I've done some test code which is [http://www.aldenbates.com/vatest.html currently hosted externally] but is easily converted into something that will work on the wiki. Currently tested on Firefox 9 and 10, Internet Explorer 6 and 8, Chrome 16, and Opera 11. Feedback, anyone? --[[User:Abates|abates]] 23:41, 31 January 2012 (EST)
:Although I was expecting a show/hide like how Wikipedia does its navigation templates, I don't mind this. Still needs a "hide" option, if that's possible. [[User:Interrobang|—Interrobang]] 23:46, 31 January 2012 (EST)
::I've added in a hide option. --[[User:Abates|abates]] 00:21, 1 February 2012 (EST)
:::If you set up a <nowiki>{{voiceactors}}</nowiki> template it'd be easy to hide the 'extended' cast names and have them show up automatically if you mouse over. '''<tt><nowiki>{{voiceactors|DEFAULT-TO-VISIBLE|DEFAULT-TO-INVISIBLE}}</nowiki></tt>'''
:::It wouldn't even require Javascript, it could be pure CSS. Simpler is better, IMO. -[[User:Derik|Derik]] 00:26, 1 February 2012 (EST)
::::I kinda dislike the idea of it opening on mouse-over, because it can have unexpected effects on the layout of the rest of the page if you're not paying attention to where you're moving your mouse pointer. --[[User:Abates|abates]] 18:32, 7 February 2012 (EST)
:::::I dislike mouse-over anything. Hide/show is a better interface. [[User:Interrobang|—Interrobang]] 18:48, 7 February 2012 (EST)
::::::Add a third dislike vote for mouse-over. If we do this which (if any) voice actors should be visible without clicking? Only the primary English performer? All English performers? All English and Japanese? None? I vote for none. --[[User:Khajidha|Khajidha]] 19:40, 7 February 2012 (EST)
:::::::I vote for whatever hides the German voice actors. I'd put the English and Japanese actors on a higher tier of importance, but I'm not opposed to hiding them. [[User:Interrobang|—Interrobang]] 19:48, 7 February 2012 (EST)
:::::::I think English and Japanese should always be shown, as they are the two biggest uh... markets? Whatever. Hide everything else, and DEFINITELY make the reveal a deliberate CLICK, not a mouseover. --[[User:M Sipher|M Sipher]] 19:56, 7 February 2012 (EST)
Can we have this template now? I think everybody agrees that the extraneous VAs should be hidden. If people want to hide English and Japanese VAs, then that can be further discussed. [[User:Interrobang|—Interrobang]] 10:48, 14 February 2012 (EST)

:[[Template:va]] (Should it be vas?)
:CSS entties which need to be added to the master file are as follows:
.tt1-voiceactorlist .tt1-extraneousFuckers{
display:none;
}
.tt1-voiceactorlist:hover .tt1-extraneousFuckers{
display:inline;
font-size:smaller;
}
.tt1-voiceactorlist.tt1-more:after{
content: "more";
padding-left:.5em;
font-size:smaller;
color:#999999;
}
.tt1-voiceactorlist:hover.tt1-more:after{
content: none;
}

:Styles are visible now if you've got [[User:Derik/kired tools|Kired Tools]] installed. Alternately you can paste the above into [[Special:Mypage/monacobook.css|your css file]] to get a look at it in action.

:If you want to make it Javascript that's beyond my remit, talk to one of the tech-guys. (Also I think it's a bad idea, but I'm against modifying the DOP for presentational purposes when there's already a markup language intended to control presentation: CSS. The wiki is currently Javascript 'light', I prefer to keep it that way.) -[[User:Derik|Derik]] 13:21, 14 February 2012 (EST)
::Why does it say "hiding the non English/Japanese voiceactors unless the user chooses to mouse over the list", I thought we had decided to make it use a click? --[[User:Khajidha|Khajidha]] 14:19, 14 February 2012 (EST)
::# I don't have the authority or access to implement that.
::# I think it's a terrible idea.
:::By all means, feel free to install the CSS styles (some CSS styles will be required regardless) and see what you think of this implementation.
:::The underlying HTML will be the same for a Javascript implementation anyway. -[[User:Derik|Derik]] 15:13, 14 February 2012 (EST)
So, er, did we come to a decision on either of these methods? I have to admit I kinda forgot about it until now. --[[User:Abates|abates]] 02:13, 5 March 2012 (EST)
:I think consensus is to use clicks, not mouse-over, despite Derik's protests. [[User:Interrobang|—Interrobang]] 04:13, 13 March 2012 (EDT)

== Facebook chat ==

Did the wiki have anyone at the TF Prime Facebook chat? -[[User:Derik|Derik]] 22:38, 6 February 2012 (EST)

==Moving (Prime)/(WFC)/(RB)/(FOC) to (Aligned)==
Considering that characters are part of the Aligned continuity family, like how [[Megatron (Animated)]] belong to the Animated continuity family and [[Megatron (G1)]] belongs to the Generation 1 continuity family.
:No, that's not how we do things. Disambiguations are made by franchise of origin, hence why it's [[Megatron (G1)]], but [[Terrorsaur (BW)]] rather than Terrorsaur (G1), or why it's [[Ironhide (Energon)]] rather than Ironhide (UT). This has been discussed ad infinitum but the consensus remains the same. The only exception has been that characters who debuted in WFC but also appear in Prime get (Prime) because of the slight iffyness of the Aligned family. --[[User:Detour|Detour]] 10:26, 8 April 2012 (EDT)
::(Edit conflict'd by Detour) I don't think we have an especially good, logical reason for why we do that with Aligned characters, other than that it simply feels very "wrong" to label a character with a prominent, regular fictional appearance in the ''Prime'' cartoon with a disambig based on their cameo appearance in a video game tie-in novel. Honestly, given that odd nature of the whole "Aligned" idea and the fact we're already breaking our standard with this continuity family's characters ''anyway'', I'm not entirely opposed to just using (Aligned) as a much handier, self-explanatory disambig, but I don't know if anyone would agree. It ''would'' feel odd, for instance, to label the Rescue Bots with that tag. And Bot Shots are a tremendous pain in the arse - it's so annoying when we have to create articles for Aligned Roadbuster and Topspin and whoever when the Bot Shots are just clearly the movieverse characters. The whole Aligned thing can sometimes be a real wiki-headache. - [[User:Chris McFeely|Chris McFeely]] 10:32, 8 April 2012 (EDT)
:::Why DON'T they just get inserted into the Movie characters sections, then? [This thing applies to a lot of Hasbro's "fuzzier" lines of late, really - stuff's matched up with what other characters in the line are part of rather than just including them in an existing article for the version they're designed after]. - [[User:Mammalian Verisimilitude|Mammalian Verisimilitude]] 10:41, 8 April 2012 (EDT)
::::I think treating Bot Shots as part of Aligned is somewhat dubious. Is there a reason it can't be viewed as using characters from multiple continuity families? --[[User:KilMichaelMcC|KilMichaelMcC]] 11:00, 8 April 2012 (EDT)
:::::We already discussed this [[Talk:Bot Shots|here]]. --[[User:Abates|abates]] 18:59, 8 April 2012 (EDT)
::::::We do that so we don't have to pick nits over where the characters belong. Bot Shots Optimus Prime could fit many of his various incarnations. I disagree with renaming them to (Aligned), somewhat because all of the (WFC) guys will eventually be moved to (Prime), anyway. [[User:Interrobang|—Interrobang]] 05:48, 10 April 2012 (EDT)
But should (Prime)/(WFC)/(RB)/(FOC) be renamed (Aligned) or not?--[[User:Finister2|Finister2]] 05:43, 10 April 2012 (EDT)
:No. --[[User:Detour|Detour]] 11:29, 10 April 2012 (EDT)
::Why?--[[User:Finister2|Finister2]] 13:55, 10 April 2012 (EDT)
:::It's already been explained why. --[[User:Detour|Detour]] 14:40, 10 April 2012 (EDT)

== Universal, properly-translated names of the Japanese Beast Wars/Beast Machines episodes ==

Okay, this has been bothering me for a while. On each page of the [[Beast Wars: Transformers (cartoon)#Episodes|Beast Wars]] and [[Beast Machines: Transformers (cartoon)#Episodes|Beast Machines]] episode, the Japanese title of each episode is given an English translation in each page's Foreign Localization section. And on the [[Geneon Universal Entertainment|Geneon]] page, under the sections of its Beast Wars, Beast Wars Metals, and Beast wars Returns releases, the Japanese episode titles are also translated into English. What's bothering me is that certain episodes are given slightly differently-translated English names when comparing those given on the actual episode pages to those given on the Geneon page. Here's a list of each differing episode title. The episode page names are on the left, and the Geneon page names are on the right:
:"The Solitary Warrior Tigatron" vs. "Lonely Warrior Tigatron"
:"Goodbye, Rattle!?" vs. "Goodbye Rattle!?"
:"The Falcon Warrior Airrazor" vs. "Falcon Warrior Airazor"
:"Floating Island Death Match Part 1" vs. "Floating Island Deathmatch Part 1"
:"Floating Island Death Match Part 2" vs. "Floating Island Deathmatch Part 2"
:"The Destrons' Dramatic Finish" vs. "The Destrons Make Drama"
:"Two Dinobots?" vs. "There are 2 Dinobots?"
:"The Ant Warrior from Hell, Inferno" vs. "Inferno, the Ant Warrior from Hell"
:"Revive, Beast Power!" vs. "Resurrected Beast Power"
:"The Immortal Starscream" vs. "Starscream's Invulnerability"
:"Fare Thee Well, Tigatron" vs. "Farewell Tigatron"
:"The Great King of Terror Arrives!" vs. "The King of Terror Arrives!"
:"You're Under Arrest, Meow" vs. "Meyow're Under Arrest"
:"Gro~w Bigger" vs. "Groooww Bigger"
:"I Am Resurrected, Dā" vs. "I am Resurrected!"
:"Blaze, Dragon" vs. "Blazing Dragon"
:"I Hath Returned" vs. "We Have Returned"
:"Resurrection of the Legend" vs. "Rebirth of the Legend"
:"The Dearly Wished Transformation" vs. "The Transformation of a Dear Wish"
:"The Memory of a Friend" vs. "Memory of a Friend"
:"Mission of the Stars" vs. "Message of the Stars"
:"The Moment of Truth" vs. "The End"
:"Captured Souls" vs. "Capture of the Spirits"
:"The Hellish All-out Attack" vs. "The General Offensive of Hell"
:"The Course of the Future" vs. "The Fate of the Future"
Could someone who's more adept at Japanese please clarify which titles should be universally used on this Wiki, and help in an attempt to create a greater sense of unity between the individual episode pages and the Geneon page (and with any other such pages on this Wiki as well)? --[[User:Sabrblade|Sabrblade]] 01:29, 10 April 2012 (EDT)
:The titles on the episode pages are more refined. Not to mention it would be easier to change the titles on a single page. [[User:Interrobang|—Interrobang]] 05:58, 10 April 2012 (EDT)
::"I Hath Returned"? That's incorrect English. "Hath" was third person singular, not first person ("he hath" not "I hath"). --[[User:Khajidha|Khajidha]] 08:10, 10 April 2012 (EDT)
:::[[User:Apcog|Apcog]] translated that. I recall the intention was to capture the old-timey connotation of the original Japanese. [[User:Interrobang|—Interrobang]] 08:21, 10 April 2012 (EDT)
:Something else that has me pondering are the specific choices made in spelling and grammar of a few of these titles. Like, the inclusion of a "The" where it may not need be (like in "The Solitary Warrior Tigatron" instead of just "Solitary Warrior Tigatron", or "The Falcon Warrior Airrazor" vs. "Falcon Warrior Airazor") or the use a comma (like in "Goodbye, Rattle!?" as opposed to "Goodbye Rattle!?") or a space between two words instead of making them a compound word ("Death Match" vs. "Deathmatch"), and the synonymous use of "Resurrect(ion)", "Rebirth", and "Revive". In these cases, are the titles on the episode pages truly the more precise titles, or could they also use some amending? --[[User:Sabrblade|Sabrblade]] 11:20, 10 April 2012 (EDT)
::Most of those details are up to the translator's discretion. But, like I said, it's easier to just edit the Genon page rather than across multiple articles. [[User:Interrobang|—Interrobang]] 11:33, 10 April 2012 (EDT)

== Category:Deceased ==
Sub-categories
*Category:Deceased (Generation 1 cartoon)
**Category:Deceased (Marvel comics)
**Category:Deceased (BW)
*Category:Deceased (Armada)
*Category:Deceased (Energon)
*Category:Deceased (Movie)
**Category:Deceased (ROTF)
**Category:Deceased (DOTM)
*Category:Deceased (SG)
*Category:Deceased (Animated)
*Category:Deceased (Aligned)

Why not?--[[User:Finister2|Finister2]] 05:52, 10 April 2012 (EDT)

:"Deceased" is a stupid idea on a wiki that focuses on fiction with multiple continuities, time periods, vague "deaths", and resurrections. All characters will inevitably die at one point. This is not a warranted category. [[User:Interrobang|—Interrobang]] 05:55, 10 April 2012 (EDT)

::Vote for "No".
::A character may get killed in a sub-continuity but alive in another. Not to mention if the character will be resurrected or not. (So, we don't need Category:Resurrected characters, either.) --'''[[User:TX55|<span style= "color:#00FA9A">TX55</span>]]'''<small><SUP>''[[User talk:TX55|<span style= "color:#0000CD">TALK</span>]]''</SUP></small> 10:11, 10 April 2012 (EDT)
:::It is an appealing idea, to have categories for characters that are deceased "now." If they are patched up, they get removed from the category. I would have changed the categories to "Deceased (Movieverse)" and "Deceased (UT cartoon)" since they are supposed to be all one continuity. The only problem I see is vague deaths and continuity inconsistencies. People would probably disagree with me that [[Brawn (G1)]] obviously survived that shot to the shoulder. So, unfortunately, I can't fully endorse the idea. - [[User:Starfield|Starﬁeld]] 11:08, 10 April 2012 (EDT)
::::If we go by continuity, we are going to have a ''lot'' of "Deceased" categories. And you could only do it by continuity, which goes against our current methods to have categories by franchise. --[[User:Abates|abates]] 16:46, 10 April 2012 (EDT)
::I agree with you guys in regards to characters. but, what about a category for ''real'' people who have been involved with the Transformers franchise (like voice actors, designers, writers, etc.) who are deceased? --[[User:Sabrblade|Sabrblade]] 11:11, 10 April 2012 (EDT)

== Scheduled downtime. ==

Our hoster is moving servers around tomorrow. One of ours is gonna be moved starting between "Thu Apr 12 23:00:00 UTC 2012 and Fri Apr 13 05:00:00 UTC 2012." So that'll happen. --[[User:ItsWalky|ItsWalky]] 21:52, 11 April 2012 (EDT)
:I presume all the necessary backups have been made? --[[User:Thylacine 2000|Thylacine 2000]] 22:37, 11 April 2012 (EDT)
::Regularly, like clockwork. --[[User:ItsWalky|ItsWalky]] 00:51, 12 April 2012 (EDT)

==Category: Cats==
Presumably we have some kind of unwritten "We don't categorise by altmode" rule in play here, so I apologise if my adding a bunch of characters to this category seemed heavy-handed but in my defence the distinction between ''Shattered Glass'' Steeljaw and G1 Ravage is, eh, pretty much non-existent, Cheetor himself says "I'm a cat", it's a subset of Characters by species and we have K-9 under Dogs, so it's hardly black and white. But my main reason for doing it was that in SEO terms, having the word "Cats" repeatedly linked a bunch of times throughout the wiki is really quite useful, as in the wider internet cats are kind of a big deal. Real effing kitten calendars and all that. Isn't that something to consider? --[[User:Emvee|Emvee]] 03:47, 26 April 2012 (EDT)
:Categorizing by alternate mode has been brought up several times, but nobody has bothered to hammer out the details and do it. I don't particularly care for it one way or another, but putting Transformers in plain categories like "Cats" and "Watercraft" based on alternate mode makes them useless to those who only want to know about actual cats or watercraft in ''Transformers''. That said, I completely fail to see the relevance of Internet memes to our categorization system. [[User:Interrobang|—Interrobang]] 03:59, 26 April 2012 (EDT)
::Well, just that keywords are good for search engines, keywords that link to relevant pages even better and lots of people search for cats on the internet. I know that my girlfriend does and at a time like this (when my birthday is coming up) it's not impossible that she might search for "Transformers cats". If that led her to, say, SG Ravage's page (which is quite accessible to an internet-savvy non-fan with its twitter references and Walky's cartoons) then she may well stick around to find out more, and maybe look for more Transformers cats through the category links at the bottom of the page. At the moment our first link in a Google search is Snow Cat, who's kinda cool but you'd probably have to be a GI Joe fan to really get it. I dunno, I'm just spitballing here, but part of my job is SEO so I hope I at least know something like what I'm talking about. Anyway, that was my line of thinking. If it's problematic then that's fine, but I'm not really convinced by the "people looking for actual cats or watercraft in ''Transformers''" argument either - on a TF wiki I think they'd assume Transformers that turn into either of those things would be included by default. They are robots in disguise, after all. --[[User:Emvee|Emvee]] 14:36, 26 April 2012 (EDT)

== Google + ==
I've made a Google + for the wiki. I just need someone to link it to the main page because I don't know how. This is the link: https://plus.google.com/106006102124340784739 -- [[User:Spydersix|Spydersix]] 19:00, 30 April 2012 (EDT)

== Alt-mode listings ==

I've seen several things here discussing listing alt-modes by ''category'', but I'm looking for something a bit less complicated. I would really appreciate having each character's page at least openly list their alt-mode in the beginning; as it stands, some pages do not make it clear what that character turns into, generally only mentioning it in passing or in screenshots. I think some kind of fill-in-the-blanks template would work well, the kind they use on Wikipedia for comic book superheroes that have sections for code names, secret identities, a brief list of abilities, etc. It doesn't even have to be that thorough, just a small piece under the page's main picture that has "name, alt-mode, faction" would be a nice change of pace. [[User:Deusoma|Deusoma]] 15:15, 2 May 2012 (EDT)
:Your idea is impractical because many characters have had numerous altmodes. Listing all of them would be ridiculously long while trying to generalize them down to a single listing would be useless. For example, [[Optimus Prime (G1)|Optimus Prime]]. The casual fan might assume that you could just list his altmode as "semi truck" and be done with it. But he has also been a bat, a Lambourghini Diablo and a shoe. And that doesn't even get into what kind of "semi truck" he is: cab over engine like the original or long nose like the Generation 2 version. And does it have a sleeper. With or without trailer. And you still haven't covered his non-Earth modes. None of the Cybertronian forms we have seen looks anything like any of the others. --[[User:Khajidha|Khajidha]] 15:29, 2 May 2012 (EDT)
::I don't care one way or the other, but we could hide the minor alternate modes, the same as we do with voice actors. [[User:Interrobang|—Interrobang]] 15:40, 2 May 2012 (EDT)
:While I agree that we should do our best to list alt-modes, at the beginning of the article doesn't seem like the most efficient place to do it. Rather, we should continue listing the alt-mode in the description of the various toys and work on filling in those that are lacking. - [[User:Shellspark|Shellspark]] 16:26, 2 May 2012 (EDT)
: Well, there are a lot of fiction-only altmodes going on. I could see this working as a Notes subsection, possibly as a gallery. --[[User:M Sipher|M Sipher]] 17:27, 2 May 2012 (EDT)
:: Yeah, that's why I always attempt to get an image of each altmode in the fiction section as they appear. --[[User:ItsWalky|ItsWalky]] 17:56, 2 May 2012 (EDT)

==Redundant foreign names==
According to Interrobang:
:"''So? It's been the standard for a long time and exactly how do you expect readers to know that Japan uses the same name without noting it?''"
1) No, it has NOT been "the standard for a long time". In fact, we didn't do this for YEARS. You're the one who seems to have decided, fairly recently, to pull this crap. Like with "mammoth".<br>
2) Well. Why don't we just list every country in the world that also uses that name? After all, how exactly are we to know if the Canadians don't not call her Airachnid, or the Germans, or the Zimbabweans (holy shit "Zimbabweans" is ''correct''?), or the other 190-odd nations across the globe? Oh wait, because we can use some incredibly base deductive reasoning and assume that unless a ''different'' name is listed for a country, ''it's the same name and we don't need to fucking list it there just so you can get a katakana-boner''. --[[User:M Sipher|M Sipher]] 06:45, 3 May 2012 (EDT)
:There is the argument to be made that not including a foreign name leaves the reader unable to know if the character either has the same name in that country, or if that information is just ''missing'' from the article. Not that I disagree that it ''really'' seems to have got out of control, to the point that the Japanese words for "doctor" or "scientist" or "coach" or "mammoth" are being added to nameless characters' articles. I enjoyed our older attitude that basically amounted to "fuck katanana unless necessary to explain something". - [[User:Chris McFeely|Chris McFeely]] 07:05, 3 May 2012 (EDT)
::The counter-argument was already made above. ''Transformers'' is a global brand now, and it's basically a waste of space to list every country where Optimus Prime is called "Optimus Prime" (or as close as they can get phonetically), and better to assume that it is "Optimus Prime" unless otherwise noted. The ''probability'' that the name is the same is pretty damn good nowadays, especially in Japan. --[[User:M Sipher|M Sipher]] 07:34, 3 May 2012 (EDT)
:::I'm sympathetic. If somebody actually does go through the trouble to track down what Airachnid is called in Zimbabwean and it ends up being "Airachnid" then if they put the information down, then nobody else will have to go through the trouble of looking it up. What if redundant foreign names are left <nowiki></nowiki> - [[User:Starfield|Starfield]] 10:04, 3 May 2012 (EDT)
::::I hate seeing redundant names, but I agree that a certain degree of "is this already known?" may exist in a vacuum. I'm not opposed to leaving them in the code but commented out to keep them out of the page itself. -[[User:LV|LV]] 00:00, 4 May 2012 (EDT)
:::::Would it be acceptable to have a template that displays the foreign names, but hides or combines entries if the names are not unique? The template might also be able to auto-categorize by "characters missing ''language'' names", too.[[Special:Contributions/192.249.47.177|192.249.47.177]] 18:49, 29 May 2012 (EDT)

==Toy Fair/Pre-Toy Fair Catalogues==
Collectively we went all out on getting hold of the 86 PTF catalogue when it popped up on eBay and have a nice page with full scans of it (I say "we" I completely missed that fund-raising drive). Going forward, is it a feasible aim for other Toy Fair and Pre-Toy Fair cats to be collected for the Wiki or is 86 known to be the only one of significant interest? I ask because I just stumbled upon an eBay seller with the 88 TF cat (which I'd hoped to procure for use on my Visionaries wiki) and some early 90s ones, all of which are beyond my means, but at relatively reasonable prices. Can't link to them on my phone, but I thought I'd mention it in case they are of significant interest like the 86 one was. [[User:Danja|Danja]] 03:45, 6 May 2012 (EDT)

== Google Chrome ==
Does anybody else experience a ''really'' slow connection to only this site while using Google Chrome? -- [[User:Spydersix|spyder]] 21:42, 17 May 2012 (EDT)

FYI: <nowiki>{{bigquote}}</nowiki> overlaps images in Google Chrome, like on [[Thaddeus Morocco|Morocco]]. I don't know when that started. - [[User:Starfield|Starfield]] 16:03, 22 May 2012 (EDT)

Now, the <nowiki>{{picsneeded}}</nowiki> tag overlaps the top of the episode template. It might just be my computer, but I don't know. -- [[User:Spydersix|spyder]] 18:28, 29 May 2012 (EDT)

:These layout problems are apparently an issue with the latest version of Chrome. I guess they'll get fixed in the next release or something. --[[User:Abates|abates]] 18:10, 31 May 2012 (EDT)
::There's been two new versions of Chrome since you said that, [[User:Abates|abates]], and it hasn't been fixed, so I'm reporting it to Google. Like that's gonna work. -- [[User:Spydersix|spyder]] 10:09, 19 June 2012 (EDT)
:::Is this problem still happening? --[[User:Abates|abates]] 05:22, 15 October 2012 (EDT)
::::Wow, completely forgot about this. And no, since I reported it to Google, it's been fixed. I'm surprised. -- [[User:Spydersix|spyder]][[User Talk:Spydersix|<sup>Use this!</sup>]] 06:26, 15 October 2012 (EDT)

== Transformers 4 ==
Does anyone mind if I take a stab at creating a page for it? I'm not some idiot who's gonna create a crappy page with no effort. Or is it ''way'' to early to do that? -- [[User:Spydersix|spyder]] 19:03, 6 June 2012 (EDT)
:I'd say wait until at least the first poster appears on the Internet, then you'll have some sort of image to put in. Really though it is a bit too early, if everything goes to plan TF4 won't be out for another two years, so the TF4 article would be sitting around with nothing on it for at least a year before we start getting concrete information. [[User:TurboFox|TurboFox]] 17:06, 24 August 2012 (EDT)

== Prime game ==
What do people think about putting [[Transformers: Prime - The Game|Transformers Prime: The Game]] in the nav bar? -- [[User:Spydersix|spyder]] 09:47, 10 June 2012 (EDT)
:Or we can replace the link to the Prime cartoon page with a link to the Prime franchise page, that way it avoids overcluttering the navbar. --[[User:Detour|Detour]] 14:15, 10 June 2012 (EDT)
::Yeah, that also might work. -- [[User:Spydersix|spyder]] 09:23, 11 June 2012 (EDT)
:::At least 95% of the people who click on that are likely to be looking for info on the cartoon, and I feel like if we have Rescue Bots and Dark of the Moon pointing to the cartoon/film rather than the franchises, we should aim to be consistent with our navigation. We'll presumably have to add [[Transformers Universe]] there eventually anyway. --[[User:Abates|abates]] 16:46, 11 June 2012 (EDT)
::::Yeah, I forgot about that. We probably can take Dark of the Moon to declutter it. -- [[User:Spydersix|spyder]] 16:50, 11 June 2012 (EDT)
:::::We could divide things up with subheaders or just by putting darker lines in to split up the links. Man, I wish there was a way to easily add in more links without cluttering up the menu too much. It feels like we should have links to current toylines as well, and maybe the current IDW comics. --[[User:Abates|abates]] 17:21, 11 June 2012 (EDT)
::::::Yeah probably, but what can you do, right? And I like that subheader idea. And on a different note, "Transformers Prime: The Game" is a mouthful. How can we abbreviate that? -- [[User:Spydersix|spyder]] 17:36, 11 June 2012 (EDT)
::::::: TF Prime: The Game??? [[User:Bumblebee2000|Bumblebee2000]] 08:19, 12 June 2012 (EDT)
::::::::Probably the best we can do. -- [[User:Spydersix|spyder]] 13:37, 12 June 2012 (EDT)
:::::::::On abbreviating the name, as everything on the wiki is Transformers, you can say "Prime: The Game" instead of "TF Prime: The Game". The "TF" is assumed. [[User:JohnnyMrNinja|JohnnyMrNinja]] 15:30, 13 June 2012 (EDT)
::::::::::So what are we going to do about this nav bar? -- [[User:Spydersix|spyder]] 18:17, 12 June 2012 (EDT)
:::::::::::Are we using the <nowiki>{{Primecap}}</nowiki> template for images from it? -- [[User:Spydersix|spyder]] 10:07, 13 June 2012 (EDT)

:::::::::::Be patient. This stuff never happens overnight. --[[User:Detour|Detour]] 18:50, 12 June 2012 (EDT)
::::::::::::Not exactly overnight anymore, two months later. As you might be able to tell, patience is not my strong suit. -- [[User:Spydersix|spyder]] 12:10, 30 August 2012 (EDT)
:::::::::::::Sorry, I meant to have a go at fiddling with the lines to break the menu up a bit but I forgot. I'll have a go at it this weekend. --[[User:Abates|abates]] 17:16, 30 August 2012 (EDT)
::::::::::::::Sweet! -- [[User:Spydersix|spyder]] 17:33, 30 August 2012 (EDT)
:::::::::::::::''Niiiiccceeee.'' -- [[User:Spydersix|spyder]] 22:10, 1 September 2012 (EDT)
I have added this and taken out Dark of the Moon, since that's been out for over a year. I was going to add [[Transformers Universe]], but I realised we still don't have a release date for that. I've also added darker lines under the "Main Page" and under the navigation links which are actual articles rather than Wiki things, which will hopefully make those links more grouped in function. You might have to force a refresh to see those. --[[User:Abates|abates]] 22:12, 1 September 2012 (EDT)
:I see them. Nice looking. And I'll let you know when we have a release date. I check every day. -- [[User:Spydersix|spyder]] 22:16, 1 September 2012 (EDT)

I think I'm leaning towards moving the ''[[Transformers: Prime - The Game|Prime: The Game]]'' page to ''Transformers Prime - The Game'', since that's how the official website writes it. So the Nav bar might have to get changed. Just a heads up. -- [[User:Spydersix|spyder]][[User Talk:Spydersix|<sup>Use this!</sup>]] 17:31, 10 October 2012 (EDT)

== Rare/Unkown vintage G1 Walkie Talkie toys? ==

Hi guys. I was just browsing ebay and came across 3 old G1 Walkie Talkies that don't appear to be mentioned on the wiki anywhere.
#1- [http://www.ebay.com/itm/Transformers-Walkie-Talkie-ROBOT-1987-Hasbro-Inc/270982316728/ This] one appears to be an Argentinian Transformer with the mold licensed from Commando Toys.
#2 [http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Transformers-G1-Walkie-Talkies-Boxed-/300654034838?pt=US_Action_Figures&hash=item4600607f96/ These] guys appear to be unnamed generics.
#3 [http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/REAL-VTG-80s-TRANSFORMERS-INTERCOM-TELEPHONE-SYSTEM-WIRED-WALKIE-TALKIE-NIB-MIB-/360458042129?pt=US_Action_Figures&hash=item53ecf93b11 This] one features two Optimus Primes as an "Electronic Intercom Telephone System" (which seems to basically be two walkie talkies connected via a wire). Box says made by Nasta in lager photos and check out that goofy looking transformation sequence.

I'm not entirely sure if any of these are legit as I've never seen them mentioned anywhere else before. Anyone else know more info about these? Should they be added to wiki? [[User:RavenG|RavenG]] 02:27, 16 June 2012 (EDT)
:I used to have a set of #2, but I've no idea where they are now. They were pretty common in the UK I think. --[[User:Emvee|Emvee]] 03:17, 19 July 2012 (EDT)

== Technical Contact (and passwords) ==

Hi, guys. It's Botch the Crab... though I can't sign in as my account. I lost my password. I don't know what email address is associated with the account, but whichever one it is, when I did the "forgot password" thing and was told a new password was emailed to me, I never received any emails.

So my first question is: who can help me re-claim my account?

My second question is: who are the technical administrators of the wiki, and is that information posted somewhere that I couldn't find? I tried contacting Chris McFeely and David Willis, but neither of them were able to help, nor did they know who
would. So! Suggestions?

:I tried emailing your username, but it didn't work... It said that I need to be logged in with a valid email set, but I had done both of those things. Can any other user successfully send an email to [[User:Botch the Crab]]? Because it might be the email module that isn't working and that's why you can't reset your password. I don't think the MediaWiki framework has been updated since 2008 (we're running [http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Release_notes/1.12#MediaWiki_1.12.0 MediWiki 1.12.0]), and if David Willis doesn't know who's running the tech (seeing as how [http://www.networksolutions.com/whois-search/tfwiki.net he registered this site), it makes me think that there are not any people doing that. I could be mistaken, but I think there are only admins that are affecting change within the MW software.
:As far as I know, once a password to a MW site is lost there is no recovery outside of email, at least that is the case for WP. [[User:JohnnyMrNinja|JohnnyMrNinja]] 17:49, 16 June 2012 (EDT)

::I just tried sending an email to Botch and it worked, though the copy I sent myself ended up in my gmail spam folder. --[[User:Abates|abates]] 18:48, 16 June 2012 (EDT)

:::You're right, I had to confirm my email address and now I can email, although emails from this site were marked as spam for me as well. Botch, I can only hope that you haven't checked your spam folder. [[User:JohnnyMrNinja|JohnnyMrNinja]] 00:54, 17 June 2012 (EDT)

:Thanks for all the help, guys. Unfortunately, I haven't received any of the "new password" emails. (Yes, I keep checking the spam folder.) The frustrating part is that without being able to sign in, I cannot confirm ''which'' email address these are being sent to. All my emails are forwarded to my gmail account, so I have no idea why I wouldn't receive them. It's a mystery. It's weird to think it's possible that none of the administrators have the access or ability to solve this.--[[User:Botch|Botch]] 23:18, 18 June 2012 (EDT)
::I thought Scout and/or McFly were doing our technical stuff. --[[User:Abates|abates]] 23:27, 18 June 2012 (EDT)
:::I'm pretty sure that Scout and I have been over this fairly often: We're pretty damned busy, so we're not monitoring the Community Portal pages. If someone's forgotten their password AND the associated email address, there's no real secure way to get them back in. Email addresses aren't exposed to us until we get down to the to SQL DB layer, barring some additional extensions that would expose everyone's information to a trusted few. I strongly suggest making a new account in the interim, while we discuss the repercussions of adding some more User Management extensions, and figuring out who we can trust. I'll tell you this much, though: If your password isn't basically a random scramble of characters and symbols, I wouldn't trust you with maintenance access. It's like giving a handgun to a chimp. (Not picking on anyone in particular, but let's keep this in mind as we start adding cooks to the kitchen.) --[[User:McFly|McFly]] 11:54, 1 August 2012 (EDT)

:Sad update: I managed to scrounge up the database password from some old notes, and I've got your email address: Same one listed on your website. If you can disable whatever's filtering out your spam, that might help, since your site mentions some sort of sender-response mechanism. Poor old Mediawiki is too stupid/honest to pretend that she's a human.--[[User:McFly|McFly]] 12:11, 1 August 2012 (EDT)

== Captions need to go ==

It seems I am not the only one who finds the caption "humor" annoying and irrelevant to the photo it is placed with. I see in huge bold letters 'THE FUNNY STAYS. -The Management' So it seems this is not the first time someone has brought this up.

It seems " The Management " are the few people who get their kicks from such while the rest of the users are stuck just rolling their eyes. I for one will no longer be visiting this wiki because of such.

The nail in the coffin for me was a caption that I looked up as I wondered why I didn't get the "joke" as I seen tons of Xformer related shows. Heaven forbid the joke had nothing to do with transformers, only the person who wrote the joke and a small selection of people probably will understand it.

Just a little FYI 90% of the captions are unfunny, I would dare say 30% or more have nothing to do with xformers.

(sorry if this is in the wrong place, sort of new to wiki's and I wish the first thing I could have posted here would have been positive. I believe this is really positive and will help the wiki more than any article I could have wrote.)
: Thank you for leaving. --[[User:ItsWalky|ItsWalky]] 02:11, 21 June 2012 (EDT)

:Eh, the majority of the time when I stumble on a discussion on wikis on other sites, people will cite TFWiki and Wookiepedia as the best, and are generally complimentary about the humour, so while we occasionally get complaints about it, it seems like the majority of people like it. --[[User:Abates|abates]] 03:29, 21 June 2012 (EDT)

: I also believe that anything else you would have contributed to the wiki would have been less useful than this. --[[User:M Sipher|M Sipher]] 06:58, 21 June 2012 (EDT)

:....xformers? Is spelling out Transformers properly now "2 kool for skool"? --[[User:Detour|Detour]] 07:32, 21 June 2012 (EDT)

:The Funny '''STAYS'''. --'''[[User:TX55|<span style= "color:#00FA9A">TX55</span>]]'''<small><SUP>''[[User talk:TX55|<span style= "color:#0000CD">TALK</span>]]''</SUP></small> 09:26, 22 June 2012 (EDT)

:I'd note that if you want a serious TF wiki, there's an abandoned Wikia wiki that nobody seems to have gotten the bright idea of turning into one yet instead of always trying to convert this one. --[[Special:Contributions/108.176.195.222|108.176.195.222]] 01:43, 22 June 2012 (EDT)

::Some people here have actually mentioned this idea to the wikia "community", but they seem hellbent on remaining a poor copy of this site. The fact that they have barely added any pages since this site began while we have doubled in size doesn't seem to register to some of the people over there. --[[User:Khajidha|Khajidha]] 02:37, 22 June 2012 (EDT)

: If you feel that bad about it then write some of your own on the Pics with out Captions. (hell knows that ultra magnus "I can deal with that" has been done to death)[[User:Phantom|Phantom]] 09:38, 22 June 2012 (EDT)
::To be fair, serious captions, unless vital to the understanding of the picture, tend to get rewritten here. --[[User:Abates|abates]] 18:42, 22 June 2012 (EDT)

== Spoiler titles ==

Something which came up last month, but I didn't want to bring it up at the time because it would only have compounded the problem.

The title for [[How Ratchet Got His Hands Back|IDW MtMtE #5]] was placed at the '''end''' of the issue, [http://www.comics.org/issue/26304/cover/4/ "The Night Gwen Stacy Died"]-style (rather than the typical beginning/first splash page), because it was ''itself'' a spoiler.

So, of course, every page which had a {{tl|spoiler}}-tag for the issue plastered it in the spoiler tag itself.

There's got to be a better way of doing this if a comic gets a spoiler-title again. -- [[User:Mammalian Verisimilitude|Mammalian Verisimilitude]] 20:19, 7 July 2012 (EDT)
:The spoiler tags could have linked to the "More than Meets the Eye issue 5" redirect instead (the issue was originally created there to avoid just that problem, but then it got moved to the actual title anyway) --[[User:Abates|abates]] 20:30, 7 July 2012 (EDT)

Speaking of SPOILERS, is there any way people could ''stop'' putting them up for comics before the issues actually come out? By sheer happenstance, I just came across some significant details on the Wiki about the DJD, their leader, and their membership that I honestly would have preferred to read for myself when it's published. It was posted by long time members, so I'm assuming it's legit and came from SDCC or somewhere, but there are no sources so I can't be sure. If an anon posted that stuff, I probably would have removed it as typical Wikipedia fanfic trying to creep in.

Regardless, it's getting tough to come onto the TFwiki because of this stuff. Whenever a new 5-page preview for RID or MTMTE comes out, people are immediately updating the crew on the ''Lost Light'' page, adding place-holder storylinks to pages for new characters showing up, and just generally revealing every detail they can extract from the previews ahead of time. I get that avoiding spoilers on the internet is a luxury nowadays, but these previews come out nearly a week in advance for each of IDW's two series. Its one thing to avoid SPOILERS-labeled topics in a message board...its another to avoid the entire TFwiki for a third of every month to dodge preview materials. --[[User:Xaaron|Xaaron]] 21:52, 20 July 2012 (EDT)
:This one I'll have to own, as 'twas me that did the deed. It was, as you speculated, another five page preview from IDW. I'd ''hoped'' the details I put in weren't too spoilery, as in the leader's case it was mostly putting a name to details we'd found out issues before. I can only apologize and try to be a bit more careful.--[[User:Rosicrucian|Rosicrucian]][[User Talk:Rosicrucian|<sup>Talk</sup>]] 22:11, 20 July 2012 (EDT)
::I'll also say that I was going to stick the group shot of them up on the wiki, but I can hold off if you think that would be best.--[[User:Rosicrucian|Rosicrucian]][[User Talk:Rosicrucian|<sup>Talk</sup>]] 22:40, 20 July 2012 (EDT)

== Autobot Communications officer in Headmasters ==

<nowiki>[[Image:Hm - autobot communications officer.jpg|thumb]]</nowiki>
Hey, this guy appeared in a single episode of Heamasters where he was the communications officer on-duty at Autobot City. ...does anyone know which episode? -[[User:Derik|Derik]]
:[[The Final Showdown on Earth (Part 1)]]. --[[User:Abates|abates]] 01:27, 18 July 2012 (EDT)
::Sir, you are a gentleman and a [[Transformerology|Transformerologist]]. -[[User:Derik|Derik]] 01:47, 18 July 2012 (EDT)

== Connection issues ==

Is it just me or are there problems with the wiki's server or in how many connections it can manage at a time? I've not been around for awhile and have noticed that if I spend a few hours reading or editing the wiki, it randomly stops working for periods between 5 minutes to half an hour, which is a problem if I've just made a large edit to something. In fact, in the few minutes that it took for me to write this, it twice stopped working (so I couldn't preview the edit), and that was after sitting around for perhaps 10 minutes waiting for the wiki to allow me to open the community portal page. --[[User:FFN|FFN]] 15:00, 2 August 2012 (EDT)
:I get this a lot, usually only for short periods but quite regularly. Either it just hangs or I get the "unable to serve page" error. Usually halfway through a big edit too, which is why I keep a text editor open to cut and paste stuff into. --[[User:Emvee|Emvee]] 04:41, 30 August 2012 (EDT)

== I ♥ you guys ==

Am I the only one who sees ♥'s everywhere in the RecentChanges page?

Did we screw up the CSS while adding an admin? -[[Special:Contributions/67.6.127.163|67.6.127.163]] 23:03, 29 August 2012 (EDT)
:You don't see them if you're logged in.--[[User:Rosicrucian|Rosicrucian]][[User Talk:Rosicrucian|<sup>Talk</sup>]] 19:10, 30 August 2012 (EDT)
::I think if you're logged in, you still see them if you have the enhanced Recent Changes turned off, because Derik only coded them for the simple version of RC. --[[User:Abates|abates]] 21:39, 1 September 2012 (EDT)

== G.I. Joe wiki - a little help? ==

Hello, all. I just wanted to add a request for some help for what should really by this wiki's sister site, Joepedia, the G.I. Joe Wiki. Now, I posted a similar request on some other sci-fi themed wiki, but the only answer I got was being told that the rules forbid a request from another wiki to be made. Well, I think that was kind of stupid, considering the communal attitude the whole wiki concept represents. BUT, ANYWAY, the Joepedia has been growing over the years, but it's mostly frequented by a small dedicated group of contributors. Since Transformers and G.I. Joe are so closely linked, I hoped some folks on here would like to help.

I will add that I have no authority over on that site, and I don't really contribute much, mostly because of the time spent my own website. I'm just a concerned geeky citizen drumming up some support. --[[User:JMM|JMM]] 10:26, 7 September 2012 (EDT)
:Well, I would, but I really don't know jack shit about G.I. Joe. And when I think about it, I'm not sure this post belongs here. -- [[User:Spydersix|spyder]] 17:36, 7 September 2012 (EDT)
::Just looking around for a little help. This seemed like the closest thing to a G.I. Joe wiki out there, and I figured it was worth a try. --[[User:JMM|JMM]] 13:23, 13 September 2012 (EDT)
::I don't see a problem with a polite request for assistance or notification that a Joe wiki exists, since there IS some crossover interest. I just don't know how much ''useful'' crossover interest for the Joe wiki there is from this end outside of what we've already done. I mean, we've got extensive coverage of the parts of Joe directly involving TFs... I'd say that's probably going to be the most useful thing we have for you. But, if others wanna try it out...<br>
::...unless you're on Wikia.... --[[User:M Sipher|M Sipher]] 13:27, 13 September 2012 (EDT)
:::Yeah, it was just a quick heads up so people who may be interested are aware. I know a number of people who are equally obsessed with TF and Joe. :) Oh, and yes, it is on Wikia! --[[User:JMM|JMM]] 14:22, 13 September 2012 (EDT)
::::We did at one point approach a partnership with Joepedia, and even had a template that cross-linked articles we shared. It was just a little premature at the time (which was years ago) as Joepedia was just starting out and often our articles were more complete than theirs, or theirs were just stubs. It looks like they've gotten off the ground a bit more now.--[[User:Rosicrucian|Rosicrucian]][[User Talk:Rosicrucian|<sup>Talk</sup>]] 15:30, 13 September 2012 (EDT)
:::::Yes, their wiki got started later than this one. They have a small group of dedicated contributers, but the site's yet to attract the kind of interest this one does. --[[User:JMM|JMM]] 16:34, 13 September 2012 (EDT)

== New stub template ==
Does anybody have any objections to a video game stub template? It would look something like this:
<br clear="all" />{{messagebox
|header=This article is still in beta stage.
|message_text=''This video game article is a [[:Category:Video game stubs|stub]] and is missing information. You can help '''{{SITENAME}}''' by [{{SERVER}}{{localurl:{{NAMESPACE}}:{{PAGENAME}}|action=edit}} expanding it].''
|image_name=ProwlTFU.JPG
|image_width=40px
|width = 90%
}}<includeonly>[[Category:Video game stubs]]</includeonly>
If anybody knows of a better picture that would go well with this, please upload it so it can be put in. Thanks! -- [[User:Spydersix|spyder]][[User Talk:Spydersix|<sup>Use this!</sup>]] 15:52, 2 October 2012 (EDT)

:How about a pic from the story where Prime dies in a video game? Heh if only Beta had ever been in a game, that'd be perfect. --[[Special:Contributions/76.28.76.206|76.28.76.206]] 16:03, 2 October 2012 (EDT)
::What story was that? And yeah, that woulda been great. -- [[User:Spydersix|spyder]][[User Talk:Spydersix|<sup>Use this!</sup>]] 19:53, 2 October 2012 (EDT)
:::That would be [[Afterdeath!]]. --[[User:Detour|Detour]] 21:56, 2 October 2012 (EDT)
::::Well if people really want a picture from that, someone else will have to upload it, as I don't have access to it. -- [[User:Spydersix|spyder]][[User Talk:Spydersix|<sup>Use this!</sup>]] 21:59, 2 October 2012 (EDT)
:::::[[:Image:Afterdeath-gameoverman.jpg|Right here, dude.]]--[[User:Detour|Detour]] 22:34, 2 October 2012 (EDT)
::::::Thanks, man. It's on the ''[[Transformers: Prime - The Game|Prime: The Game]]'' page if you want to see it. -- [[User:Spydersix|spyder]][[User Talk:Spydersix|<sup>Use this!</sup>]] 22:50, 2 October 2012 (EDT)

In addition to the video game stub, I'd like to suggest adding several templates, such as "section stub" and "fiction stub". Right now, we only have "characer stub fiction" for pages only missing fiction section, but no templates for non-character page missing fiction appearance. While "section stub" can use for articles only missing one or two sections. --'''[[User:TX55|<span style= "color:#00FA9A">TX55</span>]]'''<small><SUP>''[[User talk:TX55|<span style= "color:#0000CD">TALK</span>]]''</SUP></small> 22:05, 2 October 2012 (EDT)
:Ok, so I'm gonna go ahead and make the video game one, and TX, if I get around to it later, maybe the others. If not, well, someone else will. Oh, and if I miss an article that the video game one should go on, put it here. -- [[User:Spydersix|spyder]][[User Talk:Spydersix|<sup>Use this!</sup>]] 22:31, 2 October 2012 (EDT)

== Megatron Barcode Battler Card ==

Hi, I was wondering if anyone here had come across this Megatron card for the Barcode Battler, or knows where in the Wiki it should go:
{|
|-
|[[Image:Barcode Battler Megatron Card Front.jpg|200px]]
|[[Image:Barcode Battler Megatron Card Back.jpg|200px]]
|}
It seems to have been released by Toys R Us in 1992 as a promo for the Barcode Battler (which they were trying to sell in store), and was (as far as is known) the only such Transformers card, probably given away with two [http://barcodebattler.co.uk/scans/UK/ToysRUsF.jpg blank] [http://barcodebattler.co.uk/scans/UK/ToysRUsB.jpg cards] (the bottom scan - the middle is from the Barcode Battler box) to add your own barcodes to, and a card wallet.

The text ("Clad in steel, armed to the teeth, nobody toys with us good guys when this moody cool deadly-dudey is around.") is probably enough to make you want to forget this was ever made (is it really calling Megatron a good guy?), but it's cropped up in enough eBay sales (occasionally found in Barcode Battler lots with the seller unaware that they've got something rare) to make it likely to be genuine.

So does anyone else have any information on it, and whereabouts should this go? [[User:Xensyria|xensyria]] 12:26, 16 October 2012 (EDT) <small>EDIT: 13:10, 16 October 2012 (EDT)</small>
:I definitely don't know anything about it, besides that it's awesome, but if it's from 1992, then the only Megatron it could be is Megatron (G1), and so it should probably be on his toys/merchandise page.
:It's also plausible that someone who knows something about Barcode Battlers should make a short article on them for the wiki, since we have a lot of those "this broader thing had a TF thing released under it" pages. -[[User:LV|LV]] 12:31, 16 October 2012 (EDT)
::Or...this isn't anything to do with a licensed Transformers thing? I sort of blindly assumed Hasbro was the entity selling the Barcode Battler in the UK, but the packaging doesn't seem to support that. It's hard to believe it's not intended to be TF Megatron, but I'm also not sure it's an official product. Especially since this Megatron guy seems to be the boxfront "main character" for the UK Barcode Battler release. -[[User:LV|LV]] 12:37, 16 October 2012 (EDT)
:::Ah, that's a possibility, but Barcode Battler was being distributed in most of Europe by Tomy, so they probably gave Toys R Us rights to use Megatron. Perhaps they couldn't get the rights to use his picture though (as you say, it's Tomy's Barcode Battler cover on the card, so anyone who used the card probably wouldn't think it was supposed to be Megatron). I should also say that 1992 is more of an educated guess than fact, but it's bound to be somewhere around that.
:::If it's offical I don't mind making a Barcode Battler article (though I'll have to check out some of the other examples you mention first). [[User:Xensyria|xensyria]] 13:02, 16 October 2012 (EDT)
::::Wait, I just re-read Wikipedia, and Tomy was rivals with Takara who owned Transformers at the time. Still, I wonder if such big companies would risk a lawsuit over using Megatron, when had all sorts of other franchises they could use instead; perhaps Toys R Us arranged the deal with Hasbro, who they no doubt were one of the biggest retailers for at the time. [[User:Xensyria|xensyria]] 13:04, 16 October 2012 (EDT) <small>EDIT: 13:10, 16 October 2012 (EDT)</small>

MediaWiki talk:Community Portal

2012-10-16T17:04:21Z

Xensyria: /* Megatron Barcode Battler Card */

__NEWSECTIONLINK__

This is the place for discussion of topics that affect the entire wiki. Some topics that would ordinarily be here have merited their own pages:

{{chapters|title=Specific Discussion Subjects|align=left|content=
<div class="list-header">'''Moving From Wikia:'''</div>
* [[Transformers Wiki talk:Community Portal/Arriving|Arriving]]
* [[Transformers Wiki talk:Community Portal/Leaving|Leaving]]
* [[Transformers Wiki:Community Portal/Complaints|Complaints]]
<br/><div class="list-header">'''New Ad Policy:'''</div>
* [[Transformers Wiki:Ads|Ads]]
<br/><div class="list-header">'''Bookworm Database-Crash:'''</div>
* [[Transformers Wiki talk:Community Portal/Damage Control Central|Damage Control Central]]
* [[Project:Bookworm Crash]]
* [[Transformers Wiki talk:Community Portal/Leaving2|Leaving Take 2]]
<br/><div class="list-header">'''Server Move:'''</div>
* [[Transformers Wiki talk:Community Portal/Arriving2|Arriving Take 2]]
<br/><div class="list-header">'''Relicensing:'''</div>
* [[Transformers Wiki talk:Community Portal/Relicensing|Relicensing]]
<br/><div class="list-header">'''Dealing With Vandalism:'''</div>
* [[Transformers Wiki talk:Community Portal/Vandalism|Vandalism]]
<br/><div class="list-header">'''GoBots Sister Wiki:'''</div>
* [[Transformers Wiki talk:Community Portal/GoBots|Discussion on the place of GoBots in this wiki]]
}}<br/>

{{:{{FULLPAGENAMEE}}/Archive}}


==Adding to the Armada cartoon article==

Hello! New guy around here! I would like to add information about Home Video releases of Transformers Armada to its article. As I have no authorization to add to it, here is the information I can provide:

- Home Video Release in Bulgaria:
In Bulgaria "IP Video" released the complete series, spread across 15 volumes, as well as a "Best of" DVD. The DVDs were also distributed with a weekly newspaper upon their intial release. Volumes 1-8 contain 3 episodes each, with volumes 9-15 and the "Best of" DVD containing 4 episodes each.

Transformers: Armada vol.1 - First Encounter
Transformers: Armada vol.2 - Soldier
Transformers: Armada vol.3 - Palace
Transformers: Armada vol.4 - Ruins
Transformers: Armada vol.5 - Swoop
Transformers: Armada vol.6 - Conspiracy
Transformers: Armada vol.7 - Decisive Battle
Transformers: Armada vol.8 - Chase
Transformers: Armada vol.9 - Detection
Transformers: Armada vol.10 - Runaway
Transformers: Armada vol.11 - Rescue
Transformers: Armada vol.12 - Crisis
Transformers: Armada vol.13 - Uprising (The Unicron Battles - part 1)
Transformers: Armada vol.14 - Dash (The Unicron Battles - part 2)
Transformers: Armada vol.15 - Union (The Unicron Battles - part 3)

== TF:Prime jump-fight factoid ==

I've just started to watch Prime, and so far every episode I've seen has had someone do a dramatic jump slowed down jump before landing on someone they are fighting, (and sometimes the camera). It's quirky enough that it's stood out, and I was wondering if it's worth adding to the episode guides? I just wanted to know now because I'm going to be watching the whole of season one over the next few days, and it's easier if I know now than if it's added later. Failing that, is there anything else that people desperatly want added to the Prime episode guides that I should be looking out for? [[User:LiamK|LiamK]] 17:31, 23 January 2012 (EST)
:There is a certain level of ridiculous info you can get away with adding if you're a regular contributor doing serious and consistent work on the pages, and you handle it with sufficient comedic value. Ref: [[Enter the Nightbird|Brawn vs. Soundwave]], [[Countdown to Extinction (episode)|What Makes Starscream the Leader?]], etc. This could conceivably qualify as well, but approach with caution. -- [[User:Repowers|Repowers]] 21:22, 23 January 2012 (EST)
::Fair enough. It wasn't just going to be an adding silly jokes because oh ha ha I think I'm hilarious. I was going to add anything missing to the relevent pages as well. It's just that 5 episodes in, we've had at least 4 dramatic jumps into the camera, one dramatic jump away from the camera, and several semi-dramatic jumps off to the side. It's hilarious when characters like Bulkhead are apparently able to jump 500 feet into the air. If Springer ever shows up in this continuity family, he's gonna reach orbit.[[User:LiamK|LiamK]] 19:59, 25 January 2012 (EST)

== Expandible voice actor lists ==

There's been some noise about some of the voice actor lists getting too long and the need for a way to have them hidden unless the user expands them. I've done some test code which is [http://www.aldenbates.com/vatest.html currently hosted externally] but is easily converted into something that will work on the wiki. Currently tested on Firefox 9 and 10, Internet Explorer 6 and 8, Chrome 16, and Opera 11. Feedback, anyone? --[[User:Abates|abates]] 23:41, 31 January 2012 (EST)
:Although I was expecting a show/hide like how Wikipedia does its navigation templates, I don't mind this. Still needs a "hide" option, if that's possible. [[User:Interrobang|—Interrobang]] 23:46, 31 January 2012 (EST)
::I've added in a hide option. --[[User:Abates|abates]] 00:21, 1 February 2012 (EST)
:::If you set up a <nowiki>{{voiceactors}}</nowiki> template it'd be easy to hide the 'extended' cast names and have them show up automatically if you mouse over. '''<tt><nowiki>{{voiceactors|DEFAULT-TO-VISIBLE|DEFAULT-TO-INVISIBLE}}</nowiki></tt>'''
:::It wouldn't even require Javascript, it could be pure CSS. Simpler is better, IMO. -[[User:Derik|Derik]] 00:26, 1 February 2012 (EST)
::::I kinda dislike the idea of it opening on mouse-over, because it can have unexpected effects on the layout of the rest of the page if you're not paying attention to where you're moving your mouse pointer. --[[User:Abates|abates]] 18:32, 7 February 2012 (EST)
:::::I dislike mouse-over anything. Hide/show is a better interface. [[User:Interrobang|—Interrobang]] 18:48, 7 February 2012 (EST)
::::::Add a third dislike vote for mouse-over. If we do this which (if any) voice actors should be visible without clicking? Only the primary English performer? All English performers? All English and Japanese? None? I vote for none. --[[User:Khajidha|Khajidha]] 19:40, 7 February 2012 (EST)
:::::::I vote for whatever hides the German voice actors. I'd put the English and Japanese actors on a higher tier of importance, but I'm not opposed to hiding them. [[User:Interrobang|—Interrobang]] 19:48, 7 February 2012 (EST)
:::::::I think English and Japanese should always be shown, as they are the two biggest uh... markets? Whatever. Hide everything else, and DEFINITELY make the reveal a deliberate CLICK, not a mouseover. --[[User:M Sipher|M Sipher]] 19:56, 7 February 2012 (EST)
Can we have this template now? I think everybody agrees that the extraneous VAs should be hidden. If people want to hide English and Japanese VAs, then that can be further discussed. [[User:Interrobang|—Interrobang]] 10:48, 14 February 2012 (EST)

:[[Template:va]] (Should it be vas?)
:CSS entties which need to be added to the master file are as follows:
.tt1-voiceactorlist .tt1-extraneousFuckers{
display:none;
}
.tt1-voiceactorlist:hover .tt1-extraneousFuckers{
display:inline;
font-size:smaller;
}
.tt1-voiceactorlist.tt1-more:after{
content: "more";
padding-left:.5em;
font-size:smaller;
color:#999999;
}
.tt1-voiceactorlist:hover.tt1-more:after{
content: none;
}

:Styles are visible now if you've got [[User:Derik/kired tools|Kired Tools]] installed. Alternately you can paste the above into [[Special:Mypage/monacobook.css|your css file]] to get a look at it in action.

:If you want to make it Javascript that's beyond my remit, talk to one of the tech-guys. (Also I think it's a bad idea, but I'm against modifying the DOP for presentational purposes when there's already a markup language intended to control presentation: CSS. The wiki is currently Javascript 'light', I prefer to keep it that way.) -[[User:Derik|Derik]] 13:21, 14 February 2012 (EST)
::Why does it say "hiding the non English/Japanese voiceactors unless the user chooses to mouse over the list", I thought we had decided to make it use a click? --[[User:Khajidha|Khajidha]] 14:19, 14 February 2012 (EST)
::# I don't have the authority or access to implement that.
::# I think it's a terrible idea.
:::By all means, feel free to install the CSS styles (some CSS styles will be required regardless) and see what you think of this implementation.
:::The underlying HTML will be the same for a Javascript implementation anyway. -[[User:Derik|Derik]] 15:13, 14 February 2012 (EST)
So, er, did we come to a decision on either of these methods? I have to admit I kinda forgot about it until now. --[[User:Abates|abates]] 02:13, 5 March 2012 (EST)
:I think consensus is to use clicks, not mouse-over, despite Derik's protests. [[User:Interrobang|—Interrobang]] 04:13, 13 March 2012 (EDT)

== Facebook chat ==

Did the wiki have anyone at the TF Prime Facebook chat? -[[User:Derik|Derik]] 22:38, 6 February 2012 (EST)

==Moving (Prime)/(WFC)/(RB)/(FOC) to (Aligned)==
Considering that characters are part of the Aligned continuity family, like how [[Megatron (Animated)]] belong to the Animated continuity family and [[Megatron (G1)]] belongs to the Generation 1 continuity family.
:No, that's not how we do things. Disambiguations are made by franchise of origin, hence why it's [[Megatron (G1)]], but [[Terrorsaur (BW)]] rather than Terrorsaur (G1), or why it's [[Ironhide (Energon)]] rather than Ironhide (UT). This has been discussed ad infinitum but the consensus remains the same. The only exception has been that characters who debuted in WFC but also appear in Prime get (Prime) because of the slight iffyness of the Aligned family. --[[User:Detour|Detour]] 10:26, 8 April 2012 (EDT)
::(Edit conflict'd by Detour) I don't think we have an especially good, logical reason for why we do that with Aligned characters, other than that it simply feels very "wrong" to label a character with a prominent, regular fictional appearance in the ''Prime'' cartoon with a disambig based on their cameo appearance in a video game tie-in novel. Honestly, given that odd nature of the whole "Aligned" idea and the fact we're already breaking our standard with this continuity family's characters ''anyway'', I'm not entirely opposed to just using (Aligned) as a much handier, self-explanatory disambig, but I don't know if anyone would agree. It ''would'' feel odd, for instance, to label the Rescue Bots with that tag. And Bot Shots are a tremendous pain in the arse - it's so annoying when we have to create articles for Aligned Roadbuster and Topspin and whoever when the Bot Shots are just clearly the movieverse characters. The whole Aligned thing can sometimes be a real wiki-headache. - [[User:Chris McFeely|Chris McFeely]] 10:32, 8 April 2012 (EDT)
:::Why DON'T they just get inserted into the Movie characters sections, then? [This thing applies to a lot of Hasbro's "fuzzier" lines of late, really - stuff's matched up with what other characters in the line are part of rather than just including them in an existing article for the version they're designed after]. - [[User:Mammalian Verisimilitude|Mammalian Verisimilitude]] 10:41, 8 April 2012 (EDT)
::::I think treating Bot Shots as part of Aligned is somewhat dubious. Is there a reason it can't be viewed as using characters from multiple continuity families? --[[User:KilMichaelMcC|KilMichaelMcC]] 11:00, 8 April 2012 (EDT)
:::::We already discussed this [[Talk:Bot Shots|here]]. --[[User:Abates|abates]] 18:59, 8 April 2012 (EDT)
::::::We do that so we don't have to pick nits over where the characters belong. Bot Shots Optimus Prime could fit many of his various incarnations. I disagree with renaming them to (Aligned), somewhat because all of the (WFC) guys will eventually be moved to (Prime), anyway. [[User:Interrobang|—Interrobang]] 05:48, 10 April 2012 (EDT)
But should (Prime)/(WFC)/(RB)/(FOC) be renamed (Aligned) or not?--[[User:Finister2|Finister2]] 05:43, 10 April 2012 (EDT)
:No. --[[User:Detour|Detour]] 11:29, 10 April 2012 (EDT)
::Why?--[[User:Finister2|Finister2]] 13:55, 10 April 2012 (EDT)
:::It's already been explained why. --[[User:Detour|Detour]] 14:40, 10 April 2012 (EDT)

== Universal, properly-translated names of the Japanese Beast Wars/Beast Machines episodes ==

Okay, this has been bothering me for a while. On each page of the [[Beast Wars: Transformers (cartoon)#Episodes|Beast Wars]] and [[Beast Machines: Transformers (cartoon)#Episodes|Beast Machines]] episode, the Japanese title of each episode is given an English translation in each page's Foreign Localization section. And on the [[Geneon Universal Entertainment|Geneon]] page, under the sections of its Beast Wars, Beast Wars Metals, and Beast wars Returns releases, the Japanese episode titles are also translated into English. What's bothering me is that certain episodes are given slightly differently-translated English names when comparing those given on the actual episode pages to those given on the Geneon page. Here's a list of each differing episode title. The episode page names are on the left, and the Geneon page names are on the right:
:"The Solitary Warrior Tigatron" vs. "Lonely Warrior Tigatron"
:"Goodbye, Rattle!?" vs. "Goodbye Rattle!?"
:"The Falcon Warrior Airrazor" vs. "Falcon Warrior Airazor"
:"Floating Island Death Match Part 1" vs. "Floating Island Deathmatch Part 1"
:"Floating Island Death Match Part 2" vs. "Floating Island Deathmatch Part 2"
:"The Destrons' Dramatic Finish" vs. "The Destrons Make Drama"
:"Two Dinobots?" vs. "There are 2 Dinobots?"
:"The Ant Warrior from Hell, Inferno" vs. "Inferno, the Ant Warrior from Hell"
:"Revive, Beast Power!" vs. "Resurrected Beast Power"
:"The Immortal Starscream" vs. "Starscream's Invulnerability"
:"Fare Thee Well, Tigatron" vs. "Farewell Tigatron"
:"The Great King of Terror Arrives!" vs. "The King of Terror Arrives!"
:"You're Under Arrest, Meow" vs. "Meyow're Under Arrest"
:"Gro~w Bigger" vs. "Groooww Bigger"
:"I Am Resurrected, Dā" vs. "I am Resurrected!"
:"Blaze, Dragon" vs. "Blazing Dragon"
:"I Hath Returned" vs. "We Have Returned"
:"Resurrection of the Legend" vs. "Rebirth of the Legend"
:"The Dearly Wished Transformation" vs. "The Transformation of a Dear Wish"
:"The Memory of a Friend" vs. "Memory of a Friend"
:"Mission of the Stars" vs. "Message of the Stars"
:"The Moment of Truth" vs. "The End"
:"Captured Souls" vs. "Capture of the Spirits"
:"The Hellish All-out Attack" vs. "The General Offensive of Hell"
:"The Course of the Future" vs. "The Fate of the Future"
Could someone who's more adept at Japanese please clarify which titles should be universally used on this Wiki, and help in an attempt to create a greater sense of unity between the individual episode pages and the Geneon page (and with any other such pages on this Wiki as well)? --[[User:Sabrblade|Sabrblade]] 01:29, 10 April 2012 (EDT)
:The titles on the episode pages are more refined. Not to mention it would be easier to change the titles on a single page. [[User:Interrobang|—Interrobang]] 05:58, 10 April 2012 (EDT)
::"I Hath Returned"? That's incorrect English. "Hath" was third person singular, not first person ("he hath" not "I hath"). --[[User:Khajidha|Khajidha]] 08:10, 10 April 2012 (EDT)
:::[[User:Apcog|Apcog]] translated that. I recall the intention was to capture the old-timey connotation of the original Japanese. [[User:Interrobang|—Interrobang]] 08:21, 10 April 2012 (EDT)
:Something else that has me pondering are the specific choices made in spelling and grammar of a few of these titles. Like, the inclusion of a "The" where it may not need be (like in "The Solitary Warrior Tigatron" instead of just "Solitary Warrior Tigatron", or "The Falcon Warrior Airrazor" vs. "Falcon Warrior Airazor") or the use a comma (like in "Goodbye, Rattle!?" as opposed to "Goodbye Rattle!?") or a space between two words instead of making them a compound word ("Death Match" vs. "Deathmatch"), and the synonymous use of "Resurrect(ion)", "Rebirth", and "Revive". In these cases, are the titles on the episode pages truly the more precise titles, or could they also use some amending? --[[User:Sabrblade|Sabrblade]] 11:20, 10 April 2012 (EDT)
::Most of those details are up to the translator's discretion. But, like I said, it's easier to just edit the Genon page rather than across multiple articles. [[User:Interrobang|—Interrobang]] 11:33, 10 April 2012 (EDT)

== Category:Deceased ==
Sub-categories
*Category:Deceased (Generation 1 cartoon)
**Category:Deceased (Marvel comics)
**Category:Deceased (BW)
*Category:Deceased (Armada)
*Category:Deceased (Energon)
*Category:Deceased (Movie)
**Category:Deceased (ROTF)
**Category:Deceased (DOTM)
*Category:Deceased (SG)
*Category:Deceased (Animated)
*Category:Deceased (Aligned)

Why not?--[[User:Finister2|Finister2]] 05:52, 10 April 2012 (EDT)

:"Deceased" is a stupid idea on a wiki that focuses on fiction with multiple continuities, time periods, vague "deaths", and resurrections. All characters will inevitably die at one point. This is not a warranted category. [[User:Interrobang|—Interrobang]] 05:55, 10 April 2012 (EDT)

::Vote for "No".
::A character may get killed in a sub-continuity but alive in another. Not to mention if the character will be resurrected or not. (So, we don't need Category:Resurrected characters, either.) --'''[[User:TX55|<span style= "color:#00FA9A">TX55</span>]]'''<small><SUP>''[[User talk:TX55|<span style= "color:#0000CD">TALK</span>]]''</SUP></small> 10:11, 10 April 2012 (EDT)
:::It is an appealing idea, to have categories for characters that are deceased "now." If they are patched up, they get removed from the category. I would have changed the categories to "Deceased (Movieverse)" and "Deceased (UT cartoon)" since they are supposed to be all one continuity. The only problem I see is vague deaths and continuity inconsistencies. People would probably disagree with me that [[Brawn (G1)]] obviously survived that shot to the shoulder. So, unfortunately, I can't fully endorse the idea. - [[User:Starfield|Starﬁeld]] 11:08, 10 April 2012 (EDT)
::::If we go by continuity, we are going to have a ''lot'' of "Deceased" categories. And you could only do it by continuity, which goes against our current methods to have categories by franchise. --[[User:Abates|abates]] 16:46, 10 April 2012 (EDT)
::I agree with you guys in regards to characters. but, what about a category for ''real'' people who have been involved with the Transformers franchise (like voice actors, designers, writers, etc.) who are deceased? --[[User:Sabrblade|Sabrblade]] 11:11, 10 April 2012 (EDT)

== Scheduled downtime. ==

Our hoster is moving servers around tomorrow. One of ours is gonna be moved starting between "Thu Apr 12 23:00:00 UTC 2012 and Fri Apr 13 05:00:00 UTC 2012." So that'll happen. --[[User:ItsWalky|ItsWalky]] 21:52, 11 April 2012 (EDT)
:I presume all the necessary backups have been made? --[[User:Thylacine 2000|Thylacine 2000]] 22:37, 11 April 2012 (EDT)
::Regularly, like clockwork. --[[User:ItsWalky|ItsWalky]] 00:51, 12 April 2012 (EDT)

==Category: Cats==
Presumably we have some kind of unwritten "We don't categorise by altmode" rule in play here, so I apologise if my adding a bunch of characters to this category seemed heavy-handed but in my defence the distinction between ''Shattered Glass'' Steeljaw and G1 Ravage is, eh, pretty much non-existent, Cheetor himself says "I'm a cat", it's a subset of Characters by species and we have K-9 under Dogs, so it's hardly black and white. But my main reason for doing it was that in SEO terms, having the word "Cats" repeatedly linked a bunch of times throughout the wiki is really quite useful, as in the wider internet cats are kind of a big deal. Real effing kitten calendars and all that. Isn't that something to consider? --[[User:Emvee|Emvee]] 03:47, 26 April 2012 (EDT)
:Categorizing by alternate mode has been brought up several times, but nobody has bothered to hammer out the details and do it. I don't particularly care for it one way or another, but putting Transformers in plain categories like "Cats" and "Watercraft" based on alternate mode makes them useless to those who only want to know about actual cats or watercraft in ''Transformers''. That said, I completely fail to see the relevance of Internet memes to our categorization system. [[User:Interrobang|—Interrobang]] 03:59, 26 April 2012 (EDT)
::Well, just that keywords are good for search engines, keywords that link to relevant pages even better and lots of people search for cats on the internet. I know that my girlfriend does and at a time like this (when my birthday is coming up) it's not impossible that she might search for "Transformers cats". If that led her to, say, SG Ravage's page (which is quite accessible to an internet-savvy non-fan with its twitter references and Walky's cartoons) then she may well stick around to find out more, and maybe look for more Transformers cats through the category links at the bottom of the page. At the moment our first link in a Google search is Snow Cat, who's kinda cool but you'd probably have to be a GI Joe fan to really get it. I dunno, I'm just spitballing here, but part of my job is SEO so I hope I at least know something like what I'm talking about. Anyway, that was my line of thinking. If it's problematic then that's fine, but I'm not really convinced by the "people looking for actual cats or watercraft in ''Transformers''" argument either - on a TF wiki I think they'd assume Transformers that turn into either of those things would be included by default. They are robots in disguise, after all. --[[User:Emvee|Emvee]] 14:36, 26 April 2012 (EDT)

== Google + ==
I've made a Google + for the wiki. I just need someone to link it to the main page because I don't know how. This is the link: https://plus.google.com/106006102124340784739 -- [[User:Spydersix|Spydersix]] 19:00, 30 April 2012 (EDT)

== Alt-mode listings ==

I've seen several things here discussing listing alt-modes by ''category'', but I'm looking for something a bit less complicated. I would really appreciate having each character's page at least openly list their alt-mode in the beginning; as it stands, some pages do not make it clear what that character turns into, generally only mentioning it in passing or in screenshots. I think some kind of fill-in-the-blanks template would work well, the kind they use on Wikipedia for comic book superheroes that have sections for code names, secret identities, a brief list of abilities, etc. It doesn't even have to be that thorough, just a small piece under the page's main picture that has "name, alt-mode, faction" would be a nice change of pace. [[User:Deusoma|Deusoma]] 15:15, 2 May 2012 (EDT)
:Your idea is impractical because many characters have had numerous altmodes. Listing all of them would be ridiculously long while trying to generalize them down to a single listing would be useless. For example, [[Optimus Prime (G1)|Optimus Prime]]. The casual fan might assume that you could just list his altmode as "semi truck" and be done with it. But he has also been a bat, a Lambourghini Diablo and a shoe. And that doesn't even get into what kind of "semi truck" he is: cab over engine like the original or long nose like the Generation 2 version. And does it have a sleeper. With or without trailer. And you still haven't covered his non-Earth modes. None of the Cybertronian forms we have seen looks anything like any of the others. --[[User:Khajidha|Khajidha]] 15:29, 2 May 2012 (EDT)
::I don't care one way or the other, but we could hide the minor alternate modes, the same as we do with voice actors. [[User:Interrobang|—Interrobang]] 15:40, 2 May 2012 (EDT)
:While I agree that we should do our best to list alt-modes, at the beginning of the article doesn't seem like the most efficient place to do it. Rather, we should continue listing the alt-mode in the description of the various toys and work on filling in those that are lacking. - [[User:Shellspark|Shellspark]] 16:26, 2 May 2012 (EDT)
: Well, there are a lot of fiction-only altmodes going on. I could see this working as a Notes subsection, possibly as a gallery. --[[User:M Sipher|M Sipher]] 17:27, 2 May 2012 (EDT)
:: Yeah, that's why I always attempt to get an image of each altmode in the fiction section as they appear. --[[User:ItsWalky|ItsWalky]] 17:56, 2 May 2012 (EDT)

==Redundant foreign names==
According to Interrobang:
:"''So? It's been the standard for a long time and exactly how do you expect readers to know that Japan uses the same name without noting it?''"
1) No, it has NOT been "the standard for a long time". In fact, we didn't do this for YEARS. You're the one who seems to have decided, fairly recently, to pull this crap. Like with "mammoth".<br>
2) Well. Why don't we just list every country in the world that also uses that name? After all, how exactly are we to know if the Canadians don't not call her Airachnid, or the Germans, or the Zimbabweans (holy shit "Zimbabweans" is ''correct''?), or the other 190-odd nations across the globe? Oh wait, because we can use some incredibly base deductive reasoning and assume that unless a ''different'' name is listed for a country, ''it's the same name and we don't need to fucking list it there just so you can get a katakana-boner''. --[[User:M Sipher|M Sipher]] 06:45, 3 May 2012 (EDT)
:There is the argument to be made that not including a foreign name leaves the reader unable to know if the character either has the same name in that country, or if that information is just ''missing'' from the article. Not that I disagree that it ''really'' seems to have got out of control, to the point that the Japanese words for "doctor" or "scientist" or "coach" or "mammoth" are being added to nameless characters' articles. I enjoyed our older attitude that basically amounted to "fuck katanana unless necessary to explain something". - [[User:Chris McFeely|Chris McFeely]] 07:05, 3 May 2012 (EDT)
::The counter-argument was already made above. ''Transformers'' is a global brand now, and it's basically a waste of space to list every country where Optimus Prime is called "Optimus Prime" (or as close as they can get phonetically), and better to assume that it is "Optimus Prime" unless otherwise noted. The ''probability'' that the name is the same is pretty damn good nowadays, especially in Japan. --[[User:M Sipher|M Sipher]] 07:34, 3 May 2012 (EDT)
:::I'm sympathetic. If somebody actually does go through the trouble to track down what Airachnid is called in Zimbabwean and it ends up being "Airachnid" then if they put the information down, then nobody else will have to go through the trouble of looking it up. What if redundant foreign names are left <nowiki></nowiki> - [[User:Starfield|Starfield]] 10:04, 3 May 2012 (EDT)
::::I hate seeing redundant names, but I agree that a certain degree of "is this already known?" may exist in a vacuum. I'm not opposed to leaving them in the code but commented out to keep them out of the page itself. -[[User:LV|LV]] 00:00, 4 May 2012 (EDT)
:::::Would it be acceptable to have a template that displays the foreign names, but hides or combines entries if the names are not unique? The template might also be able to auto-categorize by "characters missing ''language'' names", too.[[Special:Contributions/192.249.47.177|192.249.47.177]] 18:49, 29 May 2012 (EDT)

==Toy Fair/Pre-Toy Fair Catalogues==
Collectively we went all out on getting hold of the 86 PTF catalogue when it popped up on eBay and have a nice page with full scans of it (I say "we" I completely missed that fund-raising drive). Going forward, is it a feasible aim for other Toy Fair and Pre-Toy Fair cats to be collected for the Wiki or is 86 known to be the only one of significant interest? I ask because I just stumbled upon an eBay seller with the 88 TF cat (which I'd hoped to procure for use on my Visionaries wiki) and some early 90s ones, all of which are beyond my means, but at relatively reasonable prices. Can't link to them on my phone, but I thought I'd mention it in case they are of significant interest like the 86 one was. [[User:Danja|Danja]] 03:45, 6 May 2012 (EDT)

== Google Chrome ==
Does anybody else experience a ''really'' slow connection to only this site while using Google Chrome? -- [[User:Spydersix|spyder]] 21:42, 17 May 2012 (EDT)

FYI: <nowiki>{{bigquote}}</nowiki> overlaps images in Google Chrome, like on [[Thaddeus Morocco|Morocco]]. I don't know when that started. - [[User:Starfield|Starfield]] 16:03, 22 May 2012 (EDT)

Now, the <nowiki>{{picsneeded}}</nowiki> tag overlaps the top of the episode template. It might just be my computer, but I don't know. -- [[User:Spydersix|spyder]] 18:28, 29 May 2012 (EDT)

:These layout problems are apparently an issue with the latest version of Chrome. I guess they'll get fixed in the next release or something. --[[User:Abates|abates]] 18:10, 31 May 2012 (EDT)
::There's been two new versions of Chrome since you said that, [[User:Abates|abates]], and it hasn't been fixed, so I'm reporting it to Google. Like that's gonna work. -- [[User:Spydersix|spyder]] 10:09, 19 June 2012 (EDT)
:::Is this problem still happening? --[[User:Abates|abates]] 05:22, 15 October 2012 (EDT)
::::Wow, completely forgot about this. And no, since I reported it to Google, it's been fixed. I'm surprised. -- [[User:Spydersix|spyder]][[User Talk:Spydersix|<sup>Use this!</sup>]] 06:26, 15 October 2012 (EDT)

== Transformers 4 ==
Does anyone mind if I take a stab at creating a page for it? I'm not some idiot who's gonna create a crappy page with no effort. Or is it ''way'' to early to do that? -- [[User:Spydersix|spyder]] 19:03, 6 June 2012 (EDT)
:I'd say wait until at least the first poster appears on the Internet, then you'll have some sort of image to put in. Really though it is a bit too early, if everything goes to plan TF4 won't be out for another two years, so the TF4 article would be sitting around with nothing on it for at least a year before we start getting concrete information. [[User:TurboFox|TurboFox]] 17:06, 24 August 2012 (EDT)

== Prime game ==
What do people think about putting [[Transformers: Prime - The Game|Transformers Prime: The Game]] in the nav bar? -- [[User:Spydersix|spyder]] 09:47, 10 June 2012 (EDT)
:Or we can replace the link to the Prime cartoon page with a link to the Prime franchise page, that way it avoids overcluttering the navbar. --[[User:Detour|Detour]] 14:15, 10 June 2012 (EDT)
::Yeah, that also might work. -- [[User:Spydersix|spyder]] 09:23, 11 June 2012 (EDT)
:::At least 95% of the people who click on that are likely to be looking for info on the cartoon, and I feel like if we have Rescue Bots and Dark of the Moon pointing to the cartoon/film rather than the franchises, we should aim to be consistent with our navigation. We'll presumably have to add [[Transformers Universe]] there eventually anyway. --[[User:Abates|abates]] 16:46, 11 June 2012 (EDT)
::::Yeah, I forgot about that. We probably can take Dark of the Moon to declutter it. -- [[User:Spydersix|spyder]] 16:50, 11 June 2012 (EDT)
:::::We could divide things up with subheaders or just by putting darker lines in to split up the links. Man, I wish there was a way to easily add in more links without cluttering up the menu too much. It feels like we should have links to current toylines as well, and maybe the current IDW comics. --[[User:Abates|abates]] 17:21, 11 June 2012 (EDT)
::::::Yeah probably, but what can you do, right? And I like that subheader idea. And on a different note, "Transformers Prime: The Game" is a mouthful. How can we abbreviate that? -- [[User:Spydersix|spyder]] 17:36, 11 June 2012 (EDT)
::::::: TF Prime: The Game??? [[User:Bumblebee2000|Bumblebee2000]] 08:19, 12 June 2012 (EDT)
::::::::Probably the best we can do. -- [[User:Spydersix|spyder]] 13:37, 12 June 2012 (EDT)
:::::::::On abbreviating the name, as everything on the wiki is Transformers, you can say "Prime: The Game" instead of "TF Prime: The Game". The "TF" is assumed. [[User:JohnnyMrNinja|JohnnyMrNinja]] 15:30, 13 June 2012 (EDT)
::::::::::So what are we going to do about this nav bar? -- [[User:Spydersix|spyder]] 18:17, 12 June 2012 (EDT)
:::::::::::Are we using the <nowiki>{{Primecap}}</nowiki> template for images from it? -- [[User:Spydersix|spyder]] 10:07, 13 June 2012 (EDT)

:::::::::::Be patient. This stuff never happens overnight. --[[User:Detour|Detour]] 18:50, 12 June 2012 (EDT)
::::::::::::Not exactly overnight anymore, two months later. As you might be able to tell, patience is not my strong suit. -- [[User:Spydersix|spyder]] 12:10, 30 August 2012 (EDT)
:::::::::::::Sorry, I meant to have a go at fiddling with the lines to break the menu up a bit but I forgot. I'll have a go at it this weekend. --[[User:Abates|abates]] 17:16, 30 August 2012 (EDT)
::::::::::::::Sweet! -- [[User:Spydersix|spyder]] 17:33, 30 August 2012 (EDT)
:::::::::::::::''Niiiiccceeee.'' -- [[User:Spydersix|spyder]] 22:10, 1 September 2012 (EDT)
I have added this and taken out Dark of the Moon, since that's been out for over a year. I was going to add [[Transformers Universe]], but I realised we still don't have a release date for that. I've also added darker lines under the "Main Page" and under the navigation links which are actual articles rather than Wiki things, which will hopefully make those links more grouped in function. You might have to force a refresh to see those. --[[User:Abates|abates]] 22:12, 1 September 2012 (EDT)
:I see them. Nice looking. And I'll let you know when we have a release date. I check every day. -- [[User:Spydersix|spyder]] 22:16, 1 September 2012 (EDT)

I think I'm leaning towards moving the ''[[Transformers: Prime - The Game|Prime: The Game]]'' page to ''Transformers Prime - The Game'', since that's how the official website writes it. So the Nav bar might have to get changed. Just a heads up. -- [[User:Spydersix|spyder]][[User Talk:Spydersix|<sup>Use this!</sup>]] 17:31, 10 October 2012 (EDT)

== Rare/Unkown vintage G1 Walkie Talkie toys? ==

Hi guys. I was just browsing ebay and came across 3 old G1 Walkie Talkies that don't appear to be mentioned on the wiki anywhere.
#1- [http://www.ebay.com/itm/Transformers-Walkie-Talkie-ROBOT-1987-Hasbro-Inc/270982316728/ This] one appears to be an Argentinian Transformer with the mold licensed from Commando Toys.
#2 [http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Transformers-G1-Walkie-Talkies-Boxed-/300654034838?pt=US_Action_Figures&hash=item4600607f96/ These] guys appear to be unnamed generics.
#3 [http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/REAL-VTG-80s-TRANSFORMERS-INTERCOM-TELEPHONE-SYSTEM-WIRED-WALKIE-TALKIE-NIB-MIB-/360458042129?pt=US_Action_Figures&hash=item53ecf93b11 This] one features two Optimus Primes as an "Electronic Intercom Telephone System" (which seems to basically be two walkie talkies connected via a wire). Box says made by Nasta in lager photos and check out that goofy looking transformation sequence.

I'm not entirely sure if any of these are legit as I've never seen them mentioned anywhere else before. Anyone else know more info about these? Should they be added to wiki? [[User:RavenG|RavenG]] 02:27, 16 June 2012 (EDT)
:I used to have a set of #2, but I've no idea where they are now. They were pretty common in the UK I think. --[[User:Emvee|Emvee]] 03:17, 19 July 2012 (EDT)

== Technical Contact (and passwords) ==

Hi, guys. It's Botch the Crab... though I can't sign in as my account. I lost my password. I don't know what email address is associated with the account, but whichever one it is, when I did the "forgot password" thing and was told a new password was emailed to me, I never received any emails.

So my first question is: who can help me re-claim my account?

My second question is: who are the technical administrators of the wiki, and is that information posted somewhere that I couldn't find? I tried contacting Chris McFeely and David Willis, but neither of them were able to help, nor did they know who
would. So! Suggestions?

:I tried emailing your username, but it didn't work... It said that I need to be logged in with a valid email set, but I had done both of those things. Can any other user successfully send an email to [[User:Botch the Crab]]? Because it might be the email module that isn't working and that's why you can't reset your password. I don't think the MediaWiki framework has been updated since 2008 (we're running [http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Release_notes/1.12#MediaWiki_1.12.0 MediWiki 1.12.0]), and if David Willis doesn't know who's running the tech (seeing as how [http://www.networksolutions.com/whois-search/tfwiki.net he registered this site), it makes me think that there are not any people doing that. I could be mistaken, but I think there are only admins that are affecting change within the MW software.
:As far as I know, once a password to a MW site is lost there is no recovery outside of email, at least that is the case for WP. [[User:JohnnyMrNinja|JohnnyMrNinja]] 17:49, 16 June 2012 (EDT)

::I just tried sending an email to Botch and it worked, though the copy I sent myself ended up in my gmail spam folder. --[[User:Abates|abates]] 18:48, 16 June 2012 (EDT)

:::You're right, I had to confirm my email address and now I can email, although emails from this site were marked as spam for me as well. Botch, I can only hope that you haven't checked your spam folder. [[User:JohnnyMrNinja|JohnnyMrNinja]] 00:54, 17 June 2012 (EDT)

:Thanks for all the help, guys. Unfortunately, I haven't received any of the "new password" emails. (Yes, I keep checking the spam folder.) The frustrating part is that without being able to sign in, I cannot confirm ''which'' email address these are being sent to. All my emails are forwarded to my gmail account, so I have no idea why I wouldn't receive them. It's a mystery. It's weird to think it's possible that none of the administrators have the access or ability to solve this.--[[User:Botch|Botch]] 23:18, 18 June 2012 (EDT)
::I thought Scout and/or McFly were doing our technical stuff. --[[User:Abates|abates]] 23:27, 18 June 2012 (EDT)
:::I'm pretty sure that Scout and I have been over this fairly often: We're pretty damned busy, so we're not monitoring the Community Portal pages. If someone's forgotten their password AND the associated email address, there's no real secure way to get them back in. Email addresses aren't exposed to us until we get down to the to SQL DB layer, barring some additional extensions that would expose everyone's information to a trusted few. I strongly suggest making a new account in the interim, while we discuss the repercussions of adding some more User Management extensions, and figuring out who we can trust. I'll tell you this much, though: If your password isn't basically a random scramble of characters and symbols, I wouldn't trust you with maintenance access. It's like giving a handgun to a chimp. (Not picking on anyone in particular, but let's keep this in mind as we start adding cooks to the kitchen.) --[[User:McFly|McFly]] 11:54, 1 August 2012 (EDT)

:Sad update: I managed to scrounge up the database password from some old notes, and I've got your email address: Same one listed on your website. If you can disable whatever's filtering out your spam, that might help, since your site mentions some sort of sender-response mechanism. Poor old Mediawiki is too stupid/honest to pretend that she's a human.--[[User:McFly|McFly]] 12:11, 1 August 2012 (EDT)

== Captions need to go ==

It seems I am not the only one who finds the caption "humor" annoying and irrelevant to the photo it is placed with. I see in huge bold letters 'THE FUNNY STAYS. -The Management' So it seems this is not the first time someone has brought this up.

It seems " The Management " are the few people who get their kicks from such while the rest of the users are stuck just rolling their eyes. I for one will no longer be visiting this wiki because of such.

The nail in the coffin for me was a caption that I looked up as I wondered why I didn't get the "joke" as I seen tons of Xformer related shows. Heaven forbid the joke had nothing to do with transformers, only the person who wrote the joke and a small selection of people probably will understand it.

Just a little FYI 90% of the captions are unfunny, I would dare say 30% or more have nothing to do with xformers.

(sorry if this is in the wrong place, sort of new to wiki's and I wish the first thing I could have posted here would have been positive. I believe this is really positive and will help the wiki more than any article I could have wrote.)
: Thank you for leaving. --[[User:ItsWalky|ItsWalky]] 02:11, 21 June 2012 (EDT)

:Eh, the majority of the time when I stumble on a discussion on wikis on other sites, people will cite TFWiki and Wookiepedia as the best, and are generally complimentary about the humour, so while we occasionally get complaints about it, it seems like the majority of people like it. --[[User:Abates|abates]] 03:29, 21 June 2012 (EDT)

: I also believe that anything else you would have contributed to the wiki would have been less useful than this. --[[User:M Sipher|M Sipher]] 06:58, 21 June 2012 (EDT)

:....xformers? Is spelling out Transformers properly now "2 kool for skool"? --[[User:Detour|Detour]] 07:32, 21 June 2012 (EDT)

:The Funny '''STAYS'''. --'''[[User:TX55|<span style= "color:#00FA9A">TX55</span>]]'''<small><SUP>''[[User talk:TX55|<span style= "color:#0000CD">TALK</span>]]''</SUP></small> 09:26, 22 June 2012 (EDT)

:I'd note that if you want a serious TF wiki, there's an abandoned Wikia wiki that nobody seems to have gotten the bright idea of turning into one yet instead of always trying to convert this one. --[[Special:Contributions/108.176.195.222|108.176.195.222]] 01:43, 22 June 2012 (EDT)

::Some people here have actually mentioned this idea to the wikia "community", but they seem hellbent on remaining a poor copy of this site. The fact that they have barely added any pages since this site began while we have doubled in size doesn't seem to register to some of the people over there. --[[User:Khajidha|Khajidha]] 02:37, 22 June 2012 (EDT)

: If you feel that bad about it then write some of your own on the Pics with out Captions. (hell knows that ultra magnus "I can deal with that" has been done to death)[[User:Phantom|Phantom]] 09:38, 22 June 2012 (EDT)
::To be fair, serious captions, unless vital to the understanding of the picture, tend to get rewritten here. --[[User:Abates|abates]] 18:42, 22 June 2012 (EDT)

== Spoiler titles ==

Something which came up last month, but I didn't want to bring it up at the time because it would only have compounded the problem.

The title for [[How Ratchet Got His Hands Back|IDW MtMtE #5]] was placed at the '''end''' of the issue, [http://www.comics.org/issue/26304/cover/4/ "The Night Gwen Stacy Died"]-style (rather than the typical beginning/first splash page), because it was ''itself'' a spoiler.

So, of course, every page which had a {{tl|spoiler}}-tag for the issue plastered it in the spoiler tag itself.

There's got to be a better way of doing this if a comic gets a spoiler-title again. -- [[User:Mammalian Verisimilitude|Mammalian Verisimilitude]] 20:19, 7 July 2012 (EDT)
:The spoiler tags could have linked to the "More than Meets the Eye issue 5" redirect instead (the issue was originally created there to avoid just that problem, but then it got moved to the actual title anyway) --[[User:Abates|abates]] 20:30, 7 July 2012 (EDT)

Speaking of SPOILERS, is there any way people could ''stop'' putting them up for comics before the issues actually come out? By sheer happenstance, I just came across some significant details on the Wiki about the DJD, their leader, and their membership that I honestly would have preferred to read for myself when it's published. It was posted by long time members, so I'm assuming it's legit and came from SDCC or somewhere, but there are no sources so I can't be sure. If an anon posted that stuff, I probably would have removed it as typical Wikipedia fanfic trying to creep in.

Regardless, it's getting tough to come onto the TFwiki because of this stuff. Whenever a new 5-page preview for RID or MTMTE comes out, people are immediately updating the crew on the ''Lost Light'' page, adding place-holder storylinks to pages for new characters showing up, and just generally revealing every detail they can extract from the previews ahead of time. I get that avoiding spoilers on the internet is a luxury nowadays, but these previews come out nearly a week in advance for each of IDW's two series. Its one thing to avoid SPOILERS-labeled topics in a message board...its another to avoid the entire TFwiki for a third of every month to dodge preview materials. --[[User:Xaaron|Xaaron]] 21:52, 20 July 2012 (EDT)
:This one I'll have to own, as 'twas me that did the deed. It was, as you speculated, another five page preview from IDW. I'd ''hoped'' the details I put in weren't too spoilery, as in the leader's case it was mostly putting a name to details we'd found out issues before. I can only apologize and try to be a bit more careful.--[[User:Rosicrucian|Rosicrucian]][[User Talk:Rosicrucian|<sup>Talk</sup>]] 22:11, 20 July 2012 (EDT)
::I'll also say that I was going to stick the group shot of them up on the wiki, but I can hold off if you think that would be best.--[[User:Rosicrucian|Rosicrucian]][[User Talk:Rosicrucian|<sup>Talk</sup>]] 22:40, 20 July 2012 (EDT)

== Autobot Communications officer in Headmasters ==

<nowiki>[[Image:Hm - autobot communications officer.jpg|thumb]]</nowiki>
Hey, this guy appeared in a single episode of Heamasters where he was the communications officer on-duty at Autobot City. ...does anyone know which episode? -[[User:Derik|Derik]]
:[[The Final Showdown on Earth (Part 1)]]. --[[User:Abates|abates]] 01:27, 18 July 2012 (EDT)
::Sir, you are a gentleman and a [[Transformerology|Transformerologist]]. -[[User:Derik|Derik]] 01:47, 18 July 2012 (EDT)

== Connection issues ==

Is it just me or are there problems with the wiki's server or in how many connections it can manage at a time? I've not been around for awhile and have noticed that if I spend a few hours reading or editing the wiki, it randomly stops working for periods between 5 minutes to half an hour, which is a problem if I've just made a large edit to something. In fact, in the few minutes that it took for me to write this, it twice stopped working (so I couldn't preview the edit), and that was after sitting around for perhaps 10 minutes waiting for the wiki to allow me to open the community portal page. --[[User:FFN|FFN]] 15:00, 2 August 2012 (EDT)
:I get this a lot, usually only for short periods but quite regularly. Either it just hangs or I get the "unable to serve page" error. Usually halfway through a big edit too, which is why I keep a text editor open to cut and paste stuff into. --[[User:Emvee|Emvee]] 04:41, 30 August 2012 (EDT)

== I ♥ you guys ==

Am I the only one who sees ♥'s everywhere in the RecentChanges page?

Did we screw up the CSS while adding an admin? -[[Special:Contributions/67.6.127.163|67.6.127.163]] 23:03, 29 August 2012 (EDT)
:You don't see them if you're logged in.--[[User:Rosicrucian|Rosicrucian]][[User Talk:Rosicrucian|<sup>Talk</sup>]] 19:10, 30 August 2012 (EDT)
::I think if you're logged in, you still see them if you have the enhanced Recent Changes turned off, because Derik only coded them for the simple version of RC. --[[User:Abates|abates]] 21:39, 1 September 2012 (EDT)

== G.I. Joe wiki - a little help? ==

Hello, all. I just wanted to add a request for some help for what should really by this wiki's sister site, Joepedia, the G.I. Joe Wiki. Now, I posted a similar request on some other sci-fi themed wiki, but the only answer I got was being told that the rules forbid a request from another wiki to be made. Well, I think that was kind of stupid, considering the communal attitude the whole wiki concept represents. BUT, ANYWAY, the Joepedia has been growing over the years, but it's mostly frequented by a small dedicated group of contributors. Since Transformers and G.I. Joe are so closely linked, I hoped some folks on here would like to help.

I will add that I have no authority over on that site, and I don't really contribute much, mostly because of the time spent my own website. I'm just a concerned geeky citizen drumming up some support. --[[User:JMM|JMM]] 10:26, 7 September 2012 (EDT)
:Well, I would, but I really don't know jack shit about G.I. Joe. And when I think about it, I'm not sure this post belongs here. -- [[User:Spydersix|spyder]] 17:36, 7 September 2012 (EDT)
::Just looking around for a little help. This seemed like the closest thing to a G.I. Joe wiki out there, and I figured it was worth a try. --[[User:JMM|JMM]] 13:23, 13 September 2012 (EDT)
::I don't see a problem with a polite request for assistance or notification that a Joe wiki exists, since there IS some crossover interest. I just don't know how much ''useful'' crossover interest for the Joe wiki there is from this end outside of what we've already done. I mean, we've got extensive coverage of the parts of Joe directly involving TFs... I'd say that's probably going to be the most useful thing we have for you. But, if others wanna try it out...<br>
::...unless you're on Wikia.... --[[User:M Sipher|M Sipher]] 13:27, 13 September 2012 (EDT)
:::Yeah, it was just a quick heads up so people who may be interested are aware. I know a number of people who are equally obsessed with TF and Joe. :) Oh, and yes, it is on Wikia! --[[User:JMM|JMM]] 14:22, 13 September 2012 (EDT)
::::We did at one point approach a partnership with Joepedia, and even had a template that cross-linked articles we shared. It was just a little premature at the time (which was years ago) as Joepedia was just starting out and often our articles were more complete than theirs, or theirs were just stubs. It looks like they've gotten off the ground a bit more now.--[[User:Rosicrucian|Rosicrucian]][[User Talk:Rosicrucian|<sup>Talk</sup>]] 15:30, 13 September 2012 (EDT)
:::::Yes, their wiki got started later than this one. They have a small group of dedicated contributers, but the site's yet to attract the kind of interest this one does. --[[User:JMM|JMM]] 16:34, 13 September 2012 (EDT)

== New stub template ==
Does anybody have any objections to a video game stub template? It would look something like this:
<br clear="all" />{{messagebox
|header=This article is still in beta stage.
|message_text=''This video game article is a [[:Category:Video game stubs|stub]] and is missing information. You can help '''{{SITENAME}}''' by [{{SERVER}}{{localurl:{{NAMESPACE}}:{{PAGENAME}}|action=edit}} expanding it].''
|image_name=ProwlTFU.JPG
|image_width=40px
|width = 90%
}}<includeonly>[[Category:Video game stubs]]</includeonly>
If anybody knows of a better picture that would go well with this, please upload it so it can be put in. Thanks! -- [[User:Spydersix|spyder]][[User Talk:Spydersix|<sup>Use this!</sup>]] 15:52, 2 October 2012 (EDT)

:How about a pic from the story where Prime dies in a video game? Heh if only Beta had ever been in a game, that'd be perfect. --[[Special:Contributions/76.28.76.206|76.28.76.206]] 16:03, 2 October 2012 (EDT)
::What story was that? And yeah, that woulda been great. -- [[User:Spydersix|spyder]][[User Talk:Spydersix|<sup>Use this!</sup>]] 19:53, 2 October 2012 (EDT)
:::That would be [[Afterdeath!]]. --[[User:Detour|Detour]] 21:56, 2 October 2012 (EDT)
::::Well if people really want a picture from that, someone else will have to upload it, as I don't have access to it. -- [[User:Spydersix|spyder]][[User Talk:Spydersix|<sup>Use this!</sup>]] 21:59, 2 October 2012 (EDT)
:::::[[:Image:Afterdeath-gameoverman.jpg|Right here, dude.]]--[[User:Detour|Detour]] 22:34, 2 October 2012 (EDT)
::::::Thanks, man. It's on the ''[[Transformers: Prime - The Game|Prime: The Game]]'' page if you want to see it. -- [[User:Spydersix|spyder]][[User Talk:Spydersix|<sup>Use this!</sup>]] 22:50, 2 October 2012 (EDT)

In addition to the video game stub, I'd like to suggest adding several templates, such as "section stub" and "fiction stub". Right now, we only have "characer stub fiction" for pages only missing fiction section, but no templates for non-character page missing fiction appearance. While "section stub" can use for articles only missing one or two sections. --'''[[User:TX55|<span style= "color:#00FA9A">TX55</span>]]'''<small><SUP>''[[User talk:TX55|<span style= "color:#0000CD">TALK</span>]]''</SUP></small> 22:05, 2 October 2012 (EDT)
:Ok, so I'm gonna go ahead and make the video game one, and TX, if I get around to it later, maybe the others. If not, well, someone else will. Oh, and if I miss an article that the video game one should go on, put it here. -- [[User:Spydersix|spyder]][[User Talk:Spydersix|<sup>Use this!</sup>]] 22:31, 2 October 2012 (EDT)

== Megatron Barcode Battler Card ==

Hi, I was wondering if anyone here had come across this Megatron card for the Barcode Battler, or knows where in the Wiki it should go:
{|
|-
|[[Image:Barcode Battler Megatron Card Front.jpg|200px]]
|[[Image:Barcode Battler Megatron Card Back.jpg|200px]]
|}
It seems to have been released by Toys R Us in 1992 as a promo for the Barcode Battler (which they were trying to sell in store), and was (as far as is known) the only such Transformers card, probably given away with two [http://barcodebattler.co.uk/scans/UK/ToysRUsF.jpg blank] [http://barcodebattler.co.uk/scans/UK/ToysRUsB.jpg cards] (the bottom scan - the middle is from the Barcode Battler box) to add your own barcodes to, and a card wallet.

The text ("Clad in steel, armed to the teeth, nobody toys with us good guys when this moody cool deadly-dudey is around.") is probably enough to make you want to forget this was ever made (is it really calling Megatron a good guy?), but it's cropped up in enough eBay sales (occasionally found in Barcode Battler lots with the seller unaware that they've got something rare) to make it likely to be genuine.

So does anyone else have any information on it, and whereabouts should this go? [[User:Xensyria|xensyria]] 12:26, 16 October 2012 (EDT)
:I definitely don't know anything about it, besides that it's awesome, but if it's from 1992, then the only Megatron it could be is Megatron (G1), and so it should probably be on his toys/merchandise page.
:It's also plausible that someone who knows something about Barcode Battlers should make a short article on them for the wiki, since we have a lot of those "this broader thing had a TF thing released under it" pages. -[[User:LV|LV]] 12:31, 16 October 2012 (EDT)
::Or...this isn't anything to do with a licensed Transformers thing? I sort of blindly assumed Hasbro was the entity selling the Barcode Battler in the UK, but the packaging doesn't seem to support that. It's hard to believe it's not intended to be TF Megatron, but I'm also not sure it's an official product. Especially since this Megatron guy seems to be the boxfront "main character" for the UK Barcode Battler release. -[[User:LV|LV]] 12:37, 16 October 2012 (EDT)
:::Ah, that's a possibility, but Barcode Battler was being distributed in most of Europe by Tomy, so they probably gave Toys R Us rights to use Megatron. Perhaps they couldn't get the rights to use his picture though (as you say, it's Tomy's Barcode Battler cover on the card, so anyone who used the card probably wouldn't think it was supposed to be Megatron). I should also say that 1992 is more of an educated guess than fact, but it's bound to be somewhere around that.
:::If it's offical I don't mind making a Barcode Battler article (though I'll have to check out some of the other examples you mention first). [[User:Xensyria|xensyria]] 13:02, 16 October 2012 (EDT)
::::Wait, I just re-read Wikipedia, and Tomy was rivals with Takara who owned Transformers at the time... [[User:Xensyria|xensyria]] 13:04, 16 October 2012 (EDT)

MediaWiki talk:Community Portal

2012-10-16T17:02:06Z

Xensyria: /* Megatron Barcode Battler */

__NEWSECTIONLINK__

This is the place for discussion of topics that affect the entire wiki. Some topics that would ordinarily be here have merited their own pages:

{{chapters|title=Specific Discussion Subjects|align=left|content=
<div class="list-header">'''Moving From Wikia:'''</div>
* [[Transformers Wiki talk:Community Portal/Arriving|Arriving]]
* [[Transformers Wiki talk:Community Portal/Leaving|Leaving]]
* [[Transformers Wiki:Community Portal/Complaints|Complaints]]
<br/><div class="list-header">'''New Ad Policy:'''</div>
* [[Transformers Wiki:Ads|Ads]]
<br/><div class="list-header">'''Bookworm Database-Crash:'''</div>
* [[Transformers Wiki talk:Community Portal/Damage Control Central|Damage Control Central]]
* [[Project:Bookworm Crash]]
* [[Transformers Wiki talk:Community Portal/Leaving2|Leaving Take 2]]
<br/><div class="list-header">'''Server Move:'''</div>
* [[Transformers Wiki talk:Community Portal/Arriving2|Arriving Take 2]]
<br/><div class="list-header">'''Relicensing:'''</div>
* [[Transformers Wiki talk:Community Portal/Relicensing|Relicensing]]
<br/><div class="list-header">'''Dealing With Vandalism:'''</div>
* [[Transformers Wiki talk:Community Portal/Vandalism|Vandalism]]
<br/><div class="list-header">'''GoBots Sister Wiki:'''</div>
* [[Transformers Wiki talk:Community Portal/GoBots|Discussion on the place of GoBots in this wiki]]
}}<br/>

{{:{{FULLPAGENAMEE}}/Archive}}


==Adding to the Armada cartoon article==

Hello! New guy around here! I would like to add information about Home Video releases of Transformers Armada to its article. As I have no authorization to add to it, here is the information I can provide:

- Home Video Release in Bulgaria:
In Bulgaria "IP Video" released the complete series, spread across 15 volumes, as well as a "Best of" DVD. The DVDs were also distributed with a weekly newspaper upon their intial release. Volumes 1-8 contain 3 episodes each, with volumes 9-15 and the "Best of" DVD containing 4 episodes each.

Transformers: Armada vol.1 - First Encounter
Transformers: Armada vol.2 - Soldier
Transformers: Armada vol.3 - Palace
Transformers: Armada vol.4 - Ruins
Transformers: Armada vol.5 - Swoop
Transformers: Armada vol.6 - Conspiracy
Transformers: Armada vol.7 - Decisive Battle
Transformers: Armada vol.8 - Chase
Transformers: Armada vol.9 - Detection
Transformers: Armada vol.10 - Runaway
Transformers: Armada vol.11 - Rescue
Transformers: Armada vol.12 - Crisis
Transformers: Armada vol.13 - Uprising (The Unicron Battles - part 1)
Transformers: Armada vol.14 - Dash (The Unicron Battles - part 2)
Transformers: Armada vol.15 - Union (The Unicron Battles - part 3)

== TF:Prime jump-fight factoid ==

I've just started to watch Prime, and so far every episode I've seen has had someone do a dramatic jump slowed down jump before landing on someone they are fighting, (and sometimes the camera). It's quirky enough that it's stood out, and I was wondering if it's worth adding to the episode guides? I just wanted to know now because I'm going to be watching the whole of season one over the next few days, and it's easier if I know now than if it's added later. Failing that, is there anything else that people desperatly want added to the Prime episode guides that I should be looking out for? [[User:LiamK|LiamK]] 17:31, 23 January 2012 (EST)
:There is a certain level of ridiculous info you can get away with adding if you're a regular contributor doing serious and consistent work on the pages, and you handle it with sufficient comedic value. Ref: [[Enter the Nightbird|Brawn vs. Soundwave]], [[Countdown to Extinction (episode)|What Makes Starscream the Leader?]], etc. This could conceivably qualify as well, but approach with caution. -- [[User:Repowers|Repowers]] 21:22, 23 January 2012 (EST)
::Fair enough. It wasn't just going to be an adding silly jokes because oh ha ha I think I'm hilarious. I was going to add anything missing to the relevent pages as well. It's just that 5 episodes in, we've had at least 4 dramatic jumps into the camera, one dramatic jump away from the camera, and several semi-dramatic jumps off to the side. It's hilarious when characters like Bulkhead are apparently able to jump 500 feet into the air. If Springer ever shows up in this continuity family, he's gonna reach orbit.[[User:LiamK|LiamK]] 19:59, 25 January 2012 (EST)

== Expandible voice actor lists ==

There's been some noise about some of the voice actor lists getting too long and the need for a way to have them hidden unless the user expands them. I've done some test code which is [http://www.aldenbates.com/vatest.html currently hosted externally] but is easily converted into something that will work on the wiki. Currently tested on Firefox 9 and 10, Internet Explorer 6 and 8, Chrome 16, and Opera 11. Feedback, anyone? --[[User:Abates|abates]] 23:41, 31 January 2012 (EST)
:Although I was expecting a show/hide like how Wikipedia does its navigation templates, I don't mind this. Still needs a "hide" option, if that's possible. [[User:Interrobang|—Interrobang]] 23:46, 31 January 2012 (EST)
::I've added in a hide option. --[[User:Abates|abates]] 00:21, 1 February 2012 (EST)
:::If you set up a <nowiki>{{voiceactors}}</nowiki> template it'd be easy to hide the 'extended' cast names and have them show up automatically if you mouse over. '''<tt><nowiki>{{voiceactors|DEFAULT-TO-VISIBLE|DEFAULT-TO-INVISIBLE}}</nowiki></tt>'''
:::It wouldn't even require Javascript, it could be pure CSS. Simpler is better, IMO. -[[User:Derik|Derik]] 00:26, 1 February 2012 (EST)
::::I kinda dislike the idea of it opening on mouse-over, because it can have unexpected effects on the layout of the rest of the page if you're not paying attention to where you're moving your mouse pointer. --[[User:Abates|abates]] 18:32, 7 February 2012 (EST)
:::::I dislike mouse-over anything. Hide/show is a better interface. [[User:Interrobang|—Interrobang]] 18:48, 7 February 2012 (EST)
::::::Add a third dislike vote for mouse-over. If we do this which (if any) voice actors should be visible without clicking? Only the primary English performer? All English performers? All English and Japanese? None? I vote for none. --[[User:Khajidha|Khajidha]] 19:40, 7 February 2012 (EST)
:::::::I vote for whatever hides the German voice actors. I'd put the English and Japanese actors on a higher tier of importance, but I'm not opposed to hiding them. [[User:Interrobang|—Interrobang]] 19:48, 7 February 2012 (EST)
:::::::I think English and Japanese should always be shown, as they are the two biggest uh... markets? Whatever. Hide everything else, and DEFINITELY make the reveal a deliberate CLICK, not a mouseover. --[[User:M Sipher|M Sipher]] 19:56, 7 February 2012 (EST)
Can we have this template now? I think everybody agrees that the extraneous VAs should be hidden. If people want to hide English and Japanese VAs, then that can be further discussed. [[User:Interrobang|—Interrobang]] 10:48, 14 February 2012 (EST)

:[[Template:va]] (Should it be vas?)
:CSS entties which need to be added to the master file are as follows:
.tt1-voiceactorlist .tt1-extraneousFuckers{
display:none;
}
.tt1-voiceactorlist:hover .tt1-extraneousFuckers{
display:inline;
font-size:smaller;
}
.tt1-voiceactorlist.tt1-more:after{
content: "more";
padding-left:.5em;
font-size:smaller;
color:#999999;
}
.tt1-voiceactorlist:hover.tt1-more:after{
content: none;
}

:Styles are visible now if you've got [[User:Derik/kired tools|Kired Tools]] installed. Alternately you can paste the above into [[Special:Mypage/monacobook.css|your css file]] to get a look at it in action.

:If you want to make it Javascript that's beyond my remit, talk to one of the tech-guys. (Also I think it's a bad idea, but I'm against modifying the DOP for presentational purposes when there's already a markup language intended to control presentation: CSS. The wiki is currently Javascript 'light', I prefer to keep it that way.) -[[User:Derik|Derik]] 13:21, 14 February 2012 (EST)
::Why does it say "hiding the non English/Japanese voiceactors unless the user chooses to mouse over the list", I thought we had decided to make it use a click? --[[User:Khajidha|Khajidha]] 14:19, 14 February 2012 (EST)
::# I don't have the authority or access to implement that.
::# I think it's a terrible idea.
:::By all means, feel free to install the CSS styles (some CSS styles will be required regardless) and see what you think of this implementation.
:::The underlying HTML will be the same for a Javascript implementation anyway. -[[User:Derik|Derik]] 15:13, 14 February 2012 (EST)
So, er, did we come to a decision on either of these methods? I have to admit I kinda forgot about it until now. --[[User:Abates|abates]] 02:13, 5 March 2012 (EST)
:I think consensus is to use clicks, not mouse-over, despite Derik's protests. [[User:Interrobang|—Interrobang]] 04:13, 13 March 2012 (EDT)

== Facebook chat ==

Did the wiki have anyone at the TF Prime Facebook chat? -[[User:Derik|Derik]] 22:38, 6 February 2012 (EST)

==Moving (Prime)/(WFC)/(RB)/(FOC) to (Aligned)==
Considering that characters are part of the Aligned continuity family, like how [[Megatron (Animated)]] belong to the Animated continuity family and [[Megatron (G1)]] belongs to the Generation 1 continuity family.
:No, that's not how we do things. Disambiguations are made by franchise of origin, hence why it's [[Megatron (G1)]], but [[Terrorsaur (BW)]] rather than Terrorsaur (G1), or why it's [[Ironhide (Energon)]] rather than Ironhide (UT). This has been discussed ad infinitum but the consensus remains the same. The only exception has been that characters who debuted in WFC but also appear in Prime get (Prime) because of the slight iffyness of the Aligned family. --[[User:Detour|Detour]] 10:26, 8 April 2012 (EDT)
::(Edit conflict'd by Detour) I don't think we have an especially good, logical reason for why we do that with Aligned characters, other than that it simply feels very "wrong" to label a character with a prominent, regular fictional appearance in the ''Prime'' cartoon with a disambig based on their cameo appearance in a video game tie-in novel. Honestly, given that odd nature of the whole "Aligned" idea and the fact we're already breaking our standard with this continuity family's characters ''anyway'', I'm not entirely opposed to just using (Aligned) as a much handier, self-explanatory disambig, but I don't know if anyone would agree. It ''would'' feel odd, for instance, to label the Rescue Bots with that tag. And Bot Shots are a tremendous pain in the arse - it's so annoying when we have to create articles for Aligned Roadbuster and Topspin and whoever when the Bot Shots are just clearly the movieverse characters. The whole Aligned thing can sometimes be a real wiki-headache. - [[User:Chris McFeely|Chris McFeely]] 10:32, 8 April 2012 (EDT)
:::Why DON'T they just get inserted into the Movie characters sections, then? [This thing applies to a lot of Hasbro's "fuzzier" lines of late, really - stuff's matched up with what other characters in the line are part of rather than just including them in an existing article for the version they're designed after]. - [[User:Mammalian Verisimilitude|Mammalian Verisimilitude]] 10:41, 8 April 2012 (EDT)
::::I think treating Bot Shots as part of Aligned is somewhat dubious. Is there a reason it can't be viewed as using characters from multiple continuity families? --[[User:KilMichaelMcC|KilMichaelMcC]] 11:00, 8 April 2012 (EDT)
:::::We already discussed this [[Talk:Bot Shots|here]]. --[[User:Abates|abates]] 18:59, 8 April 2012 (EDT)
::::::We do that so we don't have to pick nits over where the characters belong. Bot Shots Optimus Prime could fit many of his various incarnations. I disagree with renaming them to (Aligned), somewhat because all of the (WFC) guys will eventually be moved to (Prime), anyway. [[User:Interrobang|—Interrobang]] 05:48, 10 April 2012 (EDT)
But should (Prime)/(WFC)/(RB)/(FOC) be renamed (Aligned) or not?--[[User:Finister2|Finister2]] 05:43, 10 April 2012 (EDT)
:No. --[[User:Detour|Detour]] 11:29, 10 April 2012 (EDT)
::Why?--[[User:Finister2|Finister2]] 13:55, 10 April 2012 (EDT)
:::It's already been explained why. --[[User:Detour|Detour]] 14:40, 10 April 2012 (EDT)

== Universal, properly-translated names of the Japanese Beast Wars/Beast Machines episodes ==

Okay, this has been bothering me for a while. On each page of the [[Beast Wars: Transformers (cartoon)#Episodes|Beast Wars]] and [[Beast Machines: Transformers (cartoon)#Episodes|Beast Machines]] episode, the Japanese title of each episode is given an English translation in each page's Foreign Localization section. And on the [[Geneon Universal Entertainment|Geneon]] page, under the sections of its Beast Wars, Beast Wars Metals, and Beast wars Returns releases, the Japanese episode titles are also translated into English. What's bothering me is that certain episodes are given slightly differently-translated English names when comparing those given on the actual episode pages to those given on the Geneon page. Here's a list of each differing episode title. The episode page names are on the left, and the Geneon page names are on the right:
:"The Solitary Warrior Tigatron" vs. "Lonely Warrior Tigatron"
:"Goodbye, Rattle!?" vs. "Goodbye Rattle!?"
:"The Falcon Warrior Airrazor" vs. "Falcon Warrior Airazor"
:"Floating Island Death Match Part 1" vs. "Floating Island Deathmatch Part 1"
:"Floating Island Death Match Part 2" vs. "Floating Island Deathmatch Part 2"
:"The Destrons' Dramatic Finish" vs. "The Destrons Make Drama"
:"Two Dinobots?" vs. "There are 2 Dinobots?"
:"The Ant Warrior from Hell, Inferno" vs. "Inferno, the Ant Warrior from Hell"
:"Revive, Beast Power!" vs. "Resurrected Beast Power"
:"The Immortal Starscream" vs. "Starscream's Invulnerability"
:"Fare Thee Well, Tigatron" vs. "Farewell Tigatron"
:"The Great King of Terror Arrives!" vs. "The King of Terror Arrives!"
:"You're Under Arrest, Meow" vs. "Meyow're Under Arrest"
:"Gro~w Bigger" vs. "Groooww Bigger"
:"I Am Resurrected, Dā" vs. "I am Resurrected!"
:"Blaze, Dragon" vs. "Blazing Dragon"
:"I Hath Returned" vs. "We Have Returned"
:"Resurrection of the Legend" vs. "Rebirth of the Legend"
:"The Dearly Wished Transformation" vs. "The Transformation of a Dear Wish"
:"The Memory of a Friend" vs. "Memory of a Friend"
:"Mission of the Stars" vs. "Message of the Stars"
:"The Moment of Truth" vs. "The End"
:"Captured Souls" vs. "Capture of the Spirits"
:"The Hellish All-out Attack" vs. "The General Offensive of Hell"
:"The Course of the Future" vs. "The Fate of the Future"
Could someone who's more adept at Japanese please clarify which titles should be universally used on this Wiki, and help in an attempt to create a greater sense of unity between the individual episode pages and the Geneon page (and with any other such pages on this Wiki as well)? --[[User:Sabrblade|Sabrblade]] 01:29, 10 April 2012 (EDT)
:The titles on the episode pages are more refined. Not to mention it would be easier to change the titles on a single page. [[User:Interrobang|—Interrobang]] 05:58, 10 April 2012 (EDT)
::"I Hath Returned"? That's incorrect English. "Hath" was third person singular, not first person ("he hath" not "I hath"). --[[User:Khajidha|Khajidha]] 08:10, 10 April 2012 (EDT)
:::[[User:Apcog|Apcog]] translated that. I recall the intention was to capture the old-timey connotation of the original Japanese. [[User:Interrobang|—Interrobang]] 08:21, 10 April 2012 (EDT)
:Something else that has me pondering are the specific choices made in spelling and grammar of a few of these titles. Like, the inclusion of a "The" where it may not need be (like in "The Solitary Warrior Tigatron" instead of just "Solitary Warrior Tigatron", or "The Falcon Warrior Airrazor" vs. "Falcon Warrior Airazor") or the use a comma (like in "Goodbye, Rattle!?" as opposed to "Goodbye Rattle!?") or a space between two words instead of making them a compound word ("Death Match" vs. "Deathmatch"), and the synonymous use of "Resurrect(ion)", "Rebirth", and "Revive". In these cases, are the titles on the episode pages truly the more precise titles, or could they also use some amending? --[[User:Sabrblade|Sabrblade]] 11:20, 10 April 2012 (EDT)
::Most of those details are up to the translator's discretion. But, like I said, it's easier to just edit the Genon page rather than across multiple articles. [[User:Interrobang|—Interrobang]] 11:33, 10 April 2012 (EDT)

== Category:Deceased ==
Sub-categories
*Category:Deceased (Generation 1 cartoon)
**Category:Deceased (Marvel comics)
**Category:Deceased (BW)
*Category:Deceased (Armada)
*Category:Deceased (Energon)
*Category:Deceased (Movie)
**Category:Deceased (ROTF)
**Category:Deceased (DOTM)
*Category:Deceased (SG)
*Category:Deceased (Animated)
*Category:Deceased (Aligned)

Why not?--[[User:Finister2|Finister2]] 05:52, 10 April 2012 (EDT)

:"Deceased" is a stupid idea on a wiki that focuses on fiction with multiple continuities, time periods, vague "deaths", and resurrections. All characters will inevitably die at one point. This is not a warranted category. [[User:Interrobang|—Interrobang]] 05:55, 10 April 2012 (EDT)

::Vote for "No".
::A character may get killed in a sub-continuity but alive in another. Not to mention if the character will be resurrected or not. (So, we don't need Category:Resurrected characters, either.) --'''[[User:TX55|<span style= "color:#00FA9A">TX55</span>]]'''<small><SUP>''[[User talk:TX55|<span style= "color:#0000CD">TALK</span>]]''</SUP></small> 10:11, 10 April 2012 (EDT)
:::It is an appealing idea, to have categories for characters that are deceased "now." If they are patched up, they get removed from the category. I would have changed the categories to "Deceased (Movieverse)" and "Deceased (UT cartoon)" since they are supposed to be all one continuity. The only problem I see is vague deaths and continuity inconsistencies. People would probably disagree with me that [[Brawn (G1)]] obviously survived that shot to the shoulder. So, unfortunately, I can't fully endorse the idea. - [[User:Starfield|Starﬁeld]] 11:08, 10 April 2012 (EDT)
::::If we go by continuity, we are going to have a ''lot'' of "Deceased" categories. And you could only do it by continuity, which goes against our current methods to have categories by franchise. --[[User:Abates|abates]] 16:46, 10 April 2012 (EDT)
::I agree with you guys in regards to characters. but, what about a category for ''real'' people who have been involved with the Transformers franchise (like voice actors, designers, writers, etc.) who are deceased? --[[User:Sabrblade|Sabrblade]] 11:11, 10 April 2012 (EDT)

== Scheduled downtime. ==

Our hoster is moving servers around tomorrow. One of ours is gonna be moved starting between "Thu Apr 12 23:00:00 UTC 2012 and Fri Apr 13 05:00:00 UTC 2012." So that'll happen. --[[User:ItsWalky|ItsWalky]] 21:52, 11 April 2012 (EDT)
:I presume all the necessary backups have been made? --[[User:Thylacine 2000|Thylacine 2000]] 22:37, 11 April 2012 (EDT)
::Regularly, like clockwork. --[[User:ItsWalky|ItsWalky]] 00:51, 12 April 2012 (EDT)

==Category: Cats==
Presumably we have some kind of unwritten "We don't categorise by altmode" rule in play here, so I apologise if my adding a bunch of characters to this category seemed heavy-handed but in my defence the distinction between ''Shattered Glass'' Steeljaw and G1 Ravage is, eh, pretty much non-existent, Cheetor himself says "I'm a cat", it's a subset of Characters by species and we have K-9 under Dogs, so it's hardly black and white. But my main reason for doing it was that in SEO terms, having the word "Cats" repeatedly linked a bunch of times throughout the wiki is really quite useful, as in the wider internet cats are kind of a big deal. Real effing kitten calendars and all that. Isn't that something to consider? --[[User:Emvee|Emvee]] 03:47, 26 April 2012 (EDT)
:Categorizing by alternate mode has been brought up several times, but nobody has bothered to hammer out the details and do it. I don't particularly care for it one way or another, but putting Transformers in plain categories like "Cats" and "Watercraft" based on alternate mode makes them useless to those who only want to know about actual cats or watercraft in ''Transformers''. That said, I completely fail to see the relevance of Internet memes to our categorization system. [[User:Interrobang|—Interrobang]] 03:59, 26 April 2012 (EDT)
::Well, just that keywords are good for search engines, keywords that link to relevant pages even better and lots of people search for cats on the internet. I know that my girlfriend does and at a time like this (when my birthday is coming up) it's not impossible that she might search for "Transformers cats". If that led her to, say, SG Ravage's page (which is quite accessible to an internet-savvy non-fan with its twitter references and Walky's cartoons) then she may well stick around to find out more, and maybe look for more Transformers cats through the category links at the bottom of the page. At the moment our first link in a Google search is Snow Cat, who's kinda cool but you'd probably have to be a GI Joe fan to really get it. I dunno, I'm just spitballing here, but part of my job is SEO so I hope I at least know something like what I'm talking about. Anyway, that was my line of thinking. If it's problematic then that's fine, but I'm not really convinced by the "people looking for actual cats or watercraft in ''Transformers''" argument either - on a TF wiki I think they'd assume Transformers that turn into either of those things would be included by default. They are robots in disguise, after all. --[[User:Emvee|Emvee]] 14:36, 26 April 2012 (EDT)

== Google + ==
I've made a Google + for the wiki. I just need someone to link it to the main page because I don't know how. This is the link: https://plus.google.com/106006102124340784739 -- [[User:Spydersix|Spydersix]] 19:00, 30 April 2012 (EDT)

== Alt-mode listings ==

I've seen several things here discussing listing alt-modes by ''category'', but I'm looking for something a bit less complicated. I would really appreciate having each character's page at least openly list their alt-mode in the beginning; as it stands, some pages do not make it clear what that character turns into, generally only mentioning it in passing or in screenshots. I think some kind of fill-in-the-blanks template would work well, the kind they use on Wikipedia for comic book superheroes that have sections for code names, secret identities, a brief list of abilities, etc. It doesn't even have to be that thorough, just a small piece under the page's main picture that has "name, alt-mode, faction" would be a nice change of pace. [[User:Deusoma|Deusoma]] 15:15, 2 May 2012 (EDT)
:Your idea is impractical because many characters have had numerous altmodes. Listing all of them would be ridiculously long while trying to generalize them down to a single listing would be useless. For example, [[Optimus Prime (G1)|Optimus Prime]]. The casual fan might assume that you could just list his altmode as "semi truck" and be done with it. But he has also been a bat, a Lambourghini Diablo and a shoe. And that doesn't even get into what kind of "semi truck" he is: cab over engine like the original or long nose like the Generation 2 version. And does it have a sleeper. With or without trailer. And you still haven't covered his non-Earth modes. None of the Cybertronian forms we have seen looks anything like any of the others. --[[User:Khajidha|Khajidha]] 15:29, 2 May 2012 (EDT)
::I don't care one way or the other, but we could hide the minor alternate modes, the same as we do with voice actors. [[User:Interrobang|—Interrobang]] 15:40, 2 May 2012 (EDT)
:While I agree that we should do our best to list alt-modes, at the beginning of the article doesn't seem like the most efficient place to do it. Rather, we should continue listing the alt-mode in the description of the various toys and work on filling in those that are lacking. - [[User:Shellspark|Shellspark]] 16:26, 2 May 2012 (EDT)
: Well, there are a lot of fiction-only altmodes going on. I could see this working as a Notes subsection, possibly as a gallery. --[[User:M Sipher|M Sipher]] 17:27, 2 May 2012 (EDT)
:: Yeah, that's why I always attempt to get an image of each altmode in the fiction section as they appear. --[[User:ItsWalky|ItsWalky]] 17:56, 2 May 2012 (EDT)

==Redundant foreign names==
According to Interrobang:
:"''So? It's been the standard for a long time and exactly how do you expect readers to know that Japan uses the same name without noting it?''"
1) No, it has NOT been "the standard for a long time". In fact, we didn't do this for YEARS. You're the one who seems to have decided, fairly recently, to pull this crap. Like with "mammoth".<br>
2) Well. Why don't we just list every country in the world that also uses that name? After all, how exactly are we to know if the Canadians don't not call her Airachnid, or the Germans, or the Zimbabweans (holy shit "Zimbabweans" is ''correct''?), or the other 190-odd nations across the globe? Oh wait, because we can use some incredibly base deductive reasoning and assume that unless a ''different'' name is listed for a country, ''it's the same name and we don't need to fucking list it there just so you can get a katakana-boner''. --[[User:M Sipher|M Sipher]] 06:45, 3 May 2012 (EDT)
:There is the argument to be made that not including a foreign name leaves the reader unable to know if the character either has the same name in that country, or if that information is just ''missing'' from the article. Not that I disagree that it ''really'' seems to have got out of control, to the point that the Japanese words for "doctor" or "scientist" or "coach" or "mammoth" are being added to nameless characters' articles. I enjoyed our older attitude that basically amounted to "fuck katanana unless necessary to explain something". - [[User:Chris McFeely|Chris McFeely]] 07:05, 3 May 2012 (EDT)
::The counter-argument was already made above. ''Transformers'' is a global brand now, and it's basically a waste of space to list every country where Optimus Prime is called "Optimus Prime" (or as close as they can get phonetically), and better to assume that it is "Optimus Prime" unless otherwise noted. The ''probability'' that the name is the same is pretty damn good nowadays, especially in Japan. --[[User:M Sipher|M Sipher]] 07:34, 3 May 2012 (EDT)
:::I'm sympathetic. If somebody actually does go through the trouble to track down what Airachnid is called in Zimbabwean and it ends up being "Airachnid" then if they put the information down, then nobody else will have to go through the trouble of looking it up. What if redundant foreign names are left <nowiki></nowiki> - [[User:Starfield|Starfield]] 10:04, 3 May 2012 (EDT)
::::I hate seeing redundant names, but I agree that a certain degree of "is this already known?" may exist in a vacuum. I'm not opposed to leaving them in the code but commented out to keep them out of the page itself. -[[User:LV|LV]] 00:00, 4 May 2012 (EDT)
:::::Would it be acceptable to have a template that displays the foreign names, but hides or combines entries if the names are not unique? The template might also be able to auto-categorize by "characters missing ''language'' names", too.[[Special:Contributions/192.249.47.177|192.249.47.177]] 18:49, 29 May 2012 (EDT)

==Toy Fair/Pre-Toy Fair Catalogues==
Collectively we went all out on getting hold of the 86 PTF catalogue when it popped up on eBay and have a nice page with full scans of it (I say "we" I completely missed that fund-raising drive). Going forward, is it a feasible aim for other Toy Fair and Pre-Toy Fair cats to be collected for the Wiki or is 86 known to be the only one of significant interest? I ask because I just stumbled upon an eBay seller with the 88 TF cat (which I'd hoped to procure for use on my Visionaries wiki) and some early 90s ones, all of which are beyond my means, but at relatively reasonable prices. Can't link to them on my phone, but I thought I'd mention it in case they are of significant interest like the 86 one was. [[User:Danja|Danja]] 03:45, 6 May 2012 (EDT)

== Google Chrome ==
Does anybody else experience a ''really'' slow connection to only this site while using Google Chrome? -- [[User:Spydersix|spyder]] 21:42, 17 May 2012 (EDT)

FYI: <nowiki>{{bigquote}}</nowiki> overlaps images in Google Chrome, like on [[Thaddeus Morocco|Morocco]]. I don't know when that started. - [[User:Starfield|Starfield]] 16:03, 22 May 2012 (EDT)

Now, the <nowiki>{{picsneeded}}</nowiki> tag overlaps the top of the episode template. It might just be my computer, but I don't know. -- [[User:Spydersix|spyder]] 18:28, 29 May 2012 (EDT)

:These layout problems are apparently an issue with the latest version of Chrome. I guess they'll get fixed in the next release or something. --[[User:Abates|abates]] 18:10, 31 May 2012 (EDT)
::There's been two new versions of Chrome since you said that, [[User:Abates|abates]], and it hasn't been fixed, so I'm reporting it to Google. Like that's gonna work. -- [[User:Spydersix|spyder]] 10:09, 19 June 2012 (EDT)
:::Is this problem still happening? --[[User:Abates|abates]] 05:22, 15 October 2012 (EDT)
::::Wow, completely forgot about this. And no, since I reported it to Google, it's been fixed. I'm surprised. -- [[User:Spydersix|spyder]][[User Talk:Spydersix|<sup>Use this!</sup>]] 06:26, 15 October 2012 (EDT)

== Transformers 4 ==
Does anyone mind if I take a stab at creating a page for it? I'm not some idiot who's gonna create a crappy page with no effort. Or is it ''way'' to early to do that? -- [[User:Spydersix|spyder]] 19:03, 6 June 2012 (EDT)
:I'd say wait until at least the first poster appears on the Internet, then you'll have some sort of image to put in. Really though it is a bit too early, if everything goes to plan TF4 won't be out for another two years, so the TF4 article would be sitting around with nothing on it for at least a year before we start getting concrete information. [[User:TurboFox|TurboFox]] 17:06, 24 August 2012 (EDT)

== Prime game ==
What do people think about putting [[Transformers: Prime - The Game|Transformers Prime: The Game]] in the nav bar? -- [[User:Spydersix|spyder]] 09:47, 10 June 2012 (EDT)
:Or we can replace the link to the Prime cartoon page with a link to the Prime franchise page, that way it avoids overcluttering the navbar. --[[User:Detour|Detour]] 14:15, 10 June 2012 (EDT)
::Yeah, that also might work. -- [[User:Spydersix|spyder]] 09:23, 11 June 2012 (EDT)
:::At least 95% of the people who click on that are likely to be looking for info on the cartoon, and I feel like if we have Rescue Bots and Dark of the Moon pointing to the cartoon/film rather than the franchises, we should aim to be consistent with our navigation. We'll presumably have to add [[Transformers Universe]] there eventually anyway. --[[User:Abates|abates]] 16:46, 11 June 2012 (EDT)
::::Yeah, I forgot about that. We probably can take Dark of the Moon to declutter it. -- [[User:Spydersix|spyder]] 16:50, 11 June 2012 (EDT)
:::::We could divide things up with subheaders or just by putting darker lines in to split up the links. Man, I wish there was a way to easily add in more links without cluttering up the menu too much. It feels like we should have links to current toylines as well, and maybe the current IDW comics. --[[User:Abates|abates]] 17:21, 11 June 2012 (EDT)
::::::Yeah probably, but what can you do, right? And I like that subheader idea. And on a different note, "Transformers Prime: The Game" is a mouthful. How can we abbreviate that? -- [[User:Spydersix|spyder]] 17:36, 11 June 2012 (EDT)
::::::: TF Prime: The Game??? [[User:Bumblebee2000|Bumblebee2000]] 08:19, 12 June 2012 (EDT)
::::::::Probably the best we can do. -- [[User:Spydersix|spyder]] 13:37, 12 June 2012 (EDT)
:::::::::On abbreviating the name, as everything on the wiki is Transformers, you can say "Prime: The Game" instead of "TF Prime: The Game". The "TF" is assumed. [[User:JohnnyMrNinja|JohnnyMrNinja]] 15:30, 13 June 2012 (EDT)
::::::::::So what are we going to do about this nav bar? -- [[User:Spydersix|spyder]] 18:17, 12 June 2012 (EDT)
:::::::::::Are we using the <nowiki>{{Primecap}}</nowiki> template for images from it? -- [[User:Spydersix|spyder]] 10:07, 13 June 2012 (EDT)

:::::::::::Be patient. This stuff never happens overnight. --[[User:Detour|Detour]] 18:50, 12 June 2012 (EDT)
::::::::::::Not exactly overnight anymore, two months later. As you might be able to tell, patience is not my strong suit. -- [[User:Spydersix|spyder]] 12:10, 30 August 2012 (EDT)
:::::::::::::Sorry, I meant to have a go at fiddling with the lines to break the menu up a bit but I forgot. I'll have a go at it this weekend. --[[User:Abates|abates]] 17:16, 30 August 2012 (EDT)
::::::::::::::Sweet! -- [[User:Spydersix|spyder]] 17:33, 30 August 2012 (EDT)
:::::::::::::::''Niiiiccceeee.'' -- [[User:Spydersix|spyder]] 22:10, 1 September 2012 (EDT)
I have added this and taken out Dark of the Moon, since that's been out for over a year. I was going to add [[Transformers Universe]], but I realised we still don't have a release date for that. I've also added darker lines under the "Main Page" and under the navigation links which are actual articles rather than Wiki things, which will hopefully make those links more grouped in function. You might have to force a refresh to see those. --[[User:Abates|abates]] 22:12, 1 September 2012 (EDT)
:I see them. Nice looking. And I'll let you know when we have a release date. I check every day. -- [[User:Spydersix|spyder]] 22:16, 1 September 2012 (EDT)

I think I'm leaning towards moving the ''[[Transformers: Prime - The Game|Prime: The Game]]'' page to ''Transformers Prime - The Game'', since that's how the official website writes it. So the Nav bar might have to get changed. Just a heads up. -- [[User:Spydersix|spyder]][[User Talk:Spydersix|<sup>Use this!</sup>]] 17:31, 10 October 2012 (EDT)

== Rare/Unkown vintage G1 Walkie Talkie toys? ==

Hi guys. I was just browsing ebay and came across 3 old G1 Walkie Talkies that don't appear to be mentioned on the wiki anywhere.
#1- [http://www.ebay.com/itm/Transformers-Walkie-Talkie-ROBOT-1987-Hasbro-Inc/270982316728/ This] one appears to be an Argentinian Transformer with the mold licensed from Commando Toys.
#2 [http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Transformers-G1-Walkie-Talkies-Boxed-/300654034838?pt=US_Action_Figures&hash=item4600607f96/ These] guys appear to be unnamed generics.
#3 [http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/REAL-VTG-80s-TRANSFORMERS-INTERCOM-TELEPHONE-SYSTEM-WIRED-WALKIE-TALKIE-NIB-MIB-/360458042129?pt=US_Action_Figures&hash=item53ecf93b11 This] one features two Optimus Primes as an "Electronic Intercom Telephone System" (which seems to basically be two walkie talkies connected via a wire). Box says made by Nasta in lager photos and check out that goofy looking transformation sequence.

I'm not entirely sure if any of these are legit as I've never seen them mentioned anywhere else before. Anyone else know more info about these? Should they be added to wiki? [[User:RavenG|RavenG]] 02:27, 16 June 2012 (EDT)
:I used to have a set of #2, but I've no idea where they are now. They were pretty common in the UK I think. --[[User:Emvee|Emvee]] 03:17, 19 July 2012 (EDT)

== Technical Contact (and passwords) ==

Hi, guys. It's Botch the Crab... though I can't sign in as my account. I lost my password. I don't know what email address is associated with the account, but whichever one it is, when I did the "forgot password" thing and was told a new password was emailed to me, I never received any emails.

So my first question is: who can help me re-claim my account?

My second question is: who are the technical administrators of the wiki, and is that information posted somewhere that I couldn't find? I tried contacting Chris McFeely and David Willis, but neither of them were able to help, nor did they know who
would. So! Suggestions?

:I tried emailing your username, but it didn't work... It said that I need to be logged in with a valid email set, but I had done both of those things. Can any other user successfully send an email to [[User:Botch the Crab]]? Because it might be the email module that isn't working and that's why you can't reset your password. I don't think the MediaWiki framework has been updated since 2008 (we're running [http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Release_notes/1.12#MediaWiki_1.12.0 MediWiki 1.12.0]), and if David Willis doesn't know who's running the tech (seeing as how [http://www.networksolutions.com/whois-search/tfwiki.net he registered this site), it makes me think that there are not any people doing that. I could be mistaken, but I think there are only admins that are affecting change within the MW software.
:As far as I know, once a password to a MW site is lost there is no recovery outside of email, at least that is the case for WP. [[User:JohnnyMrNinja|JohnnyMrNinja]] 17:49, 16 June 2012 (EDT)

::I just tried sending an email to Botch and it worked, though the copy I sent myself ended up in my gmail spam folder. --[[User:Abates|abates]] 18:48, 16 June 2012 (EDT)

:::You're right, I had to confirm my email address and now I can email, although emails from this site were marked as spam for me as well. Botch, I can only hope that you haven't checked your spam folder. [[User:JohnnyMrNinja|JohnnyMrNinja]] 00:54, 17 June 2012 (EDT)

:Thanks for all the help, guys. Unfortunately, I haven't received any of the "new password" emails. (Yes, I keep checking the spam folder.) The frustrating part is that without being able to sign in, I cannot confirm ''which'' email address these are being sent to. All my emails are forwarded to my gmail account, so I have no idea why I wouldn't receive them. It's a mystery. It's weird to think it's possible that none of the administrators have the access or ability to solve this.--[[User:Botch|Botch]] 23:18, 18 June 2012 (EDT)
::I thought Scout and/or McFly were doing our technical stuff. --[[User:Abates|abates]] 23:27, 18 June 2012 (EDT)
:::I'm pretty sure that Scout and I have been over this fairly often: We're pretty damned busy, so we're not monitoring the Community Portal pages. If someone's forgotten their password AND the associated email address, there's no real secure way to get them back in. Email addresses aren't exposed to us until we get down to the to SQL DB layer, barring some additional extensions that would expose everyone's information to a trusted few. I strongly suggest making a new account in the interim, while we discuss the repercussions of adding some more User Management extensions, and figuring out who we can trust. I'll tell you this much, though: If your password isn't basically a random scramble of characters and symbols, I wouldn't trust you with maintenance access. It's like giving a handgun to a chimp. (Not picking on anyone in particular, but let's keep this in mind as we start adding cooks to the kitchen.) --[[User:McFly|McFly]] 11:54, 1 August 2012 (EDT)

:Sad update: I managed to scrounge up the database password from some old notes, and I've got your email address: Same one listed on your website. If you can disable whatever's filtering out your spam, that might help, since your site mentions some sort of sender-response mechanism. Poor old Mediawiki is too stupid/honest to pretend that she's a human.--[[User:McFly|McFly]] 12:11, 1 August 2012 (EDT)

== Captions need to go ==

It seems I am not the only one who finds the caption "humor" annoying and irrelevant to the photo it is placed with. I see in huge bold letters 'THE FUNNY STAYS. -The Management' So it seems this is not the first time someone has brought this up.

It seems " The Management " are the few people who get their kicks from such while the rest of the users are stuck just rolling their eyes. I for one will no longer be visiting this wiki because of such.

The nail in the coffin for me was a caption that I looked up as I wondered why I didn't get the "joke" as I seen tons of Xformer related shows. Heaven forbid the joke had nothing to do with transformers, only the person who wrote the joke and a small selection of people probably will understand it.

Just a little FYI 90% of the captions are unfunny, I would dare say 30% or more have nothing to do with xformers.

(sorry if this is in the wrong place, sort of new to wiki's and I wish the first thing I could have posted here would have been positive. I believe this is really positive and will help the wiki more than any article I could have wrote.)
: Thank you for leaving. --[[User:ItsWalky|ItsWalky]] 02:11, 21 June 2012 (EDT)

:Eh, the majority of the time when I stumble on a discussion on wikis on other sites, people will cite TFWiki and Wookiepedia as the best, and are generally complimentary about the humour, so while we occasionally get complaints about it, it seems like the majority of people like it. --[[User:Abates|abates]] 03:29, 21 June 2012 (EDT)

: I also believe that anything else you would have contributed to the wiki would have been less useful than this. --[[User:M Sipher|M Sipher]] 06:58, 21 June 2012 (EDT)

:....xformers? Is spelling out Transformers properly now "2 kool for skool"? --[[User:Detour|Detour]] 07:32, 21 June 2012 (EDT)

:The Funny '''STAYS'''. --'''[[User:TX55|<span style= "color:#00FA9A">TX55</span>]]'''<small><SUP>''[[User talk:TX55|<span style= "color:#0000CD">TALK</span>]]''</SUP></small> 09:26, 22 June 2012 (EDT)

:I'd note that if you want a serious TF wiki, there's an abandoned Wikia wiki that nobody seems to have gotten the bright idea of turning into one yet instead of always trying to convert this one. --[[Special:Contributions/108.176.195.222|108.176.195.222]] 01:43, 22 June 2012 (EDT)

::Some people here have actually mentioned this idea to the wikia "community", but they seem hellbent on remaining a poor copy of this site. The fact that they have barely added any pages since this site began while we have doubled in size doesn't seem to register to some of the people over there. --[[User:Khajidha|Khajidha]] 02:37, 22 June 2012 (EDT)

: If you feel that bad about it then write some of your own on the Pics with out Captions. (hell knows that ultra magnus "I can deal with that" has been done to death)[[User:Phantom|Phantom]] 09:38, 22 June 2012 (EDT)
::To be fair, serious captions, unless vital to the understanding of the picture, tend to get rewritten here. --[[User:Abates|abates]] 18:42, 22 June 2012 (EDT)

== Spoiler titles ==

Something which came up last month, but I didn't want to bring it up at the time because it would only have compounded the problem.

The title for [[How Ratchet Got His Hands Back|IDW MtMtE #5]] was placed at the '''end''' of the issue, [http://www.comics.org/issue/26304/cover/4/ "The Night Gwen Stacy Died"]-style (rather than the typical beginning/first splash page), because it was ''itself'' a spoiler.

So, of course, every page which had a {{tl|spoiler}}-tag for the issue plastered it in the spoiler tag itself.

There's got to be a better way of doing this if a comic gets a spoiler-title again. -- [[User:Mammalian Verisimilitude|Mammalian Verisimilitude]] 20:19, 7 July 2012 (EDT)
:The spoiler tags could have linked to the "More than Meets the Eye issue 5" redirect instead (the issue was originally created there to avoid just that problem, but then it got moved to the actual title anyway) --[[User:Abates|abates]] 20:30, 7 July 2012 (EDT)

Speaking of SPOILERS, is there any way people could ''stop'' putting them up for comics before the issues actually come out? By sheer happenstance, I just came across some significant details on the Wiki about the DJD, their leader, and their membership that I honestly would have preferred to read for myself when it's published. It was posted by long time members, so I'm assuming it's legit and came from SDCC or somewhere, but there are no sources so I can't be sure. If an anon posted that stuff, I probably would have removed it as typical Wikipedia fanfic trying to creep in.

Regardless, it's getting tough to come onto the TFwiki because of this stuff. Whenever a new 5-page preview for RID or MTMTE comes out, people are immediately updating the crew on the ''Lost Light'' page, adding place-holder storylinks to pages for new characters showing up, and just generally revealing every detail they can extract from the previews ahead of time. I get that avoiding spoilers on the internet is a luxury nowadays, but these previews come out nearly a week in advance for each of IDW's two series. Its one thing to avoid SPOILERS-labeled topics in a message board...its another to avoid the entire TFwiki for a third of every month to dodge preview materials. --[[User:Xaaron|Xaaron]] 21:52, 20 July 2012 (EDT)
:This one I'll have to own, as 'twas me that did the deed. It was, as you speculated, another five page preview from IDW. I'd ''hoped'' the details I put in weren't too spoilery, as in the leader's case it was mostly putting a name to details we'd found out issues before. I can only apologize and try to be a bit more careful.--[[User:Rosicrucian|Rosicrucian]][[User Talk:Rosicrucian|<sup>Talk</sup>]] 22:11, 20 July 2012 (EDT)
::I'll also say that I was going to stick the group shot of them up on the wiki, but I can hold off if you think that would be best.--[[User:Rosicrucian|Rosicrucian]][[User Talk:Rosicrucian|<sup>Talk</sup>]] 22:40, 20 July 2012 (EDT)

== Autobot Communications officer in Headmasters ==

<nowiki>[[Image:Hm - autobot communications officer.jpg|thumb]]</nowiki>
Hey, this guy appeared in a single episode of Heamasters where he was the communications officer on-duty at Autobot City. ...does anyone know which episode? -[[User:Derik|Derik]]
:[[The Final Showdown on Earth (Part 1)]]. --[[User:Abates|abates]] 01:27, 18 July 2012 (EDT)
::Sir, you are a gentleman and a [[Transformerology|Transformerologist]]. -[[User:Derik|Derik]] 01:47, 18 July 2012 (EDT)

== Connection issues ==

Is it just me or are there problems with the wiki's server or in how many connections it can manage at a time? I've not been around for awhile and have noticed that if I spend a few hours reading or editing the wiki, it randomly stops working for periods between 5 minutes to half an hour, which is a problem if I've just made a large edit to something. In fact, in the few minutes that it took for me to write this, it twice stopped working (so I couldn't preview the edit), and that was after sitting around for perhaps 10 minutes waiting for the wiki to allow me to open the community portal page. --[[User:FFN|FFN]] 15:00, 2 August 2012 (EDT)
:I get this a lot, usually only for short periods but quite regularly. Either it just hangs or I get the "unable to serve page" error. Usually halfway through a big edit too, which is why I keep a text editor open to cut and paste stuff into. --[[User:Emvee|Emvee]] 04:41, 30 August 2012 (EDT)

== I ♥ you guys ==

Am I the only one who sees ♥'s everywhere in the RecentChanges page?

Did we screw up the CSS while adding an admin? -[[Special:Contributions/67.6.127.163|67.6.127.163]] 23:03, 29 August 2012 (EDT)
:You don't see them if you're logged in.--[[User:Rosicrucian|Rosicrucian]][[User Talk:Rosicrucian|<sup>Talk</sup>]] 19:10, 30 August 2012 (EDT)
::I think if you're logged in, you still see them if you have the enhanced Recent Changes turned off, because Derik only coded them for the simple version of RC. --[[User:Abates|abates]] 21:39, 1 September 2012 (EDT)

== G.I. Joe wiki - a little help? ==

Hello, all. I just wanted to add a request for some help for what should really by this wiki's sister site, Joepedia, the G.I. Joe Wiki. Now, I posted a similar request on some other sci-fi themed wiki, but the only answer I got was being told that the rules forbid a request from another wiki to be made. Well, I think that was kind of stupid, considering the communal attitude the whole wiki concept represents. BUT, ANYWAY, the Joepedia has been growing over the years, but it's mostly frequented by a small dedicated group of contributors. Since Transformers and G.I. Joe are so closely linked, I hoped some folks on here would like to help.

I will add that I have no authority over on that site, and I don't really contribute much, mostly because of the time spent my own website. I'm just a concerned geeky citizen drumming up some support. --[[User:JMM|JMM]] 10:26, 7 September 2012 (EDT)
:Well, I would, but I really don't know jack shit about G.I. Joe. And when I think about it, I'm not sure this post belongs here. -- [[User:Spydersix|spyder]] 17:36, 7 September 2012 (EDT)
::Just looking around for a little help. This seemed like the closest thing to a G.I. Joe wiki out there, and I figured it was worth a try. --[[User:JMM|JMM]] 13:23, 13 September 2012 (EDT)
::I don't see a problem with a polite request for assistance or notification that a Joe wiki exists, since there IS some crossover interest. I just don't know how much ''useful'' crossover interest for the Joe wiki there is from this end outside of what we've already done. I mean, we've got extensive coverage of the parts of Joe directly involving TFs... I'd say that's probably going to be the most useful thing we have for you. But, if others wanna try it out...<br>
::...unless you're on Wikia.... --[[User:M Sipher|M Sipher]] 13:27, 13 September 2012 (EDT)
:::Yeah, it was just a quick heads up so people who may be interested are aware. I know a number of people who are equally obsessed with TF and Joe. :) Oh, and yes, it is on Wikia! --[[User:JMM|JMM]] 14:22, 13 September 2012 (EDT)
::::We did at one point approach a partnership with Joepedia, and even had a template that cross-linked articles we shared. It was just a little premature at the time (which was years ago) as Joepedia was just starting out and often our articles were more complete than theirs, or theirs were just stubs. It looks like they've gotten off the ground a bit more now.--[[User:Rosicrucian|Rosicrucian]][[User Talk:Rosicrucian|<sup>Talk</sup>]] 15:30, 13 September 2012 (EDT)
:::::Yes, their wiki got started later than this one. They have a small group of dedicated contributers, but the site's yet to attract the kind of interest this one does. --[[User:JMM|JMM]] 16:34, 13 September 2012 (EDT)

== New stub template ==
Does anybody have any objections to a video game stub template? It would look something like this:
<br clear="all" />{{messagebox
|header=This article is still in beta stage.
|message_text=''This video game article is a [[:Category:Video game stubs|stub]] and is missing information. You can help '''{{SITENAME}}''' by [{{SERVER}}{{localurl:{{NAMESPACE}}:{{PAGENAME}}|action=edit}} expanding it].''
|image_name=ProwlTFU.JPG
|image_width=40px
|width = 90%
}}<includeonly>[[Category:Video game stubs]]</includeonly>
If anybody knows of a better picture that would go well with this, please upload it so it can be put in. Thanks! -- [[User:Spydersix|spyder]][[User Talk:Spydersix|<sup>Use this!</sup>]] 15:52, 2 October 2012 (EDT)

:How about a pic from the story where Prime dies in a video game? Heh if only Beta had ever been in a game, that'd be perfect. --[[Special:Contributions/76.28.76.206|76.28.76.206]] 16:03, 2 October 2012 (EDT)
::What story was that? And yeah, that woulda been great. -- [[User:Spydersix|spyder]][[User Talk:Spydersix|<sup>Use this!</sup>]] 19:53, 2 October 2012 (EDT)
:::That would be [[Afterdeath!]]. --[[User:Detour|Detour]] 21:56, 2 October 2012 (EDT)
::::Well if people really want a picture from that, someone else will have to upload it, as I don't have access to it. -- [[User:Spydersix|spyder]][[User Talk:Spydersix|<sup>Use this!</sup>]] 21:59, 2 October 2012 (EDT)
:::::[[:Image:Afterdeath-gameoverman.jpg|Right here, dude.]]--[[User:Detour|Detour]] 22:34, 2 October 2012 (EDT)
::::::Thanks, man. It's on the ''[[Transformers: Prime - The Game|Prime: The Game]]'' page if you want to see it. -- [[User:Spydersix|spyder]][[User Talk:Spydersix|<sup>Use this!</sup>]] 22:50, 2 October 2012 (EDT)

In addition to the video game stub, I'd like to suggest adding several templates, such as "section stub" and "fiction stub". Right now, we only have "characer stub fiction" for pages only missing fiction section, but no templates for non-character page missing fiction appearance. While "section stub" can use for articles only missing one or two sections. --'''[[User:TX55|<span style= "color:#00FA9A">TX55</span>]]'''<small><SUP>''[[User talk:TX55|<span style= "color:#0000CD">TALK</span>]]''</SUP></small> 22:05, 2 October 2012 (EDT)
:Ok, so I'm gonna go ahead and make the video game one, and TX, if I get around to it later, maybe the others. If not, well, someone else will. Oh, and if I miss an article that the video game one should go on, put it here. -- [[User:Spydersix|spyder]][[User Talk:Spydersix|<sup>Use this!</sup>]] 22:31, 2 October 2012 (EDT)

== Megatron Barcode Battler Card ==

Hi, I was wondering if anyone here had come across this Megatron card for the Barcode Battler, or knows where in the Wiki it should go:
{|
|-
|[[Image:Barcode Battler Megatron Card Front.jpg|200px]]
|[[Image:Barcode Battler Megatron Card Back.jpg|200px]]
|}
It seems to have been released by Toys R Us in 1992 as a promo for the Barcode Battler (which they were trying to sell in store), and was (as far as is known) the only such Transformers card, probably given away with two [http://barcodebattler.co.uk/scans/UK/ToysRUsF.jpg blank] [http://barcodebattler.co.uk/scans/UK/ToysRUsB.jpg cards] (the bottom scan - the middle is from the Barcode Battler box) to add your own barcodes to, and a card wallet.

The text ("Clad in steel, armed to the teeth, nobody toys with us good guys when this moody cool deadly-dudey is around.") is probably enough to make you want to forget this was ever made (is it really calling Megatron a good guy?), but it's cropped up in enough eBay sales (occasionally found in Barcode Battler lots with the seller unaware that they've got something rare) to make it likely to be genuine.

So does anyone else have any information on it, and whereabouts should this go? [[User:Xensyria|xensyria]] 12:26, 16 October 2012 (EDT)
:I definitely don't know anything about it, besides that it's awesome, but if it's from 1992, then the only Megatron it could be is Megatron (G1), and so it should probably be on his toys/merchandise page.
:It's also plausible that someone who knows something about Barcode Battlers should make a short article on them for the wiki, since we have a lot of those "this broader thing had a TF thing released under it" pages. -[[User:LV|LV]] 12:31, 16 October 2012 (EDT)
::Or...this isn't anything to do with a licensed Transformers thing? I sort of blindly assumed Hasbro was the entity selling the Barcode Battler in the UK, but the packaging doesn't seem to support that. It's hard to believe it's not intended to be TF Megatron, but I'm also not sure it's an official product. Especially since this Megatron guy seems to be the boxfront "main character" for the UK Barcode Battler release. -[[User:LV|LV]] 12:37, 16 October 2012 (EDT)
:::Ah, that's a possibility, but Barcode Battler was being distributed in most of Europe by Tomy, so they probably gave Toys R Us rights to use Megatron. Perhaps they couldn't get the rights to use his picture though (as you say, it's Tomy's Barcode Battler cover on the card, so anyone who used the card probably wouldn't think it was supposed to be Megatron). I should also say that 1992 is more of an educated guess than fact, but it's bound to be somewhere around that.
:::If it's offical I don't mind making a Barcode Battler article (though I'll have to check out some of the other examples you mention first). [[User:Xensyria|xensyria]] 13:02, 16 October 2012 (EDT)

MediaWiki talk:Community Portal

2012-10-16T16:26:27Z

Xensyria: /* Megatron Barcode Battler */ new section

__NEWSECTIONLINK__

This is the place for discussion of topics that affect the entire wiki. Some topics that would ordinarily be here have merited their own pages:

{{chapters|title=Specific Discussion Subjects|align=left|content=
<div class="list-header">'''Moving From Wikia:'''</div>
* [[Transformers Wiki talk:Community Portal/Arriving|Arriving]]
* [[Transformers Wiki talk:Community Portal/Leaving|Leaving]]
* [[Transformers Wiki:Community Portal/Complaints|Complaints]]
<br/><div class="list-header">'''New Ad Policy:'''</div>
* [[Transformers Wiki:Ads|Ads]]
<br/><div class="list-header">'''Bookworm Database-Crash:'''</div>
* [[Transformers Wiki talk:Community Portal/Damage Control Central|Damage Control Central]]
* [[Project:Bookworm Crash]]
* [[Transformers Wiki talk:Community Portal/Leaving2|Leaving Take 2]]
<br/><div class="list-header">'''Server Move:'''</div>
* [[Transformers Wiki talk:Community Portal/Arriving2|Arriving Take 2]]
<br/><div class="list-header">'''Relicensing:'''</div>
* [[Transformers Wiki talk:Community Portal/Relicensing|Relicensing]]
<br/><div class="list-header">'''Dealing With Vandalism:'''</div>
* [[Transformers Wiki talk:Community Portal/Vandalism|Vandalism]]
<br/><div class="list-header">'''GoBots Sister Wiki:'''</div>
* [[Transformers Wiki talk:Community Portal/GoBots|Discussion on the place of GoBots in this wiki]]
}}<br/>

{{:{{FULLPAGENAMEE}}/Archive}}


==Adding to the Armada cartoon article==

Hello! New guy around here! I would like to add information about Home Video releases of Transformers Armada to its article. As I have no authorization to add to it, here is the information I can provide:

- Home Video Release in Bulgaria:
In Bulgaria "IP Video" released the complete series, spread across 15 volumes, as well as a "Best of" DVD. The DVDs were also distributed with a weekly newspaper upon their intial release. Volumes 1-8 contain 3 episodes each, with volumes 9-15 and the "Best of" DVD containing 4 episodes each.

Transformers: Armada vol.1 - First Encounter
Transformers: Armada vol.2 - Soldier
Transformers: Armada vol.3 - Palace
Transformers: Armada vol.4 - Ruins
Transformers: Armada vol.5 - Swoop
Transformers: Armada vol.6 - Conspiracy
Transformers: Armada vol.7 - Decisive Battle
Transformers: Armada vol.8 - Chase
Transformers: Armada vol.9 - Detection
Transformers: Armada vol.10 - Runaway
Transformers: Armada vol.11 - Rescue
Transformers: Armada vol.12 - Crisis
Transformers: Armada vol.13 - Uprising (The Unicron Battles - part 1)
Transformers: Armada vol.14 - Dash (The Unicron Battles - part 2)
Transformers: Armada vol.15 - Union (The Unicron Battles - part 3)

== TF:Prime jump-fight factoid ==

I've just started to watch Prime, and so far every episode I've seen has had someone do a dramatic jump slowed down jump before landing on someone they are fighting, (and sometimes the camera). It's quirky enough that it's stood out, and I was wondering if it's worth adding to the episode guides? I just wanted to know now because I'm going to be watching the whole of season one over the next few days, and it's easier if I know now than if it's added later. Failing that, is there anything else that people desperatly want added to the Prime episode guides that I should be looking out for? [[User:LiamK|LiamK]] 17:31, 23 January 2012 (EST)
:There is a certain level of ridiculous info you can get away with adding if you're a regular contributor doing serious and consistent work on the pages, and you handle it with sufficient comedic value. Ref: [[Enter the Nightbird|Brawn vs. Soundwave]], [[Countdown to Extinction (episode)|What Makes Starscream the Leader?]], etc. This could conceivably qualify as well, but approach with caution. -- [[User:Repowers|Repowers]] 21:22, 23 January 2012 (EST)
::Fair enough. It wasn't just going to be an adding silly jokes because oh ha ha I think I'm hilarious. I was going to add anything missing to the relevent pages as well. It's just that 5 episodes in, we've had at least 4 dramatic jumps into the camera, one dramatic jump away from the camera, and several semi-dramatic jumps off to the side. It's hilarious when characters like Bulkhead are apparently able to jump 500 feet into the air. If Springer ever shows up in this continuity family, he's gonna reach orbit.[[User:LiamK|LiamK]] 19:59, 25 January 2012 (EST)

== Expandible voice actor lists ==

There's been some noise about some of the voice actor lists getting too long and the need for a way to have them hidden unless the user expands them. I've done some test code which is [http://www.aldenbates.com/vatest.html currently hosted externally] but is easily converted into something that will work on the wiki. Currently tested on Firefox 9 and 10, Internet Explorer 6 and 8, Chrome 16, and Opera 11. Feedback, anyone? --[[User:Abates|abates]] 23:41, 31 January 2012 (EST)
:Although I was expecting a show/hide like how Wikipedia does its navigation templates, I don't mind this. Still needs a "hide" option, if that's possible. [[User:Interrobang|—Interrobang]] 23:46, 31 January 2012 (EST)
::I've added in a hide option. --[[User:Abates|abates]] 00:21, 1 February 2012 (EST)
:::If you set up a <nowiki>{{voiceactors}}</nowiki> template it'd be easy to hide the 'extended' cast names and have them show up automatically if you mouse over. '''<tt><nowiki>{{voiceactors|DEFAULT-TO-VISIBLE|DEFAULT-TO-INVISIBLE}}</nowiki></tt>'''
:::It wouldn't even require Javascript, it could be pure CSS. Simpler is better, IMO. -[[User:Derik|Derik]] 00:26, 1 February 2012 (EST)
::::I kinda dislike the idea of it opening on mouse-over, because it can have unexpected effects on the layout of the rest of the page if you're not paying attention to where you're moving your mouse pointer. --[[User:Abates|abates]] 18:32, 7 February 2012 (EST)
:::::I dislike mouse-over anything. Hide/show is a better interface. [[User:Interrobang|—Interrobang]] 18:48, 7 February 2012 (EST)
::::::Add a third dislike vote for mouse-over. If we do this which (if any) voice actors should be visible without clicking? Only the primary English performer? All English performers? All English and Japanese? None? I vote for none. --[[User:Khajidha|Khajidha]] 19:40, 7 February 2012 (EST)
:::::::I vote for whatever hides the German voice actors. I'd put the English and Japanese actors on a higher tier of importance, but I'm not opposed to hiding them. [[User:Interrobang|—Interrobang]] 19:48, 7 February 2012 (EST)
:::::::I think English and Japanese should always be shown, as they are the two biggest uh... markets? Whatever. Hide everything else, and DEFINITELY make the reveal a deliberate CLICK, not a mouseover. --[[User:M Sipher|M Sipher]] 19:56, 7 February 2012 (EST)
Can we have this template now? I think everybody agrees that the extraneous VAs should be hidden. If people want to hide English and Japanese VAs, then that can be further discussed. [[User:Interrobang|—Interrobang]] 10:48, 14 February 2012 (EST)

:[[Template:va]] (Should it be vas?)
:CSS entties which need to be added to the master file are as follows:
.tt1-voiceactorlist .tt1-extraneousFuckers{
display:none;
}
.tt1-voiceactorlist:hover .tt1-extraneousFuckers{
display:inline;
font-size:smaller;
}
.tt1-voiceactorlist.tt1-more:after{
content: "more";
padding-left:.5em;
font-size:smaller;
color:#999999;
}
.tt1-voiceactorlist:hover.tt1-more:after{
content: none;
}

:Styles are visible now if you've got [[User:Derik/kired tools|Kired Tools]] installed. Alternately you can paste the above into [[Special:Mypage/monacobook.css|your css file]] to get a look at it in action.

:If you want to make it Javascript that's beyond my remit, talk to one of the tech-guys. (Also I think it's a bad idea, but I'm against modifying the DOP for presentational purposes when there's already a markup language intended to control presentation: CSS. The wiki is currently Javascript 'light', I prefer to keep it that way.) -[[User:Derik|Derik]] 13:21, 14 February 2012 (EST)
::Why does it say "hiding the non English/Japanese voiceactors unless the user chooses to mouse over the list", I thought we had decided to make it use a click? --[[User:Khajidha|Khajidha]] 14:19, 14 February 2012 (EST)
::# I don't have the authority or access to implement that.
::# I think it's a terrible idea.
:::By all means, feel free to install the CSS styles (some CSS styles will be required regardless) and see what you think of this implementation.
:::The underlying HTML will be the same for a Javascript implementation anyway. -[[User:Derik|Derik]] 15:13, 14 February 2012 (EST)
So, er, did we come to a decision on either of these methods? I have to admit I kinda forgot about it until now. --[[User:Abates|abates]] 02:13, 5 March 2012 (EST)
:I think consensus is to use clicks, not mouse-over, despite Derik's protests. [[User:Interrobang|—Interrobang]] 04:13, 13 March 2012 (EDT)

== Facebook chat ==

Did the wiki have anyone at the TF Prime Facebook chat? -[[User:Derik|Derik]] 22:38, 6 February 2012 (EST)

==Moving (Prime)/(WFC)/(RB)/(FOC) to (Aligned)==
Considering that characters are part of the Aligned continuity family, like how [[Megatron (Animated)]] belong to the Animated continuity family and [[Megatron (G1)]] belongs to the Generation 1 continuity family.
:No, that's not how we do things. Disambiguations are made by franchise of origin, hence why it's [[Megatron (G1)]], but [[Terrorsaur (BW)]] rather than Terrorsaur (G1), or why it's [[Ironhide (Energon)]] rather than Ironhide (UT). This has been discussed ad infinitum but the consensus remains the same. The only exception has been that characters who debuted in WFC but also appear in Prime get (Prime) because of the slight iffyness of the Aligned family. --[[User:Detour|Detour]] 10:26, 8 April 2012 (EDT)
::(Edit conflict'd by Detour) I don't think we have an especially good, logical reason for why we do that with Aligned characters, other than that it simply feels very "wrong" to label a character with a prominent, regular fictional appearance in the ''Prime'' cartoon with a disambig based on their cameo appearance in a video game tie-in novel. Honestly, given that odd nature of the whole "Aligned" idea and the fact we're already breaking our standard with this continuity family's characters ''anyway'', I'm not entirely opposed to just using (Aligned) as a much handier, self-explanatory disambig, but I don't know if anyone would agree. It ''would'' feel odd, for instance, to label the Rescue Bots with that tag. And Bot Shots are a tremendous pain in the arse - it's so annoying when we have to create articles for Aligned Roadbuster and Topspin and whoever when the Bot Shots are just clearly the movieverse characters. The whole Aligned thing can sometimes be a real wiki-headache. - [[User:Chris McFeely|Chris McFeely]] 10:32, 8 April 2012 (EDT)
:::Why DON'T they just get inserted into the Movie characters sections, then? [This thing applies to a lot of Hasbro's "fuzzier" lines of late, really - stuff's matched up with what other characters in the line are part of rather than just including them in an existing article for the version they're designed after]. - [[User:Mammalian Verisimilitude|Mammalian Verisimilitude]] 10:41, 8 April 2012 (EDT)
::::I think treating Bot Shots as part of Aligned is somewhat dubious. Is there a reason it can't be viewed as using characters from multiple continuity families? --[[User:KilMichaelMcC|KilMichaelMcC]] 11:00, 8 April 2012 (EDT)
:::::We already discussed this [[Talk:Bot Shots|here]]. --[[User:Abates|abates]] 18:59, 8 April 2012 (EDT)
::::::We do that so we don't have to pick nits over where the characters belong. Bot Shots Optimus Prime could fit many of his various incarnations. I disagree with renaming them to (Aligned), somewhat because all of the (WFC) guys will eventually be moved to (Prime), anyway. [[User:Interrobang|—Interrobang]] 05:48, 10 April 2012 (EDT)
But should (Prime)/(WFC)/(RB)/(FOC) be renamed (Aligned) or not?--[[User:Finister2|Finister2]] 05:43, 10 April 2012 (EDT)
:No. --[[User:Detour|Detour]] 11:29, 10 April 2012 (EDT)
::Why?--[[User:Finister2|Finister2]] 13:55, 10 April 2012 (EDT)
:::It's already been explained why. --[[User:Detour|Detour]] 14:40, 10 April 2012 (EDT)

== Universal, properly-translated names of the Japanese Beast Wars/Beast Machines episodes ==

Okay, this has been bothering me for a while. On each page of the [[Beast Wars: Transformers (cartoon)#Episodes|Beast Wars]] and [[Beast Machines: Transformers (cartoon)#Episodes|Beast Machines]] episode, the Japanese title of each episode is given an English translation in each page's Foreign Localization section. And on the [[Geneon Universal Entertainment|Geneon]] page, under the sections of its Beast Wars, Beast Wars Metals, and Beast wars Returns releases, the Japanese episode titles are also translated into English. What's bothering me is that certain episodes are given slightly differently-translated English names when comparing those given on the actual episode pages to those given on the Geneon page. Here's a list of each differing episode title. The episode page names are on the left, and the Geneon page names are on the right:
:"The Solitary Warrior Tigatron" vs. "Lonely Warrior Tigatron"
:"Goodbye, Rattle!?" vs. "Goodbye Rattle!?"
:"The Falcon Warrior Airrazor" vs. "Falcon Warrior Airazor"
:"Floating Island Death Match Part 1" vs. "Floating Island Deathmatch Part 1"
:"Floating Island Death Match Part 2" vs. "Floating Island Deathmatch Part 2"
:"The Destrons' Dramatic Finish" vs. "The Destrons Make Drama"
:"Two Dinobots?" vs. "There are 2 Dinobots?"
:"The Ant Warrior from Hell, Inferno" vs. "Inferno, the Ant Warrior from Hell"
:"Revive, Beast Power!" vs. "Resurrected Beast Power"
:"The Immortal Starscream" vs. "Starscream's Invulnerability"
:"Fare Thee Well, Tigatron" vs. "Farewell Tigatron"
:"The Great King of Terror Arrives!" vs. "The King of Terror Arrives!"
:"You're Under Arrest, Meow" vs. "Meyow're Under Arrest"
:"Gro~w Bigger" vs. "Groooww Bigger"
:"I Am Resurrected, Dā" vs. "I am Resurrected!"
:"Blaze, Dragon" vs. "Blazing Dragon"
:"I Hath Returned" vs. "We Have Returned"
:"Resurrection of the Legend" vs. "Rebirth of the Legend"
:"The Dearly Wished Transformation" vs. "The Transformation of a Dear Wish"
:"The Memory of a Friend" vs. "Memory of a Friend"
:"Mission of the Stars" vs. "Message of the Stars"
:"The Moment of Truth" vs. "The End"
:"Captured Souls" vs. "Capture of the Spirits"
:"The Hellish All-out Attack" vs. "The General Offensive of Hell"
:"The Course of the Future" vs. "The Fate of the Future"
Could someone who's more adept at Japanese please clarify which titles should be universally used on this Wiki, and help in an attempt to create a greater sense of unity between the individual episode pages and the Geneon page (and with any other such pages on this Wiki as well)? --[[User:Sabrblade|Sabrblade]] 01:29, 10 April 2012 (EDT)
:The titles on the episode pages are more refined. Not to mention it would be easier to change the titles on a single page. [[User:Interrobang|—Interrobang]] 05:58, 10 April 2012 (EDT)
::"I Hath Returned"? That's incorrect English. "Hath" was third person singular, not first person ("he hath" not "I hath"). --[[User:Khajidha|Khajidha]] 08:10, 10 April 2012 (EDT)
:::[[User:Apcog|Apcog]] translated that. I recall the intention was to capture the old-timey connotation of the original Japanese. [[User:Interrobang|—Interrobang]] 08:21, 10 April 2012 (EDT)
:Something else that has me pondering are the specific choices made in spelling and grammar of a few of these titles. Like, the inclusion of a "The" where it may not need be (like in "The Solitary Warrior Tigatron" instead of just "Solitary Warrior Tigatron", or "The Falcon Warrior Airrazor" vs. "Falcon Warrior Airazor") or the use a comma (like in "Goodbye, Rattle!?" as opposed to "Goodbye Rattle!?") or a space between two words instead of making them a compound word ("Death Match" vs. "Deathmatch"), and the synonymous use of "Resurrect(ion)", "Rebirth", and "Revive". In these cases, are the titles on the episode pages truly the more precise titles, or could they also use some amending? --[[User:Sabrblade|Sabrblade]] 11:20, 10 April 2012 (EDT)
::Most of those details are up to the translator's discretion. But, like I said, it's easier to just edit the Genon page rather than across multiple articles. [[User:Interrobang|—Interrobang]] 11:33, 10 April 2012 (EDT)

== Category:Deceased ==
Sub-categories
*Category:Deceased (Generation 1 cartoon)
**Category:Deceased (Marvel comics)
**Category:Deceased (BW)
*Category:Deceased (Armada)
*Category:Deceased (Energon)
*Category:Deceased (Movie)
**Category:Deceased (ROTF)
**Category:Deceased (DOTM)
*Category:Deceased (SG)
*Category:Deceased (Animated)
*Category:Deceased (Aligned)

Why not?--[[User:Finister2|Finister2]] 05:52, 10 April 2012 (EDT)

:"Deceased" is a stupid idea on a wiki that focuses on fiction with multiple continuities, time periods, vague "deaths", and resurrections. All characters will inevitably die at one point. This is not a warranted category. [[User:Interrobang|—Interrobang]] 05:55, 10 April 2012 (EDT)

::Vote for "No".
::A character may get killed in a sub-continuity but alive in another. Not to mention if the character will be resurrected or not. (So, we don't need Category:Resurrected characters, either.) --'''[[User:TX55|<span style= "color:#00FA9A">TX55</span>]]'''<small><SUP>''[[User talk:TX55|<span style= "color:#0000CD">TALK</span>]]''</SUP></small> 10:11, 10 April 2012 (EDT)
:::It is an appealing idea, to have categories for characters that are deceased "now." If they are patched up, they get removed from the category. I would have changed the categories to "Deceased (Movieverse)" and "Deceased (UT cartoon)" since they are supposed to be all one continuity. The only problem I see is vague deaths and continuity inconsistencies. People would probably disagree with me that [[Brawn (G1)]] obviously survived that shot to the shoulder. So, unfortunately, I can't fully endorse the idea. - [[User:Starfield|Starﬁeld]] 11:08, 10 April 2012 (EDT)
::::If we go by continuity, we are going to have a ''lot'' of "Deceased" categories. And you could only do it by continuity, which goes against our current methods to have categories by franchise. --[[User:Abates|abates]] 16:46, 10 April 2012 (EDT)
::I agree with you guys in regards to characters. but, what about a category for ''real'' people who have been involved with the Transformers franchise (like voice actors, designers, writers, etc.) who are deceased? --[[User:Sabrblade|Sabrblade]] 11:11, 10 April 2012 (EDT)

== Scheduled downtime. ==

Our hoster is moving servers around tomorrow. One of ours is gonna be moved starting between "Thu Apr 12 23:00:00 UTC 2012 and Fri Apr 13 05:00:00 UTC 2012." So that'll happen. --[[User:ItsWalky|ItsWalky]] 21:52, 11 April 2012 (EDT)
:I presume all the necessary backups have been made? --[[User:Thylacine 2000|Thylacine 2000]] 22:37, 11 April 2012 (EDT)
::Regularly, like clockwork. --[[User:ItsWalky|ItsWalky]] 00:51, 12 April 2012 (EDT)

==Category: Cats==
Presumably we have some kind of unwritten "We don't categorise by altmode" rule in play here, so I apologise if my adding a bunch of characters to this category seemed heavy-handed but in my defence the distinction between ''Shattered Glass'' Steeljaw and G1 Ravage is, eh, pretty much non-existent, Cheetor himself says "I'm a cat", it's a subset of Characters by species and we have K-9 under Dogs, so it's hardly black and white. But my main reason for doing it was that in SEO terms, having the word "Cats" repeatedly linked a bunch of times throughout the wiki is really quite useful, as in the wider internet cats are kind of a big deal. Real effing kitten calendars and all that. Isn't that something to consider? --[[User:Emvee|Emvee]] 03:47, 26 April 2012 (EDT)
:Categorizing by alternate mode has been brought up several times, but nobody has bothered to hammer out the details and do it. I don't particularly care for it one way or another, but putting Transformers in plain categories like "Cats" and "Watercraft" based on alternate mode makes them useless to those who only want to know about actual cats or watercraft in ''Transformers''. That said, I completely fail to see the relevance of Internet memes to our categorization system. [[User:Interrobang|—Interrobang]] 03:59, 26 April 2012 (EDT)
::Well, just that keywords are good for search engines, keywords that link to relevant pages even better and lots of people search for cats on the internet. I know that my girlfriend does and at a time like this (when my birthday is coming up) it's not impossible that she might search for "Transformers cats". If that led her to, say, SG Ravage's page (which is quite accessible to an internet-savvy non-fan with its twitter references and Walky's cartoons) then she may well stick around to find out more, and maybe look for more Transformers cats through the category links at the bottom of the page. At the moment our first link in a Google search is Snow Cat, who's kinda cool but you'd probably have to be a GI Joe fan to really get it. I dunno, I'm just spitballing here, but part of my job is SEO so I hope I at least know something like what I'm talking about. Anyway, that was my line of thinking. If it's problematic then that's fine, but I'm not really convinced by the "people looking for actual cats or watercraft in ''Transformers''" argument either - on a TF wiki I think they'd assume Transformers that turn into either of those things would be included by default. They are robots in disguise, after all. --[[User:Emvee|Emvee]] 14:36, 26 April 2012 (EDT)

== Google + ==
I've made a Google + for the wiki. I just need someone to link it to the main page because I don't know how. This is the link: https://plus.google.com/106006102124340784739 -- [[User:Spydersix|Spydersix]] 19:00, 30 April 2012 (EDT)

== Alt-mode listings ==

I've seen several things here discussing listing alt-modes by ''category'', but I'm looking for something a bit less complicated. I would really appreciate having each character's page at least openly list their alt-mode in the beginning; as it stands, some pages do not make it clear what that character turns into, generally only mentioning it in passing or in screenshots. I think some kind of fill-in-the-blanks template would work well, the kind they use on Wikipedia for comic book superheroes that have sections for code names, secret identities, a brief list of abilities, etc. It doesn't even have to be that thorough, just a small piece under the page's main picture that has "name, alt-mode, faction" would be a nice change of pace. [[User:Deusoma|Deusoma]] 15:15, 2 May 2012 (EDT)
:Your idea is impractical because many characters have had numerous altmodes. Listing all of them would be ridiculously long while trying to generalize them down to a single listing would be useless. For example, [[Optimus Prime (G1)|Optimus Prime]]. The casual fan might assume that you could just list his altmode as "semi truck" and be done with it. But he has also been a bat, a Lambourghini Diablo and a shoe. And that doesn't even get into what kind of "semi truck" he is: cab over engine like the original or long nose like the Generation 2 version. And does it have a sleeper. With or without trailer. And you still haven't covered his non-Earth modes. None of the Cybertronian forms we have seen looks anything like any of the others. --[[User:Khajidha|Khajidha]] 15:29, 2 May 2012 (EDT)
::I don't care one way or the other, but we could hide the minor alternate modes, the same as we do with voice actors. [[User:Interrobang|—Interrobang]] 15:40, 2 May 2012 (EDT)
:While I agree that we should do our best to list alt-modes, at the beginning of the article doesn't seem like the most efficient place to do it. Rather, we should continue listing the alt-mode in the description of the various toys and work on filling in those that are lacking. - [[User:Shellspark|Shellspark]] 16:26, 2 May 2012 (EDT)
: Well, there are a lot of fiction-only altmodes going on. I could see this working as a Notes subsection, possibly as a gallery. --[[User:M Sipher|M Sipher]] 17:27, 2 May 2012 (EDT)
:: Yeah, that's why I always attempt to get an image of each altmode in the fiction section as they appear. --[[User:ItsWalky|ItsWalky]] 17:56, 2 May 2012 (EDT)

==Redundant foreign names==
According to Interrobang:
:"''So? It's been the standard for a long time and exactly how do you expect readers to know that Japan uses the same name without noting it?''"
1) No, it has NOT been "the standard for a long time". In fact, we didn't do this for YEARS. You're the one who seems to have decided, fairly recently, to pull this crap. Like with "mammoth".<br>
2) Well. Why don't we just list every country in the world that also uses that name? After all, how exactly are we to know if the Canadians don't not call her Airachnid, or the Germans, or the Zimbabweans (holy shit "Zimbabweans" is ''correct''?), or the other 190-odd nations across the globe? Oh wait, because we can use some incredibly base deductive reasoning and assume that unless a ''different'' name is listed for a country, ''it's the same name and we don't need to fucking list it there just so you can get a katakana-boner''. --[[User:M Sipher|M Sipher]] 06:45, 3 May 2012 (EDT)
:There is the argument to be made that not including a foreign name leaves the reader unable to know if the character either has the same name in that country, or if that information is just ''missing'' from the article. Not that I disagree that it ''really'' seems to have got out of control, to the point that the Japanese words for "doctor" or "scientist" or "coach" or "mammoth" are being added to nameless characters' articles. I enjoyed our older attitude that basically amounted to "fuck katanana unless necessary to explain something". - [[User:Chris McFeely|Chris McFeely]] 07:05, 3 May 2012 (EDT)
::The counter-argument was already made above. ''Transformers'' is a global brand now, and it's basically a waste of space to list every country where Optimus Prime is called "Optimus Prime" (or as close as they can get phonetically), and better to assume that it is "Optimus Prime" unless otherwise noted. The ''probability'' that the name is the same is pretty damn good nowadays, especially in Japan. --[[User:M Sipher|M Sipher]] 07:34, 3 May 2012 (EDT)
:::I'm sympathetic. If somebody actually does go through the trouble to track down what Airachnid is called in Zimbabwean and it ends up being "Airachnid" then if they put the information down, then nobody else will have to go through the trouble of looking it up. What if redundant foreign names are left <nowiki></nowiki> - [[User:Starfield|Starfield]] 10:04, 3 May 2012 (EDT)
::::I hate seeing redundant names, but I agree that a certain degree of "is this already known?" may exist in a vacuum. I'm not opposed to leaving them in the code but commented out to keep them out of the page itself. -[[User:LV|LV]] 00:00, 4 May 2012 (EDT)
:::::Would it be acceptable to have a template that displays the foreign names, but hides or combines entries if the names are not unique? The template might also be able to auto-categorize by "characters missing ''language'' names", too.[[Special:Contributions/192.249.47.177|192.249.47.177]] 18:49, 29 May 2012 (EDT)

==Toy Fair/Pre-Toy Fair Catalogues==
Collectively we went all out on getting hold of the 86 PTF catalogue when it popped up on eBay and have a nice page with full scans of it (I say "we" I completely missed that fund-raising drive). Going forward, is it a feasible aim for other Toy Fair and Pre-Toy Fair cats to be collected for the Wiki or is 86 known to be the only one of significant interest? I ask because I just stumbled upon an eBay seller with the 88 TF cat (which I'd hoped to procure for use on my Visionaries wiki) and some early 90s ones, all of which are beyond my means, but at relatively reasonable prices. Can't link to them on my phone, but I thought I'd mention it in case they are of significant interest like the 86 one was. [[User:Danja|Danja]] 03:45, 6 May 2012 (EDT)

== Google Chrome ==
Does anybody else experience a ''really'' slow connection to only this site while using Google Chrome? -- [[User:Spydersix|spyder]] 21:42, 17 May 2012 (EDT)

FYI: <nowiki>{{bigquote}}</nowiki> overlaps images in Google Chrome, like on [[Thaddeus Morocco|Morocco]]. I don't know when that started. - [[User:Starfield|Starfield]] 16:03, 22 May 2012 (EDT)

Now, the <nowiki>{{picsneeded}}</nowiki> tag overlaps the top of the episode template. It might just be my computer, but I don't know. -- [[User:Spydersix|spyder]] 18:28, 29 May 2012 (EDT)

:These layout problems are apparently an issue with the latest version of Chrome. I guess they'll get fixed in the next release or something. --[[User:Abates|abates]] 18:10, 31 May 2012 (EDT)
::There's been two new versions of Chrome since you said that, [[User:Abates|abates]], and it hasn't been fixed, so I'm reporting it to Google. Like that's gonna work. -- [[User:Spydersix|spyder]] 10:09, 19 June 2012 (EDT)
:::Is this problem still happening? --[[User:Abates|abates]] 05:22, 15 October 2012 (EDT)
::::Wow, completely forgot about this. And no, since I reported it to Google, it's been fixed. I'm surprised. -- [[User:Spydersix|spyder]][[User Talk:Spydersix|<sup>Use this!</sup>]] 06:26, 15 October 2012 (EDT)

== Transformers 4 ==
Does anyone mind if I take a stab at creating a page for it? I'm not some idiot who's gonna create a crappy page with no effort. Or is it ''way'' to early to do that? -- [[User:Spydersix|spyder]] 19:03, 6 June 2012 (EDT)
:I'd say wait until at least the first poster appears on the Internet, then you'll have some sort of image to put in. Really though it is a bit too early, if everything goes to plan TF4 won't be out for another two years, so the TF4 article would be sitting around with nothing on it for at least a year before we start getting concrete information. [[User:TurboFox|TurboFox]] 17:06, 24 August 2012 (EDT)

== Prime game ==
What do people think about putting [[Transformers: Prime - The Game|Transformers Prime: The Game]] in the nav bar? -- [[User:Spydersix|spyder]] 09:47, 10 June 2012 (EDT)
:Or we can replace the link to the Prime cartoon page with a link to the Prime franchise page, that way it avoids overcluttering the navbar. --[[User:Detour|Detour]] 14:15, 10 June 2012 (EDT)
::Yeah, that also might work. -- [[User:Spydersix|spyder]] 09:23, 11 June 2012 (EDT)
:::At least 95% of the people who click on that are likely to be looking for info on the cartoon, and I feel like if we have Rescue Bots and Dark of the Moon pointing to the cartoon/film rather than the franchises, we should aim to be consistent with our navigation. We'll presumably have to add [[Transformers Universe]] there eventually anyway. --[[User:Abates|abates]] 16:46, 11 June 2012 (EDT)
::::Yeah, I forgot about that. We probably can take Dark of the Moon to declutter it. -- [[User:Spydersix|spyder]] 16:50, 11 June 2012 (EDT)
:::::We could divide things up with subheaders or just by putting darker lines in to split up the links. Man, I wish there was a way to easily add in more links without cluttering up the menu too much. It feels like we should have links to current toylines as well, and maybe the current IDW comics. --[[User:Abates|abates]] 17:21, 11 June 2012 (EDT)
::::::Yeah probably, but what can you do, right? And I like that subheader idea. And on a different note, "Transformers Prime: The Game" is a mouthful. How can we abbreviate that? -- [[User:Spydersix|spyder]] 17:36, 11 June 2012 (EDT)
::::::: TF Prime: The Game??? [[User:Bumblebee2000|Bumblebee2000]] 08:19, 12 June 2012 (EDT)
::::::::Probably the best we can do. -- [[User:Spydersix|spyder]] 13:37, 12 June 2012 (EDT)
:::::::::On abbreviating the name, as everything on the wiki is Transformers, you can say "Prime: The Game" instead of "TF Prime: The Game". The "TF" is assumed. [[User:JohnnyMrNinja|JohnnyMrNinja]] 15:30, 13 June 2012 (EDT)
::::::::::So what are we going to do about this nav bar? -- [[User:Spydersix|spyder]] 18:17, 12 June 2012 (EDT)
:::::::::::Are we using the <nowiki>{{Primecap}}</nowiki> template for images from it? -- [[User:Spydersix|spyder]] 10:07, 13 June 2012 (EDT)

:::::::::::Be patient. This stuff never happens overnight. --[[User:Detour|Detour]] 18:50, 12 June 2012 (EDT)
::::::::::::Not exactly overnight anymore, two months later. As you might be able to tell, patience is not my strong suit. -- [[User:Spydersix|spyder]] 12:10, 30 August 2012 (EDT)
:::::::::::::Sorry, I meant to have a go at fiddling with the lines to break the menu up a bit but I forgot. I'll have a go at it this weekend. --[[User:Abates|abates]] 17:16, 30 August 2012 (EDT)
::::::::::::::Sweet! -- [[User:Spydersix|spyder]] 17:33, 30 August 2012 (EDT)
:::::::::::::::''Niiiiccceeee.'' -- [[User:Spydersix|spyder]] 22:10, 1 September 2012 (EDT)
I have added this and taken out Dark of the Moon, since that's been out for over a year. I was going to add [[Transformers Universe]], but I realised we still don't have a release date for that. I've also added darker lines under the "Main Page" and under the navigation links which are actual articles rather than Wiki things, which will hopefully make those links more grouped in function. You might have to force a refresh to see those. --[[User:Abates|abates]] 22:12, 1 September 2012 (EDT)
:I see them. Nice looking. And I'll let you know when we have a release date. I check every day. -- [[User:Spydersix|spyder]] 22:16, 1 September 2012 (EDT)

I think I'm leaning towards moving the ''[[Transformers: Prime - The Game|Prime: The Game]]'' page to ''Transformers Prime - The Game'', since that's how the official website writes it. So the Nav bar might have to get changed. Just a heads up. -- [[User:Spydersix|spyder]][[User Talk:Spydersix|<sup>Use this!</sup>]] 17:31, 10 October 2012 (EDT)

== Rare/Unkown vintage G1 Walkie Talkie toys? ==

Hi guys. I was just browsing ebay and came across 3 old G1 Walkie Talkies that don't appear to be mentioned on the wiki anywhere.
#1- [http://www.ebay.com/itm/Transformers-Walkie-Talkie-ROBOT-1987-Hasbro-Inc/270982316728/ This] one appears to be an Argentinian Transformer with the mold licensed from Commando Toys.
#2 [http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Transformers-G1-Walkie-Talkies-Boxed-/300654034838?pt=US_Action_Figures&hash=item4600607f96/ These] guys appear to be unnamed generics.
#3 [http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/REAL-VTG-80s-TRANSFORMERS-INTERCOM-TELEPHONE-SYSTEM-WIRED-WALKIE-TALKIE-NIB-MIB-/360458042129?pt=US_Action_Figures&hash=item53ecf93b11 This] one features two Optimus Primes as an "Electronic Intercom Telephone System" (which seems to basically be two walkie talkies connected via a wire). Box says made by Nasta in lager photos and check out that goofy looking transformation sequence.

I'm not entirely sure if any of these are legit as I've never seen them mentioned anywhere else before. Anyone else know more info about these? Should they be added to wiki? [[User:RavenG|RavenG]] 02:27, 16 June 2012 (EDT)
:I used to have a set of #2, but I've no idea where they are now. They were pretty common in the UK I think. --[[User:Emvee|Emvee]] 03:17, 19 July 2012 (EDT)

== Technical Contact (and passwords) ==

Hi, guys. It's Botch the Crab... though I can't sign in as my account. I lost my password. I don't know what email address is associated with the account, but whichever one it is, when I did the "forgot password" thing and was told a new password was emailed to me, I never received any emails.

So my first question is: who can help me re-claim my account?

My second question is: who are the technical administrators of the wiki, and is that information posted somewhere that I couldn't find? I tried contacting Chris McFeely and David Willis, but neither of them were able to help, nor did they know who
would. So! Suggestions?

:I tried emailing your username, but it didn't work... It said that I need to be logged in with a valid email set, but I had done both of those things. Can any other user successfully send an email to [[User:Botch the Crab]]? Because it might be the email module that isn't working and that's why you can't reset your password. I don't think the MediaWiki framework has been updated since 2008 (we're running [http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Release_notes/1.12#MediaWiki_1.12.0 MediWiki 1.12.0]), and if David Willis doesn't know who's running the tech (seeing as how [http://www.networksolutions.com/whois-search/tfwiki.net he registered this site), it makes me think that there are not any people doing that. I could be mistaken, but I think there are only admins that are affecting change within the MW software.
:As far as I know, once a password to a MW site is lost there is no recovery outside of email, at least that is the case for WP. [[User:JohnnyMrNinja|JohnnyMrNinja]] 17:49, 16 June 2012 (EDT)

::I just tried sending an email to Botch and it worked, though the copy I sent myself ended up in my gmail spam folder. --[[User:Abates|abates]] 18:48, 16 June 2012 (EDT)

:::You're right, I had to confirm my email address and now I can email, although emails from this site were marked as spam for me as well. Botch, I can only hope that you haven't checked your spam folder. [[User:JohnnyMrNinja|JohnnyMrNinja]] 00:54, 17 June 2012 (EDT)

:Thanks for all the help, guys. Unfortunately, I haven't received any of the "new password" emails. (Yes, I keep checking the spam folder.) The frustrating part is that without being able to sign in, I cannot confirm ''which'' email address these are being sent to. All my emails are forwarded to my gmail account, so I have no idea why I wouldn't receive them. It's a mystery. It's weird to think it's possible that none of the administrators have the access or ability to solve this.--[[User:Botch|Botch]] 23:18, 18 June 2012 (EDT)
::I thought Scout and/or McFly were doing our technical stuff. --[[User:Abates|abates]] 23:27, 18 June 2012 (EDT)
:::I'm pretty sure that Scout and I have been over this fairly often: We're pretty damned busy, so we're not monitoring the Community Portal pages. If someone's forgotten their password AND the associated email address, there's no real secure way to get them back in. Email addresses aren't exposed to us until we get down to the to SQL DB layer, barring some additional extensions that would expose everyone's information to a trusted few. I strongly suggest making a new account in the interim, while we discuss the repercussions of adding some more User Management extensions, and figuring out who we can trust. I'll tell you this much, though: If your password isn't basically a random scramble of characters and symbols, I wouldn't trust you with maintenance access. It's like giving a handgun to a chimp. (Not picking on anyone in particular, but let's keep this in mind as we start adding cooks to the kitchen.) --[[User:McFly|McFly]] 11:54, 1 August 2012 (EDT)

:Sad update: I managed to scrounge up the database password from some old notes, and I've got your email address: Same one listed on your website. If you can disable whatever's filtering out your spam, that might help, since your site mentions some sort of sender-response mechanism. Poor old Mediawiki is too stupid/honest to pretend that she's a human.--[[User:McFly|McFly]] 12:11, 1 August 2012 (EDT)

== Captions need to go ==

It seems I am not the only one who finds the caption "humor" annoying and irrelevant to the photo it is placed with. I see in huge bold letters 'THE FUNNY STAYS. -The Management' So it seems this is not the first time someone has brought this up.

It seems " The Management " are the few people who get their kicks from such while the rest of the users are stuck just rolling their eyes. I for one will no longer be visiting this wiki because of such.

The nail in the coffin for me was a caption that I looked up as I wondered why I didn't get the "joke" as I seen tons of Xformer related shows. Heaven forbid the joke had nothing to do with transformers, only the person who wrote the joke and a small selection of people probably will understand it.

Just a little FYI 90% of the captions are unfunny, I would dare say 30% or more have nothing to do with xformers.

(sorry if this is in the wrong place, sort of new to wiki's and I wish the first thing I could have posted here would have been positive. I believe this is really positive and will help the wiki more than any article I could have wrote.)
: Thank you for leaving. --[[User:ItsWalky|ItsWalky]] 02:11, 21 June 2012 (EDT)

:Eh, the majority of the time when I stumble on a discussion on wikis on other sites, people will cite TFWiki and Wookiepedia as the best, and are generally complimentary about the humour, so while we occasionally get complaints about it, it seems like the majority of people like it. --[[User:Abates|abates]] 03:29, 21 June 2012 (EDT)

: I also believe that anything else you would have contributed to the wiki would have been less useful than this. --[[User:M Sipher|M Sipher]] 06:58, 21 June 2012 (EDT)

:....xformers? Is spelling out Transformers properly now "2 kool for skool"? --[[User:Detour|Detour]] 07:32, 21 June 2012 (EDT)

:The Funny '''STAYS'''. --'''[[User:TX55|<span style= "color:#00FA9A">TX55</span>]]'''<small><SUP>''[[User talk:TX55|<span style= "color:#0000CD">TALK</span>]]''</SUP></small> 09:26, 22 June 2012 (EDT)

:I'd note that if you want a serious TF wiki, there's an abandoned Wikia wiki that nobody seems to have gotten the bright idea of turning into one yet instead of always trying to convert this one. --[[Special:Contributions/108.176.195.222|108.176.195.222]] 01:43, 22 June 2012 (EDT)

::Some people here have actually mentioned this idea to the wikia "community", but they seem hellbent on remaining a poor copy of this site. The fact that they have barely added any pages since this site began while we have doubled in size doesn't seem to register to some of the people over there. --[[User:Khajidha|Khajidha]] 02:37, 22 June 2012 (EDT)

: If you feel that bad about it then write some of your own on the Pics with out Captions. (hell knows that ultra magnus "I can deal with that" has been done to death)[[User:Phantom|Phantom]] 09:38, 22 June 2012 (EDT)
::To be fair, serious captions, unless vital to the understanding of the picture, tend to get rewritten here. --[[User:Abates|abates]] 18:42, 22 June 2012 (EDT)

== Spoiler titles ==

Something which came up last month, but I didn't want to bring it up at the time because it would only have compounded the problem.

The title for [[How Ratchet Got His Hands Back|IDW MtMtE #5]] was placed at the '''end''' of the issue, [http://www.comics.org/issue/26304/cover/4/ "The Night Gwen Stacy Died"]-style (rather than the typical beginning/first splash page), because it was ''itself'' a spoiler.

So, of course, every page which had a {{tl|spoiler}}-tag for the issue plastered it in the spoiler tag itself.

There's got to be a better way of doing this if a comic gets a spoiler-title again. -- [[User:Mammalian Verisimilitude|Mammalian Verisimilitude]] 20:19, 7 July 2012 (EDT)
:The spoiler tags could have linked to the "More than Meets the Eye issue 5" redirect instead (the issue was originally created there to avoid just that problem, but then it got moved to the actual title anyway) --[[User:Abates|abates]] 20:30, 7 July 2012 (EDT)

Speaking of SPOILERS, is there any way people could ''stop'' putting them up for comics before the issues actually come out? By sheer happenstance, I just came across some significant details on the Wiki about the DJD, their leader, and their membership that I honestly would have preferred to read for myself when it's published. It was posted by long time members, so I'm assuming it's legit and came from SDCC or somewhere, but there are no sources so I can't be sure. If an anon posted that stuff, I probably would have removed it as typical Wikipedia fanfic trying to creep in.

Regardless, it's getting tough to come onto the TFwiki because of this stuff. Whenever a new 5-page preview for RID or MTMTE comes out, people are immediately updating the crew on the ''Lost Light'' page, adding place-holder storylinks to pages for new characters showing up, and just generally revealing every detail they can extract from the previews ahead of time. I get that avoiding spoilers on the internet is a luxury nowadays, but these previews come out nearly a week in advance for each of IDW's two series. Its one thing to avoid SPOILERS-labeled topics in a message board...its another to avoid the entire TFwiki for a third of every month to dodge preview materials. --[[User:Xaaron|Xaaron]] 21:52, 20 July 2012 (EDT)
:This one I'll have to own, as 'twas me that did the deed. It was, as you speculated, another five page preview from IDW. I'd ''hoped'' the details I put in weren't too spoilery, as in the leader's case it was mostly putting a name to details we'd found out issues before. I can only apologize and try to be a bit more careful.--[[User:Rosicrucian|Rosicrucian]][[User Talk:Rosicrucian|<sup>Talk</sup>]] 22:11, 20 July 2012 (EDT)
::I'll also say that I was going to stick the group shot of them up on the wiki, but I can hold off if you think that would be best.--[[User:Rosicrucian|Rosicrucian]][[User Talk:Rosicrucian|<sup>Talk</sup>]] 22:40, 20 July 2012 (EDT)

== Autobot Communications officer in Headmasters ==

<nowiki>[[Image:Hm - autobot communications officer.jpg|thumb]]</nowiki>
Hey, this guy appeared in a single episode of Heamasters where he was the communications officer on-duty at Autobot City. ...does anyone know which episode? -[[User:Derik|Derik]]
:[[The Final Showdown on Earth (Part 1)]]. --[[User:Abates|abates]] 01:27, 18 July 2012 (EDT)
::Sir, you are a gentleman and a [[Transformerology|Transformerologist]]. -[[User:Derik|Derik]] 01:47, 18 July 2012 (EDT)

== Connection issues ==

Is it just me or are there problems with the wiki's server or in how many connections it can manage at a time? I've not been around for awhile and have noticed that if I spend a few hours reading or editing the wiki, it randomly stops working for periods between 5 minutes to half an hour, which is a problem if I've just made a large edit to something. In fact, in the few minutes that it took for me to write this, it twice stopped working (so I couldn't preview the edit), and that was after sitting around for perhaps 10 minutes waiting for the wiki to allow me to open the community portal page. --[[User:FFN|FFN]] 15:00, 2 August 2012 (EDT)
:I get this a lot, usually only for short periods but quite regularly. Either it just hangs or I get the "unable to serve page" error. Usually halfway through a big edit too, which is why I keep a text editor open to cut and paste stuff into. --[[User:Emvee|Emvee]] 04:41, 30 August 2012 (EDT)

== I ♥ you guys ==

Am I the only one who sees ♥'s everywhere in the RecentChanges page?

Did we screw up the CSS while adding an admin? -[[Special:Contributions/67.6.127.163|67.6.127.163]] 23:03, 29 August 2012 (EDT)
:You don't see them if you're logged in.--[[User:Rosicrucian|Rosicrucian]][[User Talk:Rosicrucian|<sup>Talk</sup>]] 19:10, 30 August 2012 (EDT)
::I think if you're logged in, you still see them if you have the enhanced Recent Changes turned off, because Derik only coded them for the simple version of RC. --[[User:Abates|abates]] 21:39, 1 September 2012 (EDT)

== G.I. Joe wiki - a little help? ==

Hello, all. I just wanted to add a request for some help for what should really by this wiki's sister site, Joepedia, the G.I. Joe Wiki. Now, I posted a similar request on some other sci-fi themed wiki, but the only answer I got was being told that the rules forbid a request from another wiki to be made. Well, I think that was kind of stupid, considering the communal attitude the whole wiki concept represents. BUT, ANYWAY, the Joepedia has been growing over the years, but it's mostly frequented by a small dedicated group of contributors. Since Transformers and G.I. Joe are so closely linked, I hoped some folks on here would like to help.

I will add that I have no authority over on that site, and I don't really contribute much, mostly because of the time spent my own website. I'm just a concerned geeky citizen drumming up some support. --[[User:JMM|JMM]] 10:26, 7 September 2012 (EDT)
:Well, I would, but I really don't know jack shit about G.I. Joe. And when I think about it, I'm not sure this post belongs here. -- [[User:Spydersix|spyder]] 17:36, 7 September 2012 (EDT)
::Just looking around for a little help. This seemed like the closest thing to a G.I. Joe wiki out there, and I figured it was worth a try. --[[User:JMM|JMM]] 13:23, 13 September 2012 (EDT)
::I don't see a problem with a polite request for assistance or notification that a Joe wiki exists, since there IS some crossover interest. I just don't know how much ''useful'' crossover interest for the Joe wiki there is from this end outside of what we've already done. I mean, we've got extensive coverage of the parts of Joe directly involving TFs... I'd say that's probably going to be the most useful thing we have for you. But, if others wanna try it out...<br>
::...unless you're on Wikia.... --[[User:M Sipher|M Sipher]] 13:27, 13 September 2012 (EDT)
:::Yeah, it was just a quick heads up so people who may be interested are aware. I know a number of people who are equally obsessed with TF and Joe. :) Oh, and yes, it is on Wikia! --[[User:JMM|JMM]] 14:22, 13 September 2012 (EDT)
::::We did at one point approach a partnership with Joepedia, and even had a template that cross-linked articles we shared. It was just a little premature at the time (which was years ago) as Joepedia was just starting out and often our articles were more complete than theirs, or theirs were just stubs. It looks like they've gotten off the ground a bit more now.--[[User:Rosicrucian|Rosicrucian]][[User Talk:Rosicrucian|<sup>Talk</sup>]] 15:30, 13 September 2012 (EDT)
:::::Yes, their wiki got started later than this one. They have a small group of dedicated contributers, but the site's yet to attract the kind of interest this one does. --[[User:JMM|JMM]] 16:34, 13 September 2012 (EDT)

== New stub template ==
Does anybody have any objections to a video game stub template? It would look something like this:
<br clear="all" />{{messagebox
|header=This article is still in beta stage.
|message_text=''This video game article is a [[:Category:Video game stubs|stub]] and is missing information. You can help '''{{SITENAME}}''' by [{{SERVER}}{{localurl:{{NAMESPACE}}:{{PAGENAME}}|action=edit}} expanding it].''
|image_name=ProwlTFU.JPG
|image_width=40px
|width = 90%
}}<includeonly>[[Category:Video game stubs]]</includeonly>
If anybody knows of a better picture that would go well with this, please upload it so it can be put in. Thanks! -- [[User:Spydersix|spyder]][[User Talk:Spydersix|<sup>Use this!</sup>]] 15:52, 2 October 2012 (EDT)

:How about a pic from the story where Prime dies in a video game? Heh if only Beta had ever been in a game, that'd be perfect. --[[Special:Contributions/76.28.76.206|76.28.76.206]] 16:03, 2 October 2012 (EDT)
::What story was that? And yeah, that woulda been great. -- [[User:Spydersix|spyder]][[User Talk:Spydersix|<sup>Use this!</sup>]] 19:53, 2 October 2012 (EDT)
:::That would be [[Afterdeath!]]. --[[User:Detour|Detour]] 21:56, 2 October 2012 (EDT)
::::Well if people really want a picture from that, someone else will have to upload it, as I don't have access to it. -- [[User:Spydersix|spyder]][[User Talk:Spydersix|<sup>Use this!</sup>]] 21:59, 2 October 2012 (EDT)
:::::[[:Image:Afterdeath-gameoverman.jpg|Right here, dude.]]--[[User:Detour|Detour]] 22:34, 2 October 2012 (EDT)
::::::Thanks, man. It's on the ''[[Transformers: Prime - The Game|Prime: The Game]]'' page if you want to see it. -- [[User:Spydersix|spyder]][[User Talk:Spydersix|<sup>Use this!</sup>]] 22:50, 2 October 2012 (EDT)

In addition to the video game stub, I'd like to suggest adding several templates, such as "section stub" and "fiction stub". Right now, we only have "characer stub fiction" for pages only missing fiction section, but no templates for non-character page missing fiction appearance. While "section stub" can use for articles only missing one or two sections. --'''[[User:TX55|<span style= "color:#00FA9A">TX55</span>]]'''<small><SUP>''[[User talk:TX55|<span style= "color:#0000CD">TALK</span>]]''</SUP></small> 22:05, 2 October 2012 (EDT)
:Ok, so I'm gonna go ahead and make the video game one, and TX, if I get around to it later, maybe the others. If not, well, someone else will. Oh, and if I miss an article that the video game one should go on, put it here. -- [[User:Spydersix|spyder]][[User Talk:Spydersix|<sup>Use this!</sup>]] 22:31, 2 October 2012 (EDT)

== Megatron Barcode Battler ==

Hi, I was wondering if anyone here had come across this Megatron card for the Barcode Battler, and where in the Wiki it should go:
{|
|-
|[[Image:Barcode Battler Megatron Card Front.jpg|200px]]
|[[Image:Barcode Battler Megatron Card Back.jpg|200px]]
|}
It seems to have been released by Toys R Us in 1992 as a promo for the Barcode Battler (which they were trying to sell in store), and was (as far as is known) the only such Transformers card, probably given away with two [http://barcodebattler.co.uk/scans/UK/ToysRUsF.jpg blank] [http://barcodebattler.co.uk/scans/UK/ToysRUsB.jpg cards] (the bottom scan - the middle is from the Barcode Battler box) to add your own barcodes to, and a card wallet.

The text ("Clad in steel, armed to the teeth, nobody toys with us good guys when this moody cool deadly-dudey is around.") is probably enough to make you want to forget this was ever made (is it really calling Megatron a good guy?), but it's cropped up in enough eBay sales (almost always in a Barcode Battler lot with the seller unaware that they've got something rare) to make it likely to be genuine.

So does anyone else have any information on it, and whereabouts should this go? [[User:Xensyria|xensyria]] 12:26, 16 October 2012 (EDT)

File:Barcode Battler Megatron Card Back.jpg

2012-10-16T16:05:13Z

Xensyria: Megatron card (back) for the Barcode Battler, released as a promo from Toys R Us in the U.K. See :File:Barcode Battler Megatron Card Front.jpg for the other side. Scan from http://www.barcodebattler.co.uk

[[Megatron]] card (back) for the Barcode Battler, released as a promo from Toys R Us in the U.K.

See [[:File:Barcode Battler Megatron Card Front.jpg]] for the other side.

Scan from http://www.barcodebattler.co.uk

File:Barcode Battler Megatron Card Front.jpg

2012-10-16T16:04:29Z

Xensyria: Megatron card (front) for the Barcode Battler, released as a promo from Toys R Us in the U.K. See :File:Barcode Battler Megatron Card Back.jpg for the other side. Scan from http://www.barcodebattler.co.uk

[[Megatron]] card (front) for the Barcode Battler, released as a promo from Toys R Us in the U.K.

See [[:File:Barcode Battler Megatron Card Back.jpg]] for the other side.

Scan from http://www.barcodebattler.co.uk